Earlier today, the Jurist published my article on how we can expand political freedom by empowering more people to vote with their feet.
Here is an excerpt:
The United States has just completed a historically divisive election. As I write, the winner of the presidential election is not yet definitively known, though it seems highly likely that Democratic candidate Joe Biden will ultimately prevail when all the votes are counted. Whatever the outcome, many millions of people will be deeply distressed at the prospect that the levers of power in Washington will be controlled by a party they hate and fear. And individual voters of all viewpoints have little chance of making a choice that actually affects the outcome. We can alleviate these problems by expanding opportunities for people to “vote with their feet.”
Ballot box voting has many virtues. But as a mechanism for political choice, it falls short in two crucial ways: enabling people to make meaningful decisions and incentivizing them to make well-informed choices. On both dimensions, we can do better by empowering foot voting….
Effective freedom requires the ability to make a decisive choice. A person does not have meaningful religious freedom if she has only a 1 in 60 million chance of being able to determine which religion she wishes to practice. A 1 in 60 million chance of deciding what views you are allowed to express does not qualify as meaningful freedom of speech. What is true of freedom of speech and religion is also true of political freedom. A person with only an infinitesimal chance of affecting what kind of government policies he or she is subjected to has little, if any, genuine choice….
Things are very different when people “vote with their feet.” When you decide what jurisdiction to live in, that’s a decision you have real control over. For that very reason, there is a strong incentive to seek out relevant information. The same applies to private-sector decisions and choices about international migration. Most people probably devote more time and effort to deciding what television set or smartphone to buy, than to decide who to vote for in any election. The reason is not that the television set is more important than who governs the country, but that choice you make has real effects.
In the United States, foot voters can potentially choose between fifty states and thousands of local governments. They can also opt for private planned communities, such as condominium associations, which provide many services similar to those offered by local governments. Some 69 million Americans already live in private planned communities, belying the notion that they are only for the wealthy few. Widespread foot voting opportunities can benefit even many who do not actually move, by incentivizing states and localities to compete with each other by improving their policies….
We can make foot voting more accessible by decentralizing more policy issues to states, localities, and the private sector, and by loosening restrictions on the establishment of new private communities. That will increase the range of options available to potential foot voters and reduce moving costs. It is cheaper and easier to move from one state to another than to leave the US entirely, and cheaper still to choose between localities or private sector organizations….
Decentralization can also mitigate the painful reality that, whoever ultimately wins the 2020 elections at the federal level, many millions of people will be forced to accept a variety of government policies they deeply abhor. By devolving power to the state and local level and to the private sector, we can expand the range of policy options available to Americans. Those who lose out at the national level can still live under policies that match their preferences at lower levels of government, or in private institutions. By lowering the stakes of national elections, such diversity can mitigate the poisonous political polarization and partisan hatred that has infected American politics.
The article is in large part based on ideas developed much more fully in my recent book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom. The Introduction to the book, which provides an overview of the rest, is available for free download here.
I should note that the article was written and published before major media organizations called the election for Joe Biden in the late morning.
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If the Democrats just ram these election results through without explaining, then the legitimacy not just of our electoral system but of our entire government may suffer a fatal blow…
The 2020 election in particular, and our electoral process in general, have been badly compromised.
First there have been the successful efforts by Democrats to loosen electoral administration standards and practices by legalizing ballot harvesting (where partisan “volunteers” go out and collect ballots as well as “assist” voters in filling out their ballots), allowing same-day voter registration, mass mail-in voting, and the like. On the flipside we have Democrats tenaciously fighting any efforts to shore up the integrity of the system, such as requiring ID and proof of citizenship to vote.
Couple all of this with unprecedented last minute rule changes on the eve of what was sure to be the most contested election in generations, if not in American history: all changes designed to favor one side over the other.
Theoretically, none of these measures guaranteed a compromised vote. Theoretically, it’s possible that a system designed to be gamed and abused won’t be. But a party concerned about the integrity of the system wouldn’t expend so much effort making it easier to rig elections; it would do the opposite. The other party, the one trying to do exactly that (if all too often in a desultory, half-hearted way) nevertheless gets attacked as the enemy of “democracy.”
