Negative Campaigning

The cliche is that everyone says they're against negative campaigning but it works so candidates often feel they have to use it.

Perhaps most importantly, people use the term "negative campaigning" with very different meanings.

If candidate A says candidate B voted for Bill 123 and continues to support the policies of Bill 123, and if you elect candidate A he will opposed Bill 123 and its policies, in my opinion that is not negative campaigning. In fact, it's exactly what we want from candidates so we will know what their differences are and can decide for whom to vote.

However, if a candidate says, for example, that his opponent voted to hurt children but when you look up the bill involved you find that that is not what he voted for, or that the bill is much more complicated than simply helping or hurting children, that is negative campaigning, The same is true of any campaigning that involves an opponent's family or other things that are not relevant to deciding which candidate supports positions that are the same as those of voters.

It's especially bad when the real negative campaigning goes on and on, confusing some voters and making everyone feel they need to take showers after reading or hearing from candidates.

What can be done about this? Sad to say, probably very little.

Probably the only effective way to end the nasty, false and misleading negative campaigning is probably for voters to prove to candidates that it doesn't work by voting for those who don't do it. Another idea is to promote the concept of fact checking, but one of the groups that does this is often wrong in its "corrections" of what candidates say and write so this cannot be relied on too much.

There have been some hotly contested races in MoCo where every candidate ran clean campaigns, but unfortunately we've also seen our share of very dirty and negative campaigns. Hopefully, the voters will become more knowledgeable and consider the type of campaign run by a candidate when decided for whom they will vote.

Do contested races result in higher turnout?

There is a good deal of speculation about what causes voters to turnout at the polls more or less. Rather than guess, we should try to get facts to support or reject hypotheses.

Today we'll look at one hypothesis: That contested races bring out greater voter turnout, and we'll look at the Democratic turnout in the Legislative and Councilmanic races in Montgomery County in the 2014 primary election.

There are 8 Legislative districts in MoCo, and my observation is that there were seriously contested races for State Senator or State Delegates in 5 of them, a contested race in 1, and no contest in 2. Here's a chart showing the turnout in these races:

District
16	serious contest	29%
17	serious contest	21%
18	serious contest	28%
19	serious contest	26%
20	serious contest	27%
15	contest	21%
14	no contest	22%
39	no contest	15%

 

It seems that there is some evidence of a greater turnout in contested faces, except for District 17 that had a very serious contest but one of the smaller turnouts.

Next we'll look at the turnout in the MoCo Council districts, where there were serious contests in 3 districts, a contest in 1, and no contest in 1:

District
1	serious contest	29%
3	serious contest	24%
5	serious contest	26%
2	contest	17%
4	no contest	22%

Again, it seems there is some correlation between contested races and turnout, except that District 2 which has some contest (apparently not too serious) had a lower turnout than District 4 which had no contest at all.

These charts do not take account of all factors, of course, but they may be useful in evaluating what draws people to the polls.

Excellent post on Center State Politics on how the MCDCC and others can increase voter knowledge and turnout

There is an excellent posting today on Center State Politics at http://centerstatepolitics.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-mcdcc-can-help-to-raise-voter.html

Hamza Khan presents very good ideas that deserve to be discussed and considered, and implemented. Most importantly, this whole subject --- how the MCDCC and others can increase voter knowledge and turnout --- is one of the most important ones we can be considering.

There are other good ideas that can be considered on this subject too, and our County Council is working on this. Just yesterday they heard a report from their Right to Vote Task Force and there will be a public hearing and further action on this subject.

Additional ideas to consider including the possibility of following Oregon's lead (they've done it for about 15 years) in having every registered voter receive an official ballot in the mail two weeks before election day, which they can return by mail or drop in ballot boxes. There are no voting machines or polling locations on election day. This saves a lot of money but more importantly results in turnouts that sometimes hit 70% or higher for voter turnout.

Another idea --- a massive future-voter education project in MoCo high schools. We should teach those who will be voters in a few years what government does and how it affects them in every aspect of their lives, how our government is structured, and how and why to vote and that it's actually a fun thing to do. This education program can be done by our school system together with our government officials and others. It could be great fun for elected officials, but should also include those who have run and lost and those who are just interested in politics, so it won't be seen as something to just help incumbents get publicity.

There are other things to consider, including of course public financing of elections in MoCo. It's a great topic, and a very important one.

Emancipation Proclamation

On this day, July 22 in 1862, Abraham Lincoln surprised his cabinet members with a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation (painting above). He issued it to the public two months later after the Battle of Antietam and it became effective on January 1, 1863.

For those who may claim that government cannot take positive action to help people, the Emancipation Proclamation proves the opposite. As a result of Lincoln's proclamation, wherever the Union army moved freedom for slaves followed, often as the slaves freed themselves by escaping from their masters and coming in Union army camps. Over 4,000,000 people became free as the result of the federal government action started by Abraham Lincoln on this day.

Secrecy

Just about everyone says they support open meetings, transparency, inviting the public to watch what elected and appointed officials are doing.

However, there seems to be an unfortunate tendency among many people who are in position to do so to have closed, secret meetings where they can make decisions without the annoyance of people watching them. I have seen this with all sorts of groups, from homeowner associations to government groups.

