Tag Archives: Colorado

Super Tuesday Week

By tmess2 | Published March 2, 2024

Tuesday is Super Tuesday — the first Tuesday of the primary cycle in which any state can hold a primary contest.  As most states use state-run primaries, there will be a large number of states on Tuesday.

But, before Super Tuesday, several states that are using party-run contests will be holding Republican contests as the “window” for the Republicans opened yesterday.  (The “window” for Democrats opens on Tuesday.)  As discussed last week, one of the contests today is the second half of the Republican’s Michigan two-step with the Republican state convention which will be allocating the “district” level delegates.  In addition to Michigan, today will see events in Missouri and Idaho.

The Missouri Republican rules are somewhat ambiguous.  It looks like they are doing a traditional caucus with a 15% threshold and an unspecified winner-take-all kicker at local option.  But rather than allocating delegates based on today’s vote (which is what the national rules appear to require), they are merely binding the delegates chosen today to vote the same preference at the district conventions (which should effectively have the same result).  Missouri is using a caucus because our current Secretary of State repeatedly lied and claimed that the state-run primary was nonbinding (when the rules of both party made the primary binding) and a repeal of the primary was slipped into an omnibus election bill which passed despite the unanimous opposition of Democratic legislature).  The Democrats will be holding a party-run primary in three weeks with a mail-in option. Continue Reading...

Posted in Elections, House of Representatives, Presidential Candidates, Primary Elections, Senate | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on Super Tuesday Week

The Trump Ballot Case and the Precedents of Nat Turner and John Brown

By tmess2 | Published January 7, 2024

On Friday, the United Staes Supreme Court decided to grant President Trump’s Petition for Certiorari in Trump vs. Anderson.  However, it took no action on the companion Petition for Certiorari filed by the Colorado Republican Party in Colorado State Republican Central Committee v. Anderson.  Before turning to the issues raised in this case, there are two things to note about the Supreme Court order granting review and the petitions filed.

First, in granting Trump’s petition, the Supreme Court implicitly recognized the necessity to resolve this issue quickly.  The briefs of Trump and his enablers in the Republican Party (and related organizations) are due on January 18, less than two weeks after the order granting review (as opposed to the usual 45 days).  The briefs of Trump’s challengers and the Colorado election official who are in the middle of this case are due thirteen days later on January 31 (along with any outside brief from individuals who want to support Democracy) with any reply briefs due five days later on February 5.  This contrast to the normal deadlines of 45 days for petitioner’s brief with respondent’s brief due 30 days later and the reply brief an additional 35 days later. Additionally, the case will be argued on February 8 which is a special setting in the middle of what would otherwise have been the Supreme Court’s winter break.

Second, the Supreme Court did not rewrite Trump’s question presented.  Typically, the question prsented in a petition for certiorari is narrowly focused on one legal issue.  For example, did the lower court err in finding that the potential for the metabolizing of blood alcohol content is an automatic exigent circumstance permitting law enforcement officers to conduct a warrantless blood draw?  If there are multiple issues in a case, the petition will present multiple questions on which the Supreme Court can pick and choose which issues will be considered at the time that the petition is granted.  For example, the Colorado Republican Party presented three issues:  1) does Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment apply to the President; 2) is Section 3 self-executing; and 3) does disqualifying a candidate violate the First Amendment rights of political parties.  By contrast, the Trump Petition, after noting the ruling (that his actions and the office of President fell within the restrictions of Section) simply asks whether the Colorado Supreme Court erred by excluding him from the ballot.  In other words, unlike the usual question which identifies a specific legal error in the ruling, the Supreme Court appears to be allowing the consideration of any potential theory on why the Colorado Supreme Court erred. Continue Reading...