Second were all the ways the media, legacy and social, engaged in saturation broadcast of only one side of the story and deliberately suppressed any mention of the other. These enormous in-kind contributions massively outweighed the paltry $10 million Russians allegedly spent on pro-Trump Facebook ads in 2016. Yet we are insistently told that Trump’s 2016 victory was illegitimate owing to “the Russians” while everything Google, Twitter, Facebook, the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and the Associated Press (to name a few) did for Biden either had no effect at all or was totally aboveboard.
Fourth are the irregularities in the voting and counting that began in the wee hours on November 4 and continue to this minute, including but not limited to: inexplicably halting the counts in five states late on election night; the continuing, and mysterious “finding” of huge tranches of ballots overwhelmingly—and in some cases exclusively—for Biden; computer “glitches” that flipped Republican votes into the Democrats’ column; people showing up to vote in person only to be told that they had already voted absentee when they had never request an absentee ballot; Democratic-controlled states limiting access to Republican observers even in defiance of court orders; etc.
Now, it’s possible that each of these, and many other, shady-looking events has an innocent and plausible explanation. If so, we should be told what they are.
But mostly we’re not being told. Instead anyone who asks is either ignored or, more likely, told to shut up and called a conspiracy theorist and an enemy of democracy.
You’d think that if state and local election officials had innocent explanations for all these instances of alleged irregularity, they’d offer them. You’d think further that it would be in their interest to explain. Does Joe Biden really want to take office with half the country thinking he stole it? They can shout in our faces all they want—and they will—but shouting will not convince. They need to persuade. They need to explain. And their explanations need to be true.
Far from seeing any effort to explain, all I see is an enlivened and merciless push to ram through the results while censoring and slandering anyone who asks questions or points out irregularities. Either they don’t have explanations, or they don’t care what we think. Or both.
There is something to be said—from the point of view of the powerful—for just ramming things through and explaining nothing. It’s a clear demonstration of who’s boss. It demoralizes the other side. And it’s nearly certain to change the system permanently in ways that benefit the ruling class for as long as they can keep it going.
I have no special insight into what the president may or may not do. Based on his remarks Thursday night and the actions so far by his campaign, he clearly doesn’t believe the election was clean. He may nevertheless at some point conclude that he has no viable way to get to the bottom of what happened—especially with unfriendly state officials, agencies, and courts in charge of most of the processes.
Were the president eventually to concede, that will be trumpeted as “proof” that all doubts about the integrity of the election have been laid to rest, and all questions are illegitimate. It will, of course, prove no such thing.
Richard Nixon believed he won the 1960 election but had it stolen from him in Illinois and Texas. (There is evidence, but no conclusive proof, that he was right.) Seeing no clear way to establish the truth, and wishing to avert a crisis, he declined to challenge the results. This episode, ever since, has been “explained” to the American people in two ways: there was no cheating, and Nixon was statesmanlike to concede. But if there was no cheating, conceding was simply a matter of acknowledging reality. Nixon’s action was “statesmanlike” only if he sacrificed something for the (supposed) good of the country—i.e., if cheating denied him the presidency he legitimately won.
No matter what he does, President Trump will get no credit from his enemies, who are already demanding that he concede before the counting is even over—to say nothing of the lawsuits and potential recounts. If he does, a new standard will have been set, or an old one reaffirmed: in any close election, if the Democrat appears to be ahead, and irregularities appear to be present, they are to be dismissed as nonexistent and the Republican must go gentle into that good night.
That may well work in securing the White House this time. But if they just ram this through without explaining what really happened, then the legitimacy not just of our electoral system but of our entire government will have suffered an extreme, and possibly fatal, blow.
No one will really know who won. Partisans on both sides will insist they do, but they won’t—not really. Unless all the anomalies are explained, every count and recount conducted in a fair and transparent manner, the occupant of the White House on January 20, 2021—whoever he is—will sit under a cloud. If he’s Joe Biden, that cloud will be entirely of his party’s own making.
But far more ominously, one half the country—or to be more precise, the class that rules in the interests of (at most) half the country—will surmise that it can rule by fiat. The other half will conclude that they are subjects.