What is often worse is the attitude of those in power to the concept of openness. For example, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, Maryland's top health official, leads a state board working on health reform. After a journalist filed complaints, Dr. Sharfstein and his board were found to have violated the Maryland open meetings law about 50 times.

But here's the worst part. When Dr. Sharfstein chaired the next meeting after having been found to have violated the open meetings law, he read a statement required by that law before going into another closed session --- and he mocked the law and the members of his board laughed with him at the law.

In MoCo, I have attended meetings of commissions, committees, and boards, where the attitude toward having the public present at meetings was negative, to put it mildly. Information about meetings of these advisory committees are sometimes difficult to find on the county website, when citizens ask to be informed of meetings that request is sometimes ignored, staff informs citizens that subcommittee meetings are closed, and copies of public documents examined by the advisory groups are not shared with the public. This even happened with meetings of the Right to Vote Task Force, which in its recommendations urged open meetings by other groups.

I have also attended meetings of a MoCo commission where in the public session at the start I urged the commission to support a change in a section of County law. Just ten minutes later a member of the commission said no one had ever suggested any change in that section of the County law, proving that he paid no attention to the public comments.

Homeowner associations take similar attitudes, often even worse about trying to take actions in secret. Even though there are state laws requiring that most board and other meeting must be open, association officials sometimes say they are having a "working group" meeting, or something with a different title, so it can be closed -- even though there is nothing in the law that says anything of the sort.

This desire for secrecy seems to exist everywhere. Even those who have argued for openness in the past have a different attitude when they are in a position to vote for closed meetings.

A great example of a group that truly believes in openness in government, and supports that belief, is the MoCo Council. All their meeting are publicly listed in an easy-to-find and understand page on the county website. If the Council will be examining documents at an upcoming meeting, those documents are available ahead of time on the county website. When members of the public appear before the Council they are warmly welcomed and the Council members ask them questions after their testimony, proving they have listened. And Council members are sincere when they smile and thank citizens for taking the time to share their ideas and experiences with the Council.

But what can be done about the Council's advisory groups, commissions, boards, committees, and task forces, that don't have these attitudes and don't act similarly to the Council?

To start, the Council can inform the members of those advisory groups --- and perhaps more importantly, their staff assistants --- that the MoCo Council strongly supports open government and encouragement and welcoming of citizens at all meetings. All members and staff of these advisory groups can be told that this is very important to the Council and advisory groups must follow the example set by the Council. This can be done in writing and with meetings.

MoCo can set up an easy-to-find-and-understand page on the county website where all advisory groups' upcoming meetings must be announced, with links to documents the groups will be considering just as the Council does. If an advisory group meeting is not listed on this page in plenty of time for the public to know about it, the meeting should not be allowed to be held.

Advisory group members and their staffs should be told they must encourage public participation and welcome it. It may sound minor, but smiles and warm welcomes are important.

Next, even if state law does not require subcommittee meetings to be open to the public, the MoCo Council can tell its advisory groups that County policy is the opposite. Unless a meeting meets one of the exceptions such as discussion with a lawyer, meetings of subcommittees any groups with any other name should be open just as advisory committees and the Council itself are.

Advisory group staffs should be informed that they should produce and make available  at meetings to the public copies of documents the advisory groups are considering. If the staff doesn't want to make lots of copies not knowing how many citizens will attend, it's fine if the website announcement of that meeting says members of the public should rsvp if they wish to have copies of documents.

Is this important or a waste of time? One of the reasons the public has a negative view of government at all levels is that when they try to participate in government they often feel, correctly, that the members of groups such as MoCo commissions, boards, etc., don't want them there. This feeling causes problems that could be solved easily, if the members and staffs of these groups truly encourage and welcome public participation. And besides following the law and policy of openness, the members and staffs might very well find that the public gives them good ideas they hadn't thought of themselves.

Statistics

Here are some useful statistics:

Current population of the U.S. is about 316,500,000
Current population of Maryland is almost 6,000,000
Current population of Montgomery County is over 1,000,000

Current number of registered voters in Maryland is over 2,000,000
Current number of registered Democrats in Maryland is almost 1,000,000
Current number of registered voters in MoCo is about 630,000
Current number of registered Democrats in MoCo is about 350,000

It's time to change the Maryland state song

The lyrics of the Maryland state song were written during the Civil War by someone who desperately wanted the Confederacy to win and the United States to lose. He was a traitor to the U.S. (From the U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 3: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.")

Yet in 2014 we continue to use state song lyrics written by someone who wanted to tear the United States in two, and that defame Abraham Lincoln for his efforts to keep the Union together and stop the spread of slavery. This is wrong.

It's not unheard of for a state to change its song. Virginia did it about 10 years ago, eliminating words that told us how wonderful slavery was. Maryland should do it now.

At the same time the Maryland General Assembly eliminates the current state song, it can start a contest for a new state song. More interest could be generated among our citizens in the state song and we could come up with a much better song that truly describes the good qualities of our State.

This is not an attack on history. Maryland has many much better ways of remembering our history, including historical markers and remembrances of our history including Civil War battles fought on our territory.

The MCDCC has adopted a motion supporting a change in the state song. Hopefully the Maryland State Senate and House of Delegates will agree.

The state song needs to be changed, and many of us hope that will happen as soon as possible.