A Plaintive Cry For Election Reforms Before It’s Too Late

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way

As voting wraps up across the country today, let me take a quick step back to offer not so much a curmudgeon’s take as a plea not to lose sight of how badly in need of fundamental reform U.S. elections are.

No other Western democracy has anything remotely like the America election system. U.S. election campaigns are too expensive, last too long, divert valuable time and attention away from governing, and compromise everyone involved in them.

If the kinds of foundational election reforms we need are a mountain to climb, then we aren’t even to base camp. A few years back, thanks largely to the post-Watergate reforms, we’d managed to ascend partway up the mountain. The system was still a mess and we weren’t close to the summit, but over the past 15 years or so, we have lost all of the ground gained and are basically back at the trailhead.

Thanks to adverse Supreme Court decisions, it will take a strategic long game to retool elections to make them fairer, more democratic, and less of a colossal waste of money, time, and resources. It will also take overcoming the vested interests that have turned U.S. elections into a cash bonanza free-for-all. It is a defining feature of this neo-Gilded Age. Monied interests weaken campaign finance rules, which helps them acquire more political power that they use to fend off reforms. It’s vicious cycle spiraling towards oligarchy.

I won’t run down the full list of needed reforms, but they include things like making voting mandatory, declaring Election Day a national holiday, shortening campaigns into a defined period, limiting the toxic intrusion of campaign contributions, including dark money and other surreptitious funding sources. The hallmark of the Watergate-era reforms was greater transparency, but that’s not enough. Public financing of campaigns and other reforms need to dramatically reduce the role of campaign contributions.

This sounds like pie in the sky stuff, but our politics is crippled by the way we elect public officeholders. The billion-dollar-boon to broadcasters, the endless campaign cycles that bleed together, the conversion of politics into a mass-market advertising campaign that serves no one – these are public policy choices. They’re not written in stone, though the Supreme Court has certainly tried.

The political game we see on the field is heavily influenced by the field itself: where the lines are drawn, what the ground rules are, how level the surface is. When you obsess over politics like most Morning Memo readers do, you can begin to forget how much of what you see is a manmade political landscape, not a natural feature of politics.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Election Threats Watch

• Proud Boys claim they’ll be at polling places as Trump ups violent rhetoric and election fraud claims–NBC News
• Right-wing activists and G.O.P. state lawmakers have filed some 4,000 “bad-faith” ballot challenges in Pennsylvania–NYT
• The U.S. intelligence community continues to issue real-time warnings about election interference from foreign adversaries, particularly Russia and Iran:

Since our statement on Friday, the IC has been observing foreign adversaries, particularly Russia, conducting additional influence operations intended to undermine public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stoke divisions among Americans. The IC expects these activities will intensify through election day and in the coming weeks, and that foreign influence narratives will focus on swing states.

Trump Campaign Fires White Nationalist In Its Midst

Reporter Amanda Moore discovered that the real-life version of a white nationalist online persona was the Trump campaign’s regional field director in western Pennsylvania. Luke Meyer, 24, admitted he went by “Alberto Barbarossa” online and was fired by the Trump campaign Friday after Moore presented her findings.

Meyer went out with a line for the ages, sending an email to Moore that said, “I am glad you pieced these little clues together like an antifa Nancy Drew.”

If I’m Moore, “Like An Antifa Nancy Drew” goes on my business card, is the title of my memoir, and is etched on my gravestone. People go entire careers without a plaudit as rich as that.

Where Are The Candidates Today?

• Harris’ election night watch party is scheduled to be at her alma mater, Howard University in D.C.
• Trump is back at Mar-a-Lago, with an election night watch party scheduled to be at Palm Beach County Convention Center.

2024 Ephemera

• Musk Wins In Pennsylvania: “A Philadelphia judge on Monday rejected District Attorney Larry Krasner’s bid to classify Elon Musk daily $1 million giveaway to voters in battleground states as an illegal lottery that violates Pennsylvania consumer protection laws.”–Philadelphia Inquirer
• Why It Will Be Harder For Trump To Subvert This Election: “[W]hile postelection chaos is quite possible, 2024 is unlikely to be an exact replay of 2020. In important ways, the system has been strengthened.”–Cameron Joseph
• Crazy Scenario Alert: What happens if Republicans win the House but don’t elect a speaker in time to certify the Electoral College results on Jan. 6?–Politico

Good Read

Brian Beutler: Why Everyone In Politics Panders To Republicans

Policy Porn

David Dayen has a great piece on the Biden administration’s “whole-of-government’ approach to governing. This hits all my buttons for orderliness, fairness, level playing fields, getting shit done, avoiding waste, and steering clear of ridiculous outcomes. In my ideal world, it’s how everything should be run.

Alleged Accelerationist Busted In FBI Sting

A 24-year-old Tennessee white supremacist who thought he was about to use a drone packed with explosives to a destroy an electrical substation in Nashville on Saturday had actually been under FBI surveillance since June and was arrested without incident, according to authorities.

For context, via TPM: Aspiring Right-Wing Terrorists Are Targeting The Power Grid Amid Rise In Accelerationist Extremism

EXCLUSIVE

WSJ:

Western security officials say they believe that two incendiary devices, shipped via DHL, were part of a covert Russian operation that ultimately aimed to start fires aboard cargo or passenger aircraft flying to the U.S. and Canada, as Moscow steps up a sabotage campaign against Washington and its allies.

Women Don’t Forget

Shot:

JD Vance: "The trash's name is Kamala Harris." pic.twitter.com/8QMtRoSoiV

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 4, 2024

Chaser, from Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN):

Dear JD Vance: Have you found that calling a woman trash has worked for you?

Because we generally don’t forget that shit.

— Tina Smith (@TinaSmithMN) November 5, 2024

Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!