Whether that conclusion resigns the latter to apathy or stirs them to rebellion is the question that will determine the course of our politics going forward.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3p9BKwj Tyler Durden
Mapping The States Where It’s Legal To Smoke Marijuana Tyler Durden
Sat, 11/07/2020 – 14:45
Successful ballot measures in the 2020 U.S. election legalized recreational marijuana in Arizona, New Jersey, South Dakota and Montana, bringing the tally of legal weed states to 15 (along with D.C.).
As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, the new developments cement the American West as a stronghold of legal weed. Colorado and Washington were the first states to legalize the drug in 2012.
South Dakota actually gave recreational and medical use of cannabis the green light at the same time, meaning that there are now 36 states and the nation’s capital with medical marijuana laws in place.
After reducing equity risk in portfolios over the last few weeks, we suggested last week the “selling” was likely overdone.
“All of our “sell signals” have been intact for the last few weeks suggesting more downside risk near term. Those signals have now reversed to the point where we are likely to see a decent reflex rally starting as early as Monday. As noted in the year-to-date performance chart below, the market is 2-standard deviations below its 50-dma and is close to the September low support.”
Just for comparison purposes, here is the chart from last week.
And it is updated through Friday’s close.
It was quite the reversal. The rally pushed the market back above the 50-dma and lower highs’ previous downtrend. Such sets the market up for a retest of all-time highs next week.
Not Out Of The Woods
However, before you get all excited and go throwing your money into the market, you may want to step back and re-evaluate your risk. If you haven’t liked the ups and downs in the market over the last couple of months, you have too much “risk” in your portfolio.
The volatility isn’t over. Particularly as we head into 2021.
Furthermore, while we did expect this rally and added exposure in our portfolios, the previous “oversold” condition has now been largely reversed. As shown below, the market is now back to more “overbought” conditions, which suggests limited upside from current levels. Also, the deviation from the 200-dma is now back to levels that have previously led to mild, short-term corrections.
Still A Sellable Rally
“Such a rally will provide an opportunity to rebalance portfolio risks accordingly. As we will discuss momentarily, the markets will begin to process the election’s impact on various sectors and the market itself.
However, the economy’s disconnect remains longer-term, which can not last as earnings come from economic activity. While the very short-term trading environment is conducive for a rally, the longer-term ‘investing’ environment is still problematic with weakening relative strength, participation, and fundamental issues.
Keep a watch on the Advance-Decline line. Over the last few trading days, the rapid surge in prices pushed that indicator back to more extreme overbought conditions, typically denote short- to intermediate-term tops.
For all of these reasons, aggressively positioned investors can use any rally to adjust portfolio volatility and risk.
Remember, investing isn’t a competition for who can say they “beat the market.” There are no “trophies.” However, there is a heavy penalty to your retirement goals if you are wrong.
Gridlock Is Best For Markets
On Thursday, in our daily “3-Minutes” video, I discussed why the markets were rallying despite a hotly contested election.
As noted, it doesn’t matter who the President is. With the GOP potentially maintaining control of the Senate and narrowing the majority in the House, such vastly reduces significant policy changes such as:
Higher taxes
Massive stimulus packages
Extreme regulation on the oil and gas industry
Large spending packages on “green energy.”
Major reform or socialization of health care.
An inflationary spike.
Such bodes well for the markets as noted by MarketWatch:
“The likely reason that Wall Street likes gridlock is that it reduces the possibility that any major policy changes will take effect. Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA, noted in an email to clients that the increasingly likely gridlock ‘lessens the prospects for an increase in regulations and taxes.’ In addition, he added, the gridlock reduces the likelihood of ‘additional fiscal stimulus’ — and that reduced likelihood in turn eases potential inflationary pressures down the road.”
As noted last week, such also aligns with historical Presidential election years. The weakness in September and October turns to strength in November and December.
A Continuation Of The Rally Into Year-End
My colleague Doug Kass confirms our view of a rally into year-end.
“With the perception, in part, of election uncertainty and the quicker spread of Covid-19, market participants have been positioned defensively and cautiously. We have exited the weakest period of the calendar (August to October) and are entering a two-month period where stocks are seasonally strong.
The evolving market structure change, in which the market is dominated by products and strategies chasing price and momentum, could catapult the markets higher rather swiftly. In ‘risk parity’ and other quant strategies, ‘buyers live higher and sellers live lower.’ They are and might continue to buy high.”
He is correct.
