Further on Massachusetts Ballot Question 2

POST-GAZETTE - Res Publica

Further on Massachusetts Ballot Question 2

by David Trumbull -- December 7, 2012

On November 6, 2012, the voters of Massachusetts rejected, by 51%, a ballot question that would have legalized physician-prescribed suicide. Question 2 was vigorously opposed by the Catholic Church and others who believe that suicide is never the answer. Groups representing the medical profession and advocates for the disabled also opposed.

Question 2 illustrated a couple of the reasons why enacting law by popular initiative is inferior, as a process, to enacting bills in the legislature.

The choices on a public policy question may be properly framed as "no" and "yes, under such-and-such terms." Say a bill is filed in the legislature to legalize physician-prescribed suicide. Some legislators will be opposed. Others may be open to the idea; for them the job is to work out under what circumstances, and subject to what restraints, it will be legal. Through this process the legislature decides both what is to be done and the manner in which it will be done. When a bill is introduced in the legislature amendments may be offered; some may be accepted. Bills approved by the legislature have been, in many cases, improved by this system of debate and deliberation. On the other hand, a ballot question may be answered in just one of two ways, "no" or "yes." A complex policy question is reduced to a single solution, written by the proponents of the initiative, with no ability to improve it by amendments prior to passage.

That leads to the second flaw in use of the initiative to enact policy. A complex policy question is put to voters who, in most cases, will have given very little, if any, thought to it until shortly before the election. This is especially so considering that ballot questions generate much less press and public interest than "top of the ticket" races for President and Senator. Unlike our elected representatives who vote on a bill after hearings, debate, and deliberation, voters deciding a ballot question will, in many cases, be informed, if at all, by "sound bite" advertisements on radio and television.

Polls several weeks out from the election showed the public quite favorable to Question 2. Opponents of physician-prescribed suicide could not reasonably expect, in the brief window of public interest, to persuade voters that not only religious teaching, but also reason and natural law, dictate that physicians should not be angels of death. Therefore the opponents, wisely, crafted their public campaign around what they characterized as flaws in the proposal. This had the advantage of persuading some voters, who might not oppose physician-assisted suicide in all cases, to oppose this particular proposal. However, that left the underlying question not only unanswered, but un-debated. Physician-prescribed suicide is, literally, a question of life and death. Such questions require sober reflection, sound education, and serious evaluation. A simple "yes" or "no" ballot question with most of the discussion consisting of little more than "sound bites" is no way to deliberate over, let alone settle, such a policy issue.

2012 Massachusetts Ballot Question Physician-Prescribed Suicide

Res Publica
2012 Massachusetts Ballot Question Physician-Prescribed Suicide
by David Trumbull -- November 30, 2012

One of the most liberal States in the Union, in an election in which the Democrats at the top of the ticket won by comfortable margins, narrowly defeated physician-prescribed suicide. Let's examine the data from the election and see what they may tell us about the voters.

1. Working class Democratic cities opposed Question 2.

The top 15 (by population) communities account for 30% of the total population of the Commonwealth. Question 2 was defeated in 10 of these communities: Brockton (63.8% opposed), Fall River (63.1%), Haverhill (53.8%), Lawrence (69.4%), Lowell (57.6%), Lynn (59.2%), New Bedford (62.5%), Quincy (54.1%), Springfield (65.5%). and Worcester (58.7%), by large margins. In Boston it barely (51%) passed. 26 municipalities account for 40% of the population of the Commonwealth; Question 2 was defeated in 20 of them.

The cities where Question 2 was defeated are, generally speaking, those that, historically, had large Catholic immigrant populations (French Canadians, Italians, Poles, and Portuguese) or substantial recent immigration of Catholics and conservative Evangelicals (Brazilians, Cape Verdeans, and Hispanics). They are also among the poorer communities in Massachusetts. Some of the cities most opposed to Question 2 also had sizeable African-American populations.

In the United States Senate election these communities most opposed to Question 2 went heavily for liberal Democrat Elizabeth Warren. Moderate Republican Scott Brown carried one of the top 15, and 5 out of the top 26. He was not even competitive in most of the rest of them. The cities populated by more affluent professionals, Brookline, Cambridge, and, Newton, also went heavily for the Democratic candidate, however they went equally heavily in favor of Question 2.

