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Campaign finance remains one of the most important and controversial aspects of U.S. democracy, as shown by recent legislation, court challenges, and demands for reform. A new Brookings Institution Press book, Financing the 2004 Election, examines the implications that the costs and trends of 2004 have for the current elections.

On September 12, as the 2006 election cycle shifted into high gear, Brookings hosted a panel of experts on money and politics to examine how the year's campaign spending patterns compared to those in previous elections.

Brookings Senior Fellow Thomas Mann addressed these issues along with co-editors Anthony Corrado, Brookings nonresident senior fellow and professor of government at Colby College in Waterville, Maine; and David Magleby, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy and Dean of the School of Family, Home and Social Sciences at Brigham Young University in Utah.

The speakers compared candidate and party receipts of 2006 to date with those of 2002 and 2004, and examined the importance of the surge in individual donors and the role of 527 and 501(c) organizations. They also discussed how the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) performed in 2004 and how the 2006 elections further test federal elections legislation. The briefing was co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy.

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With the presidential debates completed, the campaigns of Senators John McCain and Barack Obama are focusing on persuading remaining undecided voters and mobilizing their supporters for Election Day. The Opportunity 08 project at Brookings and Princeton University examined key questions in the final stretch of the 2008 campaign, including money, ads and mobilization.

Have the candidates’ ads been effective at swaying voters thus far, and what form will they take in the campaign’s final week? With Obama taking the unprecedented step of opting out of public funding for the general election, has McCain been able to leverage party resources to keep pace? Will either candidate be able to match the Republican National Committee’s massive get-out-the-vote efforts of 2004? To examine these and related matters, the Brookings Institution’s Opportunity 08 project, in partnership with the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, hosted the final roundtable discussion on key questions about American electoral politics in connection with the 2008 campaign.

Featuring panelists Anthony Corrado, a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings and professor at Colby College; Diana Mutz, a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings and professor at the University of Pennsylvania; Lynn Vavreck of UCLA; Mike Allen of Politico; and moderated by Larry Bartels of Princeton and Thomas Mann of Brookings, the session explored how money, ads and mobilization are likely to affect the outcome of the presidential election.

After initial presentations, panelists took audience questions.

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The 2008 elections showcased the power of the Internet to generate voter enthusiasm, mobilize volunteers and increase small-donor contributions. After the political world has been arguing about campaign finance policy for decades, the digital revolution has altered the calculus of participation.

On January 14, a joint project of the Campaign Finance Institute, American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution unveiled a new report that seeks to change the ongoing national dialogue about money in politics. At this event, the four authors of the report will detail their findings and recommendations. Relying on lessons from the record-shattering 2008 elections and the rise of Internet campaigning, experts will present a new vision of how campaign finance and communications policy can help further democracy through broader participation.

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• Thomas Mann
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• Anthony Corrado
• Norm Ornstein

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• Campaign Reform in the Networked Age: Fostering Participation through Small Donors and Volunteers

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Executive Summary

The political world has been arguing about campaign finance policy for decades. A once rich conversation has become a stale two-sided battleground. One side sees contribution or spending limits as essential to restraining corruption, the appearance of corruption, or the “undue influence” of wealthy donors. The other resists any such limits in the name of free speech. The time has come to leap over this gulf and, as much as possible, move the disputes from the courts. Preventing corruption and protecting free speech should each be among the key goals of any policy regime, but they should not be the only objectives. This report seeks to change the ongoing conversation. Put simply, instead of focusing on attempts to further restrict the wealthy few, it seeks to focus on activating the many.

This is not a brief for deregulation. The members of this working group support limits on contributions to candidates and political parties. But we also recognize the limits of limits. More importantly, we believe that some of the key objectives can be pursued more effectively by expanding the playing field.

Interactive communications technology potentially can transform the political calculus. But technology alone cannot do the trick. Sound governmental policies will be essential: first, to protect the conditions under which a politically beneficial technology may flourish and, second, to encourage more candidates — particularly those below the top of the national ticket — to reach out to small donors and volunteers.