Combine his thesis with a lack of significant policy changes from Washington, and it is likely money will continue to chase “risk assets” given no other alternative currently. With yield spreads compressed, interest rates at zero, the “T.I.N.A” (There Is No Alternative) narrative continues to reign.
However, as noted, beware 2021.
The Focus Turns Back To The Fed
Once we start to analyze what “Gridlock” will mean for policy, it should become apparent what the “risks” are.
As we have noted previously, earnings growth rates continue to drop as we head into next year. With stock prices back near all-time highs, this continues to be a market that is driven solely by valuation expansion.
The majority of that “price chase” has been based solely on the premise of more liquidity coming from the Federal Reserve. The hope, of course, is that eventually, earnings will play “catchup” with valuations. Historically, such has never been the case.
As we head into 2021, a “gridlocked” Congress potentially means less stimulus, less infrastructure spending, and more battles over the debt and deficit. The regular “debt ceiling” fights will return, and smaller stimulus packages will compound time delays.
Such translates into three critical factors for the financial markets:
Less direct stimulus to households means reduced spending and lower rates of economic growth.
Less stimulus means there is less debt issued, which keeps the Federal Reserve trapped with interest rates at zero.
The combination of less stimulus and Fed monetization will lead to increased deflationary pressures.
In 2021, the odds of another recessionary bought will increase, putting downward pressure on stocks. The only question will be if the Federal Reserve can bail it out again as the “effective benefit” continues to decline.
The Fed Remains Stuck At Zero
This past week, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) concluded their meeting. Not surprisingly, given the embattled election and lack of stimulus, they provided “happy talk” to the markets.
In other words, they said “nothing.” As Mish Shedlock noted in his post:
“The Fed is stuck in glue. It did not change interest rates. Nor did it change much of its announcement.”
However, it is more important to understand their dilemma.
“The Fed is stuck and will not lower rates below zero nor can it raise them without killing housing. Meanwhile, the bubbles keep getting bigger increasing the odds of a deflationary collapse.”
Such is indeed the most significant risk to both the economy and the markets. As we noted in yesterday’s “Rescues Are Ruining Capitalism.”
“The rest of the world followed the Fed. As interest rates fell toward zero, the world’s debts—including households, governments and nonfinancial companies—more than tripled between 1980 and 2007 to more than three times the size of the global economy.
It was taking more debt to fuel the same amount of growth, because more debt was going to unproductive borrowers. Capitalism was bogging down.” – Sharma
Each successive round of stimulus pulls forward future consumption, which leaves a void. That void then has to be filled with more stimulus, which leaves a larger void in the future.
Eventually, the void will become too large to fill.
“The continuous bailouts continue to distort the market’s price signals, which makes the markets less efficient in allocating capital. Such has led to the rising number of “zombies” and monopolies, the widening of wealth inequality, and lower productivity and growth.
The deformation of capitalism will be an economic plague that continues to lead to further dysfunction alienating younger generations. Social unrest and revolt will be the eventual result.”
Portfolio Positioning Update
Over the last few weeks, we discussed that we had gradually raised cash and rebalanced portfolio risks ahead of the Presidential election. After the election passed, and we could see where the markets were positioning themselves, we reallocated that cash and took our equity exposure back to target weightings.
There were two primary reasons for the reversal. The first was that the sell-off had removed short-term risk over the last few weeks. The second was the outcome of the election perceived as favorable to the markets, as discussed above. There are still risks to that view until the election is officially over. Therefore, we will keep a close watch on holdings and tighten up our stops.
As we discussed recently in “Policies Over Politics,”what matters most long-term are taxes, debt, and deficits. Unfortunately, we will probably head the wrong way on all three.
Last week, I stated that we would “not buy the market’s low.” We did wait for the market to “tell us,” what it was going to do, and then we acted quickly to put capital to work. We are currently near full exposure to equities, are slightly underweight in bonds with a shortened-duration, and have tightened current stop-losses.
While the next two months tend to be positively biased, there is still a considerable risk to the markets. Markets remain deviated from long-term means, economic growth remains weak, and further stimulus will remain elusive.
As such, it is worth remaining vigilant over portfolios and using rallies to rebalance portfolio risks as needed.