2. Many, but not all, Republican-leaning towns and small cities opposed Question 2.

Of 351 cities and towns in the Commonwealth 166 had vote totals on Question 2 that were majority opposed. Once we look past the largest communities, find 156 small to medium sized communities where Question 2 was defeated. Scott Brown won 133 of them. These communities are among those that traditionally have supported Republicans and are among the more conservative in an otherwise liberal State.

My hypothesis is that Question 2 was defeated in part due to a competent organized opposition and the nature of turnout on Election Day, as driven by the candidates for the two major parties. Strong candidates from both parties and a hotly contested race brought high turnout. The large Democratic turnout for Ms. Warren in the cities may have brought to the polls a large number of economic liberal/social conservative voters in blue-color immigrant cities. While that also brought large numbers of social liberals to the polls in affluent cities and suburbs, the strong Republican support for Mr. Brown in the smaller more conservative communities may have brought out offsetting economic and social conservatives in those municipalities.

What Happened to Senator Brown?

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What Happened to Senator Brown?
by David Trumbull -- November 23, 2012

After Scott Brown's win in the January 2010 Special Election I did an analysis of his remarkably strong showing in the City of Boston. Recently I did the same for this year's election. In both elections half of Mr. Brown's Boston votes came from the following neighborhoods:

• Back Bay/Beacon Hill/Downtown,
• Brighton, Chestnut Hill,
• Charlestown,
• Parts of Dorchester (Cedar Grove, Clam Point, Neponset, and Pope's Hill),
• Part of East Boston (Central Square, Eagle Hill, and Orient Heights),
• North End,
• Readville,
• Roslindale/West Roxbury,
• South Boston, and
• West Roxbury.

His 2010 percentages in those neighborhoods ranged from 45% to 60%. Voter turnout was relatively high in those neighborhoods. With the exception of Beacon Hill (41% turnout) the best neighborhoods for Brown in 2010 all had turnout in excess of the citywide average of 43%. Three had turnout at, or nearly at, 60%, very high for a special election. In contrast, among the best neighborhoods for the 2010 Democratic candidate, Martha Coakley, about 16% of them had turnout in excess of the citywide average, most were under 40% and some were under 30%. Mr. Brown failed to win Boston in 2010, but, for a Republican he did very well by getting a high percentage of his potential voters to the polls and that stronger-than-expected showing in Boston, combined with victories elsewhere, elected him to the U.S. Senate.

In 2012 the total number of registered Boston voters was up 30,000 over 2010, and turnout, at 64% was substantially higher that in 2010. The beneficiary of the large voter base and turnout rate was the Democratic candidate, Elizabeth Warren. She got about 80,000 votes more than the Democratic candidate in 2010. Mr. Brown picked up about 17,500 more votes than he got in 2010. In the best neighborhoods for Brown turnout was up in 2012, ranging from 62% to 77%, but most of that helped the Democrat, as Brown picked up merely 5,800 additional votes in his best neighborhoods. In the neighborhoods that Ms. Warren won by the largest margins, voter turnout was up, typically, 20 or even 30 percentage points above the rates in 2010. Put these numbers together and you get the result in Boston, Brown dropping from 30.3% in 2010 to 25.7% in 2010, a loss of about 4.5 percentage points.

In the North End, where the Post-Gazette is published, Brown did slightly better in 2012 (48.6%) than he did in 2010 (46.3%). North End turnout was also up, at 61.9% compared to 46.3% in 2010.

In East Boston, where the Post-Gazette has a satellite office, the story was reversed. In 2010 the historically Italian-American neighborhood of Orient Heights went big for Brown (54.1%). Turnout, which in 2010 was 43.1%, went up in Orient Heights to 65.1%, and the vote for Brown dropped to 40.1%. I wonder if the 15-percentage point (three times the citywide average) defection away from the Republican toward the Democrat is related to the changing demographics of East Boston. As I pointed out in my April 15, 2011, Post-Gazette column, that neighborhood has become more and more Hispanic over time. Republicans, over the past decade, have not done a good job of giving that growing group of American citizens reasons to vote for the party of economic opportunity and traditional values.