We focus on participation for two reasons. First, if enough people come into the system at the low end there may be less reason to worry about the top. Second, heightened participation would be healthy for its own sake. A more engaged citizenry would mean a greater share of the public following political events and participating in public life. And the evidence seems to suggest that giving and doing are reciprocal activities: volunteering stimulates giving, while giving small amounts seems to heighten non-financial forms of participation by people who feel more invested in the process.

For these reasons, we aim to promote equality and civic engagement by enlarging the participatory pie instead of shrinking it. The Supreme Court has ruled out pursuing equality or civic engagement by constraining speech. But the Court has never ruled out pursuing these goals through policies that do not constrain speech.

This report will show how to further these ends. The first half surveys current conditions; the second contains detailed recommendations for moving forward.

The report begins with new opportunities. The digital revolution is altering the calculus of participation by reducing the costs of both individual and collective action. Millions of American went online in 2008 to access campaign materials, comment on news reports, watch campaign videos and share information. The many can now communicate with the many without the intervention of elite or centralized organizations. This capacity has made new forms of political organizations easier to create, while permitting the traditional organizations — candidates and parties — to achieve unprecedented scales of citizen participation. No example better illustrates this potential than the Obama campaign of 2008, which is discussed at length in the full report.

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From “American Crossroads” to “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow,” so-called "super PACs" have emerged as the dominant new force in campaign finance. Created in the aftermath of two landmark court decisions and regulatory action and inaction by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), these independent spending-only political action committees are collecting unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations and unions to advocate for or against political candidates. The legal requirements they face—disclosure of donors and non-coordination with the candidates and campaigns they are supporting—have proven embarrassingly porous. Increasingly, super PACs are being formed to boost a single candidate and are often organized and funded by that candidate’s close friends, relatives and former staff members. Their presence is most visible in presidential elections but they are quickly moving to Senate and House elections.

On March 1, on the heels of the FEC’s February filing deadline, the Governance Studies program at Brookings hosted a discussion exploring the role of super PACs in the broader campaign finance landscape this election season. Anthony Corrado, professor of government at Colby College and a leading authority on campaign finance, and Trevor Potter, nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a former chairman of the FEC and lawyer to Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, presented. 

After the panel discussion, the speakers took audience questions. Participants joined the discussion on Twitter by using the hashtag #BISuperPAC.

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Super PACs have already spent tens of millions of dollars in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, with more to come. Expert Anthony Corrado says that the unlimited spending by the PACs, made possible by two Supreme Court decisions, is giving wealthy individuals unprecedented influence in the 2012 elections.

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• The Influence of Super PACs on the 2012 Elections

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There is a lively debate today over whether or not campaign finance reforms have weakened the role of political parties in campaigns. This seems an odd argument in an era of historically high levels of party loyalty — on roll calls in Congress and voting in the electorate. Are parties too strong and unified or too weak and fragmented? Have they been marginalized in the financing of elections or is their role at least as strong as it has ever been? Does the party role in campaign finance (weak or strong) materially shape the capacity to govern?

In addition, the increasing involvement in presidential and congressional campaigns of large donors – especially through Super PACs and politically-active nonprofit organizations – has raised serious concerns about whether the super-wealthy are buying American democracy. Ideologically-based outside groups financed by wealthy donors appear to be sharpening partisan differences and resisting efforts to forge agreement across parties. Many reformers have advocated steps to increase the number of small donors to balance the influence of the wealthy. But some scholars have found evidence suggesting that small donors are more polarizing than large donors. Can that be true? If so, are there channels other than the ideological positioning of the parties through which small donors might play a more constructive role in our democracy?

In this paper, Thomas Mann and Anthony Corrado attempt to shed light on both of these disputed features of our campaign finance system and then assess whether campaign finance reform offers promise for reducing polarization and strengthening American democracy. They conclude that not only is campaign finance reform a weak tool for depolarizing American political parties, but some break in the party wars is probably a prerequisite to any serious pushback to the broader deregulation of campaign finance now underway.