To win the “investing war,” it is essential to pick and choose our “battles” wisely. If you aren’t sure about the battleground, it is always better to retreat and “live to fight another day.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2GDVwi1 Tyler Durden
The Resistance Eats It’s Own: Liberals Furious At ‘Nevertrump’ Lincoln Project Tyler Durden
Sat, 11/07/2020 – 13:50
Liberals are furious at the ‘never-Trump’ super PAC, the Lincoln Project, which essentially bait-n-switched Democrats into giving them money to defeat Republicans, who then watched their party lose several House seats and fail to wrestle back control of the Senate.
The Lincoln Project, co-founded by former McCain 2008 campaign manager Steve Schmidt, promised to win over “independent-leaning men, those college-educated Republicans, the suburban Republican women.” They went on to raise at least $67 million, much of that from liberals. Yet, Trump went on to win more GOP votes in 2020 than he did in 2016.
As former Bernie Sanders speechwriter and Jacobin editor-at-large David Sirota and Andrew Perez write in the Daily Poster:
A group of longtime Republican operatives depicting themselves as anti-Trump stalwarts convinced liberals to give them more money for ineffective television ads and stunts than was raised by the Democratic Party’s national campaign to win state legislatures.
The result: Donald Trump won more Republican votes than he did in 2016 as Democrats again lost state legislatures in advance of redistricting that could determine control of Congress for the next decade.
Meanwhile, the GOP operatives are reportedly positioned to go from lighting liberals’ money on fire during the 2020 election to now using liberals’ money to launch a media empire that could push a new Biden administration to the right.
Sirota told The Hill‘s “Rising” that the Lincoln Project was actually trying to secure a Biden presidency with a GOP-controlled Senate – as opposed to shifting GOP voters towards Democrats.
“In a sense, they went to liberals and said ‘give us money to help us defeat Republicans, that’s our job,” Sirota said. “So, when Donald Trump actually increases his share of the Republican vote in 2020 versus 2016 when there wasn’t the Lincoln Project, that’s just statistically an epic failure.”
“So imagine if that $67 million had gone into winning state legislatures, it could be a totally different ball game for the next ten years,” Sirota added. “But, instead it went to Republican operatives at the Lincoln Project, to produce YouTube videos that made MSNBC-watching liberals feel smug, but didn’t actually move any voters.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32juuE8 Tyler Durden
One of the most disconcerting developments of the 2000 presidential contest in Florida was the prospect that the Republican state legislature might attempt to settle the dispute by selecting its own slate of presidential electors. Some supporters of President Donald Trump have suggested that a similar call is in the playbook this time. That would be a huge mistake, and elected leaders in Republican states should make clear that they would not support such a plan.
Radio host Mark Levin has urged state legislatures to “do your constitutional duty” and appoint a slate of Republican presidential electors. Donald Trump Jr. has endorsed that plan, as have some Republican politicians. The Republican leader of the Pennsylvania senate has dismissed the possibility. As Joe Biden’s apparent Electoral College lead grows, such state interventions become more futile and thus hopefully less likely.
We have all become more familiar with the unusual features of the Electoral College. The divergence between the electoral vote formula in the Constitution and the national popular vote has received the lion’s share of the attention recently. As partisans have maneuvered over the rules that would govern voting during a pandemic, the highly decentralized nature of our presidential election system has been made obvious. But some aspects of the Electoral College remain obscure, and the role of the state legislatures in the process is among them.
In the years after the American Revolution there was little agreement in the states of the Union about how democratic elections should be conducted and government officials should be chosen. The would-be constitutional framers who met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 knew that state politicians, and state electorates, were jealous of their own authority to set the rules of the political game. As a result, the Constitution does not attempt to create a system of federal election rules nor does it entrust the entire power to write such rules to federal officials. The “Times, Places, and Manner” of federal elections are to be set “in each State by the Legislature thereof.” State control is the default setting, unless and until Congress takes control through duly enacted statutes.
The system for choosing the presidential electors who will actually cast the official ballots for president in December is even more firmly entrusted to the states. The Constitution directs that each state shall appoint presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” Early in the nation’s history, state legislatures often simply appointed the presidential electors themselves, just as they appointed the U.S. senator before the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment. It did not take long for a more democratic sensibility to take hold. State legislatures established procedures for elections in which the voters could choose the presidential electors, and thus effectively choose the president since the candidates for presidential elector in turn pledged themselves to vote for a specific candidate for president.