Finally, kudos to Patrick Brennan, whose hard work in South Boston helped delivery Scott Brown 52.4% of the vote in that neighborhood in the recent election.

I'm Just Thankful the Election is Over

Res Publica

I'm Just Thankful the Election is Over

by David Trumbull -- November 16, 2012

The incumbent President was re-elected in a close, 51% to 48% (popular vote) contest, confirming, as we have known since the 2000 election, that the Union is just about evenly split between Republican and Democratic voters. The President's party gained a few seats in both the House and in the Senate, but neither chamber will see a change in control.

The opposition had hoped that discontent with the President would be enough to turn him out of office. They were wrong. After the election some argued that the man chosen to run against the President -- a multi-millionaire from Massachusetts who did not connect well with working men and women and who had a reputation as a "flip-flopper" on important public policy questions -- was a weak candidate. Indeed, all through the race for the nomination doubts had been raised about him, but, unfortunately for the party, all the alternatives were flawed and, looking back, the choice seems inevitable.

How's that for a summary of the 2012 federal elections? For that matter, how about the 2004 federal elections? Dissatisfaction with Obama's handling of the economy and health care was not widespread enough to un-seat him, anymore than disagreement with Bush's conduct of the War on Terror was enough to defeat him. Both won narrowly (51%) over less than ideal opponents. Both saw modest gains in the House and Senate, although, unlike Bush, President Obama will start his second term without a majority in the House.

After the 2004 election I wrote in this space: "I wish I could soothe my Democratic friends by saying, 'calm down, President Bush can't do one-tenth of the Bad Things you fear he'll do.' He likewise will not do one-tenth of the Good Things I'd like him to do." I believe the same is true of President Obama.

The Republic will survive four more years of Obama. At the end we will be weaker, poorer, and have less freedom, but will shall survive and, with a change in leadership, recover. Republican House and Senate gains in 2014 will limit Obama's ability to inflict all the harm he would with a Democratic Congress. History suggests that second terms seldom go as well as the winner expects. All in all, 2016 is, already, looking to be a good year for Republicans and for the Republic.

Next Thursday I'll be thankful that we won't see and hear negative campaign ads, at least for a few months. I'll be thankful that my friends on both sides can stop sniping over politics. I'll be thankful that the United States is, as Will Rogers said before the 1932 election, too big for any one man to spoil.

Fly Me To The Moon

Res Publica
Fly Me To The Moon
by David Trumbull -- October 12, 2012

Fifteen years ago, on October 16, 1997, the Jupiter 2 spacecraft left earth carrying the Robison family and two other men (one of whom was an unintended traveler) to colonize a planet of the nearby star Alpha Centauri. Well, at least in the Columbia Broadcasting System's television series, Lost in Space, that is what happened! In September of 2015, just three years from now, Lost in Space itself will be 50 years old! Wow, was my childhood that long ago?

As a boy, I watched every space travel television show and movie I could find. We lived, for several months, in Coco, Florida (near Coco Beach where another space-age TV show, I Dream of Jeannie, was set) and watched the rocket launches from our backyard. In my lifetime I saw America put a man on the moon, just as President Kennedy had committed us to do. In fact, we put a total of twelve men on the moon and got each one safely back. As a boy, in the late 1960s, I would have been dismayed to learn that as a man, in my 50s, I should live on in an America that has not put a man on the moon since Apollo 17, forty years ago this December -- we don't even try anymore.

Over 500 years later, Christopher Columbus' 1492 voyage of discovery still stands as the beginning of mankind's last colonization of a new world. What of my boyhood expectations of routine space travel and folks living on other worlds? Over luncheon this week with some pretty bright people, including the son of a mechanical engineer who built equipment for National Aeronautics and Space Administration ("NASA") missions of the 1960s, I asked, Did we simply lose the resolve to colonized space? Or was the science fiction of the 1960s unrealistic as to the prospects for colonization? The opinion, at the table, was that space colonization will be much, much harder than popularly imagined in my youth. In other words, Columbus' feat of opening of a new world for colonization will not be matched any time soon.