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The Supreme Court’s recent McCutcheon decision has reinvigorated the discussion on how campaign finance affects American democracy. Seeking to dissect the complex relationship between political parties, partisan polarization, and campaign finance, Tom Mann and Anthony Corrado’s new paper on Party Polarization and Campaign Finance reviews the landscape of hard and soft money in federal elections and asks whether campaign finance reform can abate polarization and strengthen governing capacity in the United States. The paper tackles two popular contentions within the campaign finance debate: First, has campaign finance reform altered the role of political parties as election financiers and therefore undermined deal making and pragmatism? Second, would a change in the composition of small and large individual donors decrease polarization in the parties?

The Role of Political Parties in Campaign Finance

Political parties have witnessed a number of shifts in their campaign finance role, including McCain-Feingold’s ban on party soft money in 2002. This has led many to ask if the breakdown in compromise and governance and the rise of polarization has come about because parties have lost the power to finance elections. To assess that claim, the authors track the amount of money crossing national and state party books as an indicator of party strength. The empirical evidence shows no significant decrease in party strength post 2002 and holds that “both parties have compensated for the loss of soft money with hard money receipts.” In fact, the parties have upped their spending on congressional candidates more than six-fold since 1980. Despite the ban on soft money, the parties remain major players in federal elections.

Large and Small Donors in National Campaigns

Mann and Corrado turn to non-party money and survey the universe of individual donors to evaluate “whether small, large or mega-donors are most likely to fuel or diminish the polarization that increasingly defines the political landscape.” The authors map the size and shape of individual giving and confront the concern that Super PACs, politically active nonprofits, and the super-wealthy are buying out American democracy. They ask: would a healthier mix of small and large donors reduce radicalization and balance out asymmetric polarization between the parties? The evidence suggests that increasing the role of small donors would have little effect on partisan polarization in either direction because small donors tend to be highly polarized. Although Mann and Corrado note that a healthier mix would champion democratic ideals like civic participation and equality of voice.

Taking both points together, Mann and Corrado find that campaign finance reform is insufficient for depolarizing the parties and improving governing capacity. They argue forcefully that polarization emerges from a broader political and partisan problem. Ultimately, they assert that, “some break in the party wars is probably a prerequisite to any serious pushback to the broader deregulation of campaign finance now underway.”

Click to read Mann and Corrado’s full paper, Party Polarization and Campaign Finance.

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Despite the attention on the mid-term races, few elections are competitive. Electoral competition, already low at the national level, is in decline in state and primary elections as well. Reformers, who point to gerrymandering and a host of other targets for change, argue that improving competition will produce voters who are more interested in elections, better-informed on issues, and more likely to turn out to the polls.

On October 27, the Brookings Institution—in conjunction with the Cato Institute and The Pew Research Center—presented a discussion and a groundbreaking survey exploring the attitudes and opinions of voters in competitive and noncompetitive congressional districts. The survey, part of Pew's regular polling on voter attitudes, was conducted through the weekend of October 21. A series of questions explored the public's perceptions, knowledge, and opinions about electoral competitiveness.

The discussion also explored a publication that addresses the startling lack of competition in our democratic system. The Marketplace of Democracy: Electoral Competition and American Politics (Brookings, 2006), considers the historical development, legal background, and political aspects of a system that is supposed to be responsive and accountable, yet for many is becoming stagnant, self-perpetuating, and tone-deaf. Michael McDonald, editor and Brookings visiting fellow, moderated a discussion among co-editor John Samples, director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute, and Andrew Kohut and Scott Keeter from The Pew Research Center, who also discussed the survey.

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On November 7, millions of Americans will exercise their civic duty to vote. At stake will be control of the House and Senate, not to mention the success of individual candidates running for office. President Bush's "stay the course" agenda will either be enabled over the next two years by a Republican Congress or knocked off kilter by a Democratic one.

With so much at stake, it is not surprising that the Pew Research Center found that 51 percent of registered voters have given a lot of thought to this November's election. This is higher than any other recent midterm election, including 44 percent in 1994, the year Republicans took control of the House. If so, turnout should better the 1994 turnout rate among eligible voters of 41 percent.