Presidential electors have overwhelmingly been chosen directly by voters for most of American history. By 1796, the first presidential election without George Washington as a candidate, less than half the states were still using direct legislative selection of presidential electors. The last state legislature to choose electors was Colorado in 1876, and that was only because Colorado was admitted into the Union too late in the presidential election cycle to organize an election.
The history of state legislatures intervening to displace the voters in order to choose presidential electors has not been a good one. Some members of the Federalist Party simply did not trust elections and generally believed that legislatures should make such important decisions. But sometimes partisans were just looking for an angle to secure victory for their side. In 1800, Alexander Hamilton tried to persuade the New York Federalists to scuttle the presidential election so that Thomas Jefferson would not win the state’s slate of electors. In 1812, the New Jersey legislature did cancel the presidential election, days before it was to take place, in order to appoint a slate of Federalist presidential electors. The public outcry generated by such episodes nearly spurred Congress to amend the Constitution to cut state legislatures out of the process.
Americans did not like the idea of state legislatures pushing aside voters in the early republic, and they would not like it today. Few things would be more destabilizing to the American political system than for legislatures to try to change the rules of the electoral game after the fact and announce that legally cast ballots will no longer be counted. The Constitution arguably gives state legislatures the power to appoint presidential electors right up until the day the electors meet to cast their ballots, even if legislatures had previously put some other system in place for selecting electors. But few constitutional norms are as strongly established as the one that holds that state legislatures should not take such an extraordinary step except under the most extreme of circumstances, as in situations like that of the newly-admitted Colorado.
For a legislature to attempt to settle an ongoing election dispute by imposing its own partisan solution would not only undermine the legitimacy of the particular presidential candidate the legislature was trying to help but it would be subversive of American faith in democratic elections generally. The political backlash could be expected to be severe.
Partisans can be expected to fight hard for their favored candidates, but at the end of the day the stability of a democracy depends on the willingness of all sides to live by the results of the election. We might not always be happy with the results of the election, or even with the process by which the election was run, but we live with such disappointments and imperfections and come back to campaign another day. State officials should make clear that their legislatures will not be partisan tools for weakening democracy.
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One of the most disconcerting developments of the 2000 presidential contest in Florida was the prospect that the Republican state legislature might attempt to settle the dispute by selecting its own slate of presidential electors. Some supporters of President Donald Trump have suggested that a similar call is in the playbook this time. That would be a huge mistake, and elected leaders in Republican states should make clear that they would not support such a plan.
Radio host Mark Levin has urged state legislatures to “do your constitutional duty” and appoint a slate of Republican presidential electors. Donald Trump Jr. has endorsed that plan, as have some Republican politicians. The Republican leader of the Pennsylvania senate has dismissed the possibility. As Joe Biden’s apparent Electoral College lead grows, such state interventions become more futile and thus hopefully less likely.
We have all become more familiar with the unusual features of the Electoral College. The divergence between the electoral vote formula in the Constitution and the national popular vote has received the lion’s share of the attention recently. As partisans have maneuvered over the rules that would govern voting during a pandemic, the highly decentralized nature of our presidential election system has been made obvious. But some aspects of the Electoral College remain obscure, and the role of the state legislatures in the process is among them.
In the years after the American Revolution there was little agreement in the states of the Union about how democratic elections should be conducted and government officials should be chosen. The would-be constitutional framers who met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 knew that state politicians, and state electorates, were jealous of their own authority to set the rules of the political game. As a result, the Constitution does not attempt to create a system of federal election rules nor does it entrust the entire power to write such rules to federal officials. The “Times, Places, and Manner” of federal elections are to be set “in each State by the Legislature thereof.” State control is the default setting, unless and until Congress takes control through duly enacted statutes.
The system for choosing the presidential electors who will actually cast the official ballots for president in December is even more firmly entrusted to the states. The Constitution directs that each state shall appoint presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” Early in the nation’s history, state legislatures often simply appointed the presidential electors themselves, just as they appointed the U.S. senator before the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment. It did not take long for a more democratic sensibility to take hold. State legislatures established procedures for elections in which the voters could choose the presidential electors, and thus effectively choose the president since the candidates for presidential elector in turn pledged themselves to vote for a specific candidate for president.