Posted in 2024 Convention, Donald Trump, Elections, GOP, Judicial, Republicans, RNC | Also tagged , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Trump Ballot Case and the Precedents of Nat Turner and John Brown

The Midterms — Preview (Part 3)

By tmess2 | Published November 2, 2022

By the time that polls close in Arkansas at 7:30 p.m. Central ST, we should be starting to get votes from the early states, but most of the key races will still be classified as “too early to call.”  Arkansas has become so red over the past two decades that none of the races are likely to be close.  The big races will be the ballot issue.  From the right is a proposition to require supermajorities for propositions in future elections and a provision enshrining a version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the Arkansas Constitution.  As we have seen at the federal level, this Free Exercise Clause on steroids will cause significant problems in Arkansas as everything will become somebody’s religious belief.  Arkansas will also vote on legalizing marijuana.

At 8:00 p.m. CST, polls will close in the remaining parts of Kansas, Michigan, South Dakota, and Texas (with those races covered in Part 2 of the preview).    Polls will close for the entire state in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Arizona will feature several key races.  At the state office level, Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State are all open seats.  The Republicans have nominated Trumpist candidates for these positions who refuse to commit to recognizing the election results in 2024.   Particularly for governor, they have nominated a media celebrity who is not qualified.  But these races are currently too close to call.  For Senate, the Republicans have also nominated an extremist.  It looks like Senator Mark Kelly will hold onto the seat, but the seat is probably the third most likely pickup for the Republicans after Nevada and Georgia.   If the Republicans have a good night, that seat could flip. Continue Reading...

Posted in Elections, General Election Forecast, House of Representatives, Senate | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Midterms — Preview (Part 3)

Redistricting — Colorado

By tmess2 | Published May 22, 2021

Colorado, to a certain extent, resembles Oregon.  Like Oregon, the census estimates show that all of the districts will need to shrink and shift to make room for the new district.   The good news for Democrats is that the least growth is in the Third District (Western Colorado) and the biggest growth is in the First District (Denver).  The potential bad news is the change to the rules in Colorado.

Since the last redistricting cycle, Colorado has taken the responsibility for drawing district lines away from the legislature and assigned it to a new nonpartisan commission.  In short, that means that the new map may not resemble the old map.

Under the new rules, the commission will be composed of twelve people — four Democrats, four Republicans, and four nonpartisan members.  The process for choosing these people also limit the influence of the political parties on the members.  The new rules required the commission to justify any deviation from absolute equality.  It also requires the commission to consider geographic and ethnic communities of interests.  The rules also direct the commission to maximize the number of competitive districts.  Currently, none of the districts are that competitive.  There are two solid Democratic districts (one of which is ubersolid) and two solid Republican districts.  Two of the districts are safe/lean Democratic districts and one safe/lean Republican districts. Continue Reading...

Posted in Elections, House of Representatives | Also tagged , , Comments Off on Redistricting — Colorado

Redistricting 2021 — The Numbers

By tmess2 | Published May 1, 2021

On Monday, four days ahead of its latest target date and almost four months behind the statutory date, the Census Bureau released the national and state-level results from the Census including the apportionment numbers that determine how many representatives each get.  As can be expected, there are multiple different tables summarizing the data in different ways for us number geeks.

The bottom line table shows the apportionment population (both those living in the state and those residing overseas — like military personnel — who call that state home), the number of representatives that each state is getting, and the change in representation.   We will get back to the change in a minute, but the big level number is that the apportionment population is slightly over 331 million.  As such, the average size (mean) of each congressional district is just under 761 thousand.  Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming have fewer people than the average congressional district.  While the apportionment formula does not work for calculating the population needed for the first representative, even Wyoming has enough population to be entitled to three-quarters of a representative.

If, D.C. and Puerto Rico were states, Puerto Rico would be just ahead of Utah (which has four representatives) and just behind Connecticut (which has five representatives) and D.C. would be between Vermont and Alaska.  Given that Puerto Rico is only slightly larger than Utah (which was not close to getting a fifth representative and far enough behind Connecticut, Puerto Rico would be due for four representatives.  If  both were states, the five states that would lose a representative would have been Oregon, Colorado, and Montana (all of which gained a seat), California (which lost a seat), and Minnesota (which barely avoided losing a seat).  The chart of priority values that allows us to consider the impact of adding Puerto Rico and D.C. also shows that Minnesota barely held onto its last seat and New York barely lost its seat.  Apparently, given the formula, Minnesota would have lost that seat if it had 24 fewer people, and New York would have kept its seat if it had 89 more people.  (The disparity in numbers is caused by the fact that the two states have different number of seats. Continue Reading...