There is good reason to suspect that despite the high interest, turnout will not exceed 1994. The problem is that a national poll is, well, a national poll, and does not measure attitudes of voters within states and districts.

People vote when there is a reason to do so. Republican and Democratic agendas are in stark contrast on important issues, but voters also need to believe that their vote will matter in deciding who will represent them. It is here that the American electoral system is broken for many voters.

Voters have little choice in most elections. In 1994, Congressional Quarterly called 98 House elections as competitive. Today, they list 51. To put it another way, we are already fairly confident of the winner in nearly 90 percent of House races. Although there is no similar tracking for state legislative offices, we know that the number of elections won by less than 60 percent of the vote has fallen since 1994.

The real damage to the national turnout rate is in the large states of California and New York, which together account for 17 percent of the country's eligible voters. Neither state has a competitive Senate or Governor's election, and few competitive House or state legislative races. Compare to 1994, when Californians participated in competitive Senate and governor races the state's turnout was 5 percentage points above the national rate. The same year New York's competitive governor's race helped boost turnout a point above the national rate.

Lacking stimulation from two of the largest states, turnout boosts will have to come from elsewhere. Texas has an interesting four-way governor's race that might draw from infrequent voters to the polls. Ohio's competitive Senate race and some House races might also draw voters. However, in other large states like Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania, turnout will suffer from largely uncompetitive statewide races.

The national turnout rate will likely be less than 1994 and fall shy of 40 percent. This is not to say that turnout will be poor everywhere. Energized voters in Connecticut get to vote in an interesting Senate race and three of five Connecticut House seats are up for grabs. The problem is that turnout will be localized in these few areas of competition.

The fault is not on the voters; people's lives are busy, and a rational person will abstain when their vote does not matter to the election outcome. The political parties also are sensitive to competition and focus their limited resources where elections are competitive. Television advertising and other mobilizing efforts by campaigns will only be found in competitive races.

The old adage of "build it and they will come" is relevant. All but hardcore sports fans tune out a blowout. Building competitive elections -- and giving voters real choices -- will do much to increase voter turnout in American politics. There are a number of reforms on the table: redistricting to create competitive districts, campaign financing to give candidates equal resources, and even altering the electoral system to fundamentally change how a vote elects representatives. If voters want choice and a government more responsive to their needs, they should consider how these seemingly arcane election procedures have real consequences on motivating them to do the most fundamental democratic action: vote.

After his first place finish in Iowa, which was supposed to propel him to a New Hampshire victory, “change” is probably a word Barack Obama does not like as much anymore. But, his support did not really change much between these two elections. He won 38 percent of Iowa’s delegates and 36 percent of New Hampshire’s vote. It was Hillary Clinton and John McCain who were the big change candidates.

What happens when a presidential candidate that does well in a primary or caucus state, does not do so well in the next? The dynamic of the presidential election can swiftly and stunningly change, as it did in New Hampshire on Tuesday.

How Barack Obama wishes John Edwards showed up in New Hampshire.

Edwards was awarded 30 percent of Iowa’s delegates, barely denying Clinton a second place finish. He finished a distant third in New Hampshire, receiving only 17 percent of the vote. There are strong indications that a shift among his supporters helped propel Hillary Clinton to her New Hampshire victory.

According to the exit polls, Edwards did 8 percentage points worse in New Hampshire among women, while Clinton did 16 percent better. Obama’s support was virtually identical, dropping a statistically insignificant 1 percentage point.

Obama’s support among young people remained strong, if slightly increasing among 18-24 and 30-39 year olds. Clinton’s support remained strong and slightly increased among those 65 and older. Edwards won Iowa’s middle-aged voters, age 40-64, but it was Clinton who decisively won this coveted age demographic in New Hampshire. And where these people were 38 percent Iowa caucus attendees, they were 54 percent of New Hampshire voters. (To understand why their turnout increased, see my analysis of Iowa’s turnout .)