Presidential electors have overwhelmingly been chosen directly by voters for most of American history. By 1796, the first presidential election without George Washington as a candidate, less than half the states were still using direct legislative selection of presidential electors. The last state legislature to choose electors was Colorado in 1876, and that was only because Colorado was admitted into the Union too late in the presidential election cycle to organize an election.
The history of state legislatures intervening to displace the voters in order to choose presidential electors has not been a good one. Some members of the Federalist Party simply did not trust elections and generally believed that legislatures should make such important decisions. But sometimes partisans were just looking for an angle to secure victory for their side. In 1800, Alexander Hamilton tried to persuade the New York Federalists to scuttle the presidential election so that Thomas Jefferson would not win the state’s slate of electors. In 1812, the New Jersey legislature did cancel the presidential election, days before it was to take place, in order to appoint a slate of Federalist presidential electors. The public outcry generated by such episodes nearly spurred Congress to amend the Constitution to cut state legislatures out of the process.
Americans did not like the idea of state legislatures pushing aside voters in the early republic, and they would not like it today. Few things would be more destabilizing to the American political system than for legislatures to try to change the rules of the electoral game after the fact and announce that legally cast ballots will no longer be counted. The Constitution arguably gives state legislatures the power to appoint presidential electors right up until the day the electors meet to cast their ballots, even if legislatures had previously put some other system in place for selecting electors. But few constitutional norms are as strongly established as the one that holds that state legislatures should not take such an extraordinary step except under the most extreme of circumstances, as in situations like that of the newly-admitted Colorado.
For a legislature to attempt to settle an ongoing election dispute by imposing its own partisan solution would not only undermine the legitimacy of the particular presidential candidate the legislature was trying to help but it would be subversive of American faith in democratic elections generally. The political backlash could be expected to be severe.
Partisans can be expected to fight hard for their favored candidates, but at the end of the day the stability of a democracy depends on the willingness of all sides to live by the results of the election. We might not always be happy with the results of the election, or even with the process by which the election was run, but we live with such disappointments and imperfections and come back to campaign another day. State officials should make clear that their legislatures will not be partisan tools for weakening democracy.
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Whether you are a Republican, a Democrat or an Independent, everyone should be able to agree that this election has exposed some very serious flaws in the way that we are currently doing things. Over the past 24 hours, I have been posting example after example of voting irregularities on The Most Important News, and this is probably the number one topic on social media right now. When this election is finally over, there are going to be tens of millions of voters that feel like this election has been stolen from them and that will have completely lost faith in the system.
As much as some of the talking heads on television would like to believe that everything will be okay if they simply ignore the irregularities that are happening, the truth is that the vast majority of Americans can clearly see what is taking place. It has never been more obvious that our system is deeply broken and desperately in need of major reform.
For this election, problems with our elections will need to be resolved in court, and that is extremely unfortunate.
But we definitely do not want to find ourselves in the same situation four years from now, if there is actually an election four years from now.
So with that in mind, I would like to submit my humble plan to fix our elections…
#1 In order to register to vote, citizens must be required to show up in person and show identification proving that they are who they say they are to a duly appointed government official.
#2 Citizens should be required to show up in person to vote to the greatest degree possible. And when they show up in person to vote, they must be required to show identification proving that they are who they say they are.
#3 All political parties must be allowed to have numerous poll watchers in all polling locations.
#4 Once you have voted, citizens should be given a receipt that shows that their votes were recorded and that shows exactly who they voted for.
#5 All political parties must be allowed to have numerous observers in all locations where ballots are counted, and they must be allowed to be close enough to be able to clearly see what is happening.
#6 All votes should be made public. I know that many would mourn the loss of the “secret ballot”, but I believe the need for transparency should take priority. Every vote from every citizen should be posted publicly, along with verification that each of those citizens was officially registered to vote.
#7 For national elections, results for each state should only be made public once the counting is entirely completed. I know that having the vote totals come in a little at a time is a lot more dramatic, but it also opens up opportunities for malfeasance. In the 2020 election, there have been allegations that some counties have delayed reporting their results until they could see how other areas have voted. It is very important that we eliminate that.