Posted in House of Representatives | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on Redistricting 2021 — The Numbers

Election Night Preview — Part 3 (9 PM to 10 PM EST)

By tmess2 | Published October 29, 2020

As we noted in the previous two posts, a key part of the night will be how fast votes are counted and, in particular, what share of early and mail-in votes are released on election night and how many mail-in votes are potentially still in the mail and eligible to be counted.   There is also the issue of how long the lines were — especially in urban precincts — which could delay the count of votes cast on election day.  At this point in time, we should have projections from Kentucky and Indiana and the bluer and redder states from the 7 PM EST hour.  The question during this hour is whether we start getting projections from some of the swingier states with 7 PM closing times like Florida and Georgia have been called, and, if so, in which direction.

During this hour, nine states will close across the entire state and the remainder of the polls will close in Kansas, Michigan, South Dakota, and Texas.  South Dakota is unlikely to be close for any race, and the majority of Kansas and Texas close at 8 PM  EST.  What to look for in Michigan, Texas, and Kansas is addressed in Part Two.  Besides these partial closures, we have full closures in Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Wyoming.

Louisiana is a weird state in that there are no party primaries.  Everybody runs on the general election ballot, but it takes a majority to be elected.  While none of the races are expected to flip, there is always the chance that the sheer number of candidates on the ballot could result in a run-off.  Of course, some of these run-offs will feature two Republicans (or, in the one district that the Democrats hold, two Democrats).  Wyoming also features no close contests and should be an early call across the board. Continue Reading...

Posted in 2020 General Election, General Election Forecast | Also tagged , , , , , , , Comments Off on Election Night Preview — Part 3 (9 PM to 10 PM EST)

Cut Time

By tmess2 | Published September 5, 2020

A political party serves two fundamental purposes.

First, people form and join political parties to advance policy.  (Of course, there are disagreements on the exact priorities or the specific details of policy proposals.)  In fact, one of the biggest mistakes that the Framers made was not anticipating that, once there were elections for federal offices, the groups in New Jersey that favored rural farmers over “urban” merchants would unite with similar groups in Georgia (and vice versa for the groups that favored merchants) rather than stay isolated in their own states.  Simply put, if you want a single-payer health care system, you are more likely to get it by forming a large group with other supporters of that type of proposal than working on your own.

Second, the way that political parties try to advance policy is by getting their candidates elected to office.  You can’t pass a single-payer system if the opponents of single-payer have the majority in Congress or control the White House.  And political parties win elections by finding good candidates and raising and spending money to support those candidates.   Especially in the year before the election, money tends to be spent on creating tools (like voter databases and helping state parties) that are available to all candidates that run on the party’s ticket.  And at this point in time, with the exception of the last handful of state primaries, the parties have their candidates. Continue Reading...

Posted in 2020 General Election, Money in Politics | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on Cut Time

Delegate Math 2020 — Super Tuesday (Part 3 — Late States)

By tmess2 | Published March 2, 2020

Aside from the big two states (California and Texas), there are three states that will close their polls after 7:00 p.m. CST — Arkansas, Colorado, Utah.   Arkansas and Utah are small red states.  Colorado is a medium-size purple-blue state.  Between these three states, there are fifteen congressional districts with between two and nine delegates each.

