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The 2018 sessions were a blue wave – despite the comments made by Fox News hosts on Wednesday morning, mimicking what was said by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, announced late on polling day.
But this wave does not mean that the undemocratic features of the US electoral process have not moved, not to mention a catalog of intentional partisan obstructions to voting in a handful of states – led by Georgia, where it can take days for all postal and provisional ballots must be validated and counted. When these totals are added, there may be an election for vice president in early December.
The first claim of the wave was the number of voters. As millions of votes are still counted (in states like California), the total number of votes cast so far is about 100 million, and experts believe that this figure will reach 111 million – a national participation rate of 47.3%. According to Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, this is the first mid-term poll and the highest participation rate since 1970, according to 1970.
Let's go back to the false statement that this is not a blue wave. Even though the final figures have not yet been certified by the state's election officials – and will not be certified for days or weeks – the Democratic candidates won the popular vote of the candidates in the House and Senate. Senate. As of Wednesday morning, the live scoreboard (and thus slowly updated) showed that there were 4 million more votes for candidates in the Chamber of Deputies and 12.1 million more votes for candidates for the Democratic Senate. It's a blue wave on any factual measure.
Why do not the Democrats earn more – by getting a full majority of Congress and not just the American House? The answer is that each state has two US senators, regardless of its population. This is the fault of the founders of the country and the structure of the federal representative government.
Democrats have also won more broadly and with lasting repercussions in a series of key states – just as the GOP has consolidated its hold in some regions, notably the Lower Midwest – but the democratic disappointments sparked by the most captivating competitions have eclipsed their victories elsewhere. The biggest disappointments are the vision of a "new South", where there was great hope that Florida, Andrew Gillum, would be elected governor (he lost by less than 60,000 votes out of 8 million votes cast) ; Beto O'Rourke of Texas would be elected to the Senate (he lost by 115,000 votes out of 8.3 million votes cast); and that Stacey Abrams of Georgia be elected governor, where the counting of votes by correspondence and provisional votes continues. (The current leader of the contest, Republican Brian Kemp, is less than 20,000 votes greater than the 50% threshold, which, if it is not raised, triggers a recount at the beginning of December.)
These three competitions were all touching races for Democrats, foreshadowing the repudiation of President Trump's dissenting leadership in one of the fastest-growing regions of the country. In fact, Gillum and O'Rourke realized what was unthinkable for Democrats in their states. O & # 39; Rourke garnered 48.3% of the vote in Texas; several points more than the summit of President Obama. And Gillum has been the first candidate for Democratic governorship in Florida to be leading polls for decades. Their respective votes show how close these purple states are to tipping points; but the opposite also holds true: vast expanses of these states, from rural to suburban areas, are deeply conservative.
Nevertheless, Florida's largest electoral windfall has not been widely discussed in election reports, but it will almost certainly push the state from purple to blue in the years to come. Voters passed an amendment to the constitution to re-emancipate about 1.6 million criminals who lost their right to vote after being convicted. Florida's ban on voting for ex-criminals was a stalemate for racist Jim Crow and affected more voters than any other state. Attempts will now be made to register them as electors, where, if they had participated in the 2018 mid-term elections, the next state governor and many legislative seats would have been blue.
There have been other important democratic victories that, like the re-enfranchisement of Florida's ex-criminals, will resonate in the 2020s. These victories relate to aspects of the redistricting process, where, unlike the 2011 GOP Extreme GOP, Democrats or citizens' commissions (which have a more just spirit) will be in place to fight against aggressive Republican attempts to create districts favorable to an increasingly minority political party.
The biggest victories of redistricting come from elected Democratic governors in formerly red states that play disproportionate roles in presidential and House elections. These blue governorship victories were held in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. (In contrast, Republicans have been elected governors in the Ohio and Florida states this decade – and it remains to be seen what will happen in Georgia.) Democratic governors can exercise a veto if the legislatures controlled by Republicans sort voters by party to intentionally create unfair acts. political cards.
Four states have adopted redistrictive reforms. Independent commissions for the redistricting of Congress and legislation were passed in Colorado (amendment Y and amendment Z) and Michigan (proposal 2), becoming the first east of the Rockies. In addition, in Missouri, state in which the group of operations consolidated its earnings in recent years, Amendment 1 requires the use of a state demographer and of fairness formulas for creating cards. And in Utah, Proposition 4 also establishes an Independent Redistribution Commission.
There were other signs that Democrats were making progress in previously red states. In Kansas, Kris Kobach, anti-immigrant and repressive secretary of state, was defeated as governor by Laura Kelly. Kansans also elected Democrat Sharice Davids, an Amerindian and homosexual woman, to the House. Davids was one of many women elected Tuesday, from governors to members of the House.
Historians and political scientists will view the 2018 mid-term elections as a blue-wave election that has shown a steady realignment of the country's political landscape. Yes, the Senate will be filled by more of Trump's henchmen, which will make him more partisan and push the federal judiciary to the right for decades, while the majority of the GOP will continue to stack the federal courts with the most conservative conservatives. However, from the point of view of the popular vote, this body is not representative of the national electorate.
But in the States, important political changes are underway. The GOP lock on the entire Midwest has been broken. Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – the last three states having elected Trump – are referred to the blue governors. In contrast, presidential supporters in Ohio and Missouri are becoming more conservative.
However, it appears that the greatest political changes are taking place in the states bordering the sunshine belt. Florida is about to become permanently purple or blue. Georgia can still see a Democratic governor; but otherwise, his voting demographics are close to those of Florida. And even in Texas – and in Arizona and Florida, where counting continues in tight races in the US Senate where the GOP has a small lead – blue voters are tipping with the popular majority in sight.
No party wins everything in an election. But the most important changes, based on popular votes, governor takeovers, electoral reforms with redistricting constituencies and the re-franking of crimes, all confirm that the 2018 mid-term elections have effectively been vague year.
Steven Rosenfeld
Steven Rosenfeld is a senior writer, editor and senior correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is a national political journalist specializing in democracy issues. He has produced reports for public radio networks, websites and newspapers nationwide, and produced discussion and music podcasts. He has written five books, including campaign profiles, voter repression, voting rights guides and a survival story from the Second World War, which is currently being transformed into a film. His last book is Democracy betrayed: how super-delegates, redistricting, party insiders and the electoral college faked the 2016 elections(Hot Books, March 2018).
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