As it stands, our elections are more broken than ever. Ballot harvesting is rampant all over the country, lots of dead people are voting, in some areas the number of people that are voting greatly exceeds the number of registered voters, and having tens of millions of ballots go through the mail has caused all sorts of problems.
Of course I don’t anticipate that the recommendations that I have made will ever be instituted. In particular, Democrats would fight tooth and nail against many of my proposals, and that is because the flaws in the current system tend to benefit their party greatly.
But if we don’t fix our system, an increasing number of Americans will lose faith in it with each passing election, and it will be just a matter of time until it completely collapses.
In addition to everything else, I believe that paper ballots should be required everywhere in the whole country. I would like to see the U.S. go to a system of 100 percent paper ballots and 100 percent manual counting, but that will never happen either.
If we can’t have faith in the integrity of our elections, what options do we have left?
We have reached such a critical time in our history, and our nation is now more divided than it has ever been in my entire lifetime.
I honestly do now know how the U.S. is ever going to recover from this chaotic election. There is no way that any politician is going to be able to bring the country together when close to half the population believes that the election was stolen.
Whoever becomes president, nearly half the nation is not going to accept that individual as legitimate, and at this point the U.S. is getting dangerously close to being ungovernable.
As I have discussed previously, for the losing side this election is going to be the greatest emotional blow in decades. Everything has changed, and the days ahead are likely to be very dark for the United States of America.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3ldzlhC Tyler Durden
Tropical Storm Eta “Regains Strength” With South Florida In Path Tyler Durden
Sat, 11/07/2020 – 13:00
As of the 1000 ET advisory from the National Hurricane Center (NHC), Tropical Storm Eta “regained strength” as it traverses the northwestern Caribbean Sea and will pass over or near Cuba, the Bahamas, and South Florida this weekend into early next week, bringing torrential rains, high winds, and potentially dangerous storm surge.
Tropical Storm #Eta Advisory 28: Eta Regains Tropical Storm Strength as the Center Reforms To The Northeast. Tropical Storm Warning Issued For South Florida and the Florida Keys. https://t.co/VqHn0u1vgc
Eta has 40 mph maximum sustained winds and is moving northeast at 17 mph. The storm’s location is about 45 miles west-northwest of Grand Cayman.
Tropical storm warnings have been issued for Cayman Islands, Cuba, and the northwestern Bahamas islands, including Abacos, Grand Bahama Island, and Nassau. NHC expects tropical storm conditions in those areas this weekend.
After Cuba, the storm is expected to curve towards the Gulf of Mexico, potentially passing over or near South Florida. Tropical storm warnings have been issued for much of South Florida.
“Gradual strengthening is expected over the Caribbean Sea before Tropical Storm Eta reaches Cuba, but some vertical wind shear and dry air may limit its intensification,” said The Weather Channel.
The Miami office of the National Weather Service forecasts rainfall totals for South Florida could range between 10 to 15 inches through Wednesday.
South Florida will start to experience Eta’s tropical-storm-force winds as early as Sunday evening.
As readers may recall, Eta has ravaged Central America, triggering deadly flooding and landslides. Here’s our past coverage on Eta over the last week:
As election results continue to trickle in suggesting Joe Biden will be the next president, there still remains a bit of uncertainty with respect the final electoral vote tally as well as any legal challenges that will emerge in the coming days.
Even still, the tail risk scenarios of a constitutional crisis or the US Supreme Court casting the deciding vote seem to have been significantly mitigated… at least that is what the market is pricing.
We know this because expected volatility across asset classes is plunging as demand for tail risk hedges is dissipating.
In the charts below we show stock market volatility…
…stock market volatility of volatility…
…bond market volatility…
…and foreign exchange volatility…
In each case, the market’s pricing of volatility has plunged from pre-election levels back into the lower-middle part of the range over the last six months.
This has implications for positioning moving into year end. As expected volatility comes down, value at risk (VaR) – the projected loss of a portfolio – is reduced, which allows institutional investors to add to risky positions. This somewhat technical feature of the market is one significant reason for the melt-up we’ve seen over the last few days.
Should election results become more clear, we’d expect volatility to come down even further, potentially somewhat counterbalancing other significant risks like COVID lockdowns, lack of fiscal stimulus, etc.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/38t0vxg Tyler Durden