A basic reminder, the rules of the Democratic Party requires each state to have district level delegates (roughly 65% of the state’s total), at-large delegates (roughly 22% of the state’s total), and party leader delegates (roughly 12% of the state’s total).  The district level delegates are split between the districts (usually congressional districts) in the state typically based on votes in past elections.  Each of the pools of delegate (each district is a separate pool) is based on the results in the area covered by the pool (the individual district for a district-level delegates and the state-wide results for the at-large and party-leader pools).  It usually takes 15% of the vote for a candidate to be viable.  And the delegates are allocated proportionately based on the percentage of the qualified vote (the total vote for all viable candidates) that each candidate receives.  The percentages below assume that only viable candidates receive votes,  As the early states have shown, with this many candidates, a significant portion of the vote will go to non-viable candidates.  As such, it is likely that candidates will earn additional delegates despite not reaching the target numbers described below.  Covering all possible situations (number of viable candidates, percentage of vote that goes to the viable candidates, etc.) would, however, lengthen these posts by a significant amount.  As long as we still have seven candidates qualifying for the debate stage and potentially qualifying for delegates in a district, we will have to go with this oversimplified calculation.

With Mayor Pete Buttigieg deciding on Sunday to join Tom Steyer on the sidelines, we are down to six major candidates, four of whom have won delegates in prior contests and two of whom have not.  One of those two, however, is Mayor Michael Bloomberg who is almost certain to win delegates.  So in most districts, we are probably looking at somewhere between two and five viable candidates. Continue Reading...

Posted in 2020 Convention, Delegates, Primary and Caucus Results | Also tagged , , , Comments Off on Delegate Math 2020 — Super Tuesday (Part 3 — Late States)

2018 Mid-term Election — Rocky Mountains

By tmess2 | Published October 30, 2018

While it’s not an exact East-West line, the Rocky Mountain region has seen a lot of change in recent years.  While not the same in every state, the southern part of the region has trended a little more toward the Democrats while the northern part has, maybe, gotten even redder.

In Montana, we have a weird combination of races.  For Senate, even with President Trump firing with both barrels due to Senator Tester shooting down Trump’s misguided cronyism at the Department of Veteran’s Affair, Senator Tester seems to have a somewhat comfortable lead in the Senate race.  On the other hand, WWE-wannabe Greg Gianforte seems to be holding on (by a less comfortable margin) in the U.S. House race.

In Wyoming, the Democrats really have very little chance at picking up any of the races.  A successful outcome would be holding the Republicans beneath 55% in any of the three main races. Continue Reading...

Posted in Elections, General Election Forecast | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on 2018 Mid-term Election — Rocky Mountains

Thinking 2021

By tmess2 | Published September 15, 2018

One weakness that the Democratic Party has had over the years is getting loosely attached Democratic voters to think beyond the current election.  But many components of the political system elect members in staggered elections (e,g,, the U.S. Senate); so gaining the ability to pass your legislation requires a multi-year plan.

While in the weeks ahead, posts on this site will undoubtedly focus on the race for power in D.C., this post is about the other offices that will be on the ballot in November — state positions.  In less than nineteen months, residents of the U.S. will receive and then return their census forms for the 2020 census.  In slightly over two years, the Census Bureau will release the numbers from that census to the states which will then begin anew the process of drawing the political maps that will control U.S. House (and state legislative elections) between 2022 and 2031.  And some of the people elected at the state level this November will still be around in 2021 to vote on these new maps.

The big office in most of the states is governor.  There are 36 governor’s offices up for election this cycle with Republicans currently holding 26 of them.  In 34 states, the term of office is four years; so the winner this year will be around in 2021.  (In two states — New Hampshire and Vermont, both held by Republicans — the term of office is two years; so we will get another shot at removing the Republican in 2020 and only New Hampshire is likely to have multiple congressional seats after the 2020 census.)   In some of these states — Arizona, California, and Iowa — the redistricting process minimizes the influence of the governor or legislature; so, while — for other reasons — holding California and picking up Arizona and Iowa would be useful, they will not have a big impact on redistricting in 2021.  There are also some states that currently only have one representative in Congress eliminating the need for Congressional Districts — Alaska (Independent); South Dakota (Republican), and Wyoming (Republican).  Even after eliminating these states, you have twenty states held by Republicans and eight states held by Democrats in which the winner of the 2018 election for governor will be around in 2021 and have the power to veto or sign any proposed congressional map. Continue Reading...

Posted in Elections | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on Thinking 2021