Today, if Americans fly to the moon and learn what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars, it will be merely in flights of fancy, inspired by Bart Howard's 1954 song -- probably as sung and swung by Italian-American crooner, Frank Sinatra.

Saturday is Felt Hat Day

September 15th is Felt Hat Day the end of the season when men may wear their straw boaters and Panamas rather than the fur felt fedoras, porkpies, homburgs, and bowlers that we wear (You do wear a hat, don't you?) the rest of the year. For more information see http://www.thefedoralounge.com/. Straw hats may not be worn again until Straw Hat Day which is May 15th.

The Power of Five Percent

by David Trumbull

It looks like Salvatore LaMattina, Boston City Councillor for District One, which covers Charlestown, East Boston, the North End, Downtown, and part of Beacon Hill, will not be the next Suffolk County Register of Probate. Unofficial results show him in second place, with 49 percent of the vote in the Democratic Primary. It was close, but Patricia Campatelli leads by over 600 votes, out of about 30 thousand votes cast for that office, and the official results are unlikely to change that significantly. Turnout was low, with 7.5 percent of the 413,927 registered voters actually voting in this race. Ms. Campatelli, a resident of East Boston, will face no Republican opposition in November. If past experience is a guide, it is safe to assume that Ms. Campatelli will hold that position until she chooses to depart. As we know, Suffolk County voters practically never turn out an incumbent Democrat. Well, that's the voters' prerogative, and Ms. Campatelli won, so I say, Congratulations to her. My analysis that follows is not meant in anyway to take away from her victory, however, I think citizens in Suffolk County should consider this latest, in a continuing trend, of a very small number of citizens deciding who will hold public office.

Voter turnout is a funny thing. One often hears people say that a single vote doesn't matter. Yet voter behavior suggests that many voters don't understand just how their votes count. Just to be clear, every vote matters. Even if you take a ballot and return it blank, that is recorded as a vote -- it is a message to the candidates that you bothered to go to the polling place and vote even though there was no one on the ballot that you approved of, either because you disapproved, or perhaps simply didn't know enough about them to have an opinion. However, it is also true that your vote matters more when it is more likely to determine the outcome. Ironically, the people who say "my vote doesn't matter" are the same ones who skip contests where their votes matter a great deal but participate in contest where their votes matter little, or not at all.

Take the recent primary (please). Overall turnout for the September 6th primaries was 11 percent across Suffolk County, which is made up of the cities of Boston, Chelsea, and Revere, and the town of Winthrop. But turnout varied from race to race. Nine percent of the registered voters cast a ballot for either incumbent U.S. Senator Scott P. Brown, a Republican, or his Democratic challenger, Elizabeth A. Warren. Perhaps they wanted to make an early show of support for a candidate prior to the November final election. Perhaps the organizations of both campaigns used the primary as a "dry-run" of the get-out-the-vote program then plan for November. Who knows? But there is one thing we can say with certainty: none of those votes counted in the slightest in determining the result as, in both cases, there was only one name on the ballot. 36,786 persons voted in the primaries for U.S. Senator, 32,840 in the Democratic Primary alone. Now compare that to the Campatelli/LaMattina race for Register of Probate. 30,919 persons voted in that race, a race where every vote truly mattered, as the winner will be the next Register of Probate and it was a very tight race. Nearly six thousand more people cast "practice" votes for a Senatorial candidate who would have won even if all the voters stayed home than cast votes in a race where their votes would have made a difference.

Along with the Register of Probate contest there were two Clerk of Courts positions filled in this Democratic Primary (because no Republican is running in the November final election). Maura A. Hennigan won for Clerk of Courts (Criminal) and Michael J. Donovan for Clerk of Courts (Civil). In none of these races did the winning candidate win the suffrages of more than 5 percent of the registered voters. Again, I have nothing against these particular politicians. They won and are to be congratulated. However, am I the only one who thinks that is not good for the long-term health of our Democracy when important offices are filled by candidates who enjoy the active support of merely 5 percent of the registered voters?