Moving forward, the generational war is still a strong dynamic in the Democratic race, as evident in the candidates’ speech styles following the election results. In Iowa, Clinton was flanked by the ghosts of the Clinton administration. In New Hampshire, she shared the stage with a sea of young voters. In Iowa, Obama spoke of change, a message that resonates with younger people who are not part of the establishment. In New Hampshire his slogan was a message that echoes the can-do spirit of the greatest generation, “Yes, we can!”

In the days between Iowa and New Hampshire, Edwards spoke about how he wanted the election to become a two-way race. One should be careful with what one wishes for. Edwards and Clinton are vying for the same support base, that when united can defeat Obama, at least in New Hampshire. In the short-term, Obama most needs Edwards to do better so that support can continue to be divided.

Among Republicans, John McCain recreated his magic of eight years ago and bounced back strong from a poor Iowa showing to win New Hampshire.

The Iowa and New Hampshire electorates are so different it is difficult to compare them. In Iowa, Evangelical Christians were 60 percent of the electorate, while in New Hampshire, they were only 23 percent. Mike Huckabee’s move from first in Iowa to third in New Hampshire can be clearly attributed to the shrinking of his base. His collapse paved the way for a new winner to emerge.

It is thus tempting to attribute McCain’s victory solely to the different electorates, but he still had to defeat Mitt Romney to win New Hampshire.

According to the exit polls, the battle between McCain and Romney is a referendum on the Bush administration. Surprisingly, McCain, who has tried to rebuild bridges with the Bush establishment since his defeat in the 2000 presidential election, is still seen as the outsider and agent of change by voters participating in the Republican nomination process.

In both Iowa and New Hampshire, McCain drew his support from those who said they are angry or dissatisfied with the Bush administration. Romney drew his support from those who said they are enthusiastic or satisfied. Not surprisingly, McCain is also drawing more support from self-described Independents and Romney from Republicans.

The candidates seem to understand this dynamic, too, as they gave their speeches following the election results. In a contrived bit of acting, Romney showed up on stage without a podium and shoved a prepared speech back into his pocket (if he had needed a podium, his advance team would have provided it). He appeared relaxed, delivering his speech in a personable style reminiscent of Huckabee, who is competing with Romney for those who support Bush. But he also seemed to be reaching out to Independents with a message of change. In stark contrast, McCain delivered a carefully written, almost sedate speech designed to reassure Republicans of his conservative credentials.

This three-way dynamic between Huckabee, McCain, and Romney should prove fascinating as the Republican nomination process moves forward. Where Evangelicals are strong, Huckabee should do well. Where they are not, the rules governing if Independents can or cannot participate will dictate how McCain and Romney do. And we have yet to see regional candidates like Fred Thompson have their day in the sun. And then there is Rudy Giuliani, who is lying in wait in the larger states where his name recognition should give him a significant boost over the other candidates. All of this points to an extended campaign among Republicans.

Michael P. McDonald is an Associate Professor at George Mason University and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He studies voter turnout and is a consultant to the national exit poll organization.

Hillary Clinton was not ready on day one.

The autopsies of her defeat for the Democratic nomination contest all point to a series of early blunders by her campaign. Her campaign plan was simple: leverage her name recognition, early money lead, and organization to win the Super-Tuesday contests, thereby wrapping up the Democratic nomination in early February. As the inevitable winner, she could be the centrist candidate on the Iraq war and tout her experience as a problem solver.

But her over-confident and over-priced campaign consultants failed to recognize that in a “change” election, caucus attenders were not excited by an Iraq war centrist who also happened to be a Washington insider. Clinton’s lack of a plan to effectively contest the caucuses allowed Barack Obama to win what would be the all important delegate race, and more importantly, give him the mantle of momentum while she appeared mired in the mud at a crucial mid-February stage of the campaign.

But she was ready on day two.

She hit her stride late in the game by impressively winning a series of primary contests. All the more remarkable: she did so on a shoestring election-to-election budget while the media wrote her off as a spoiler. With a newfound voice that emphasized she was a populist who would fight for the people, her new message resonated particularly well as the economy continued to falter.

Unfortunately, by the time she retooled her message and got rid of the people who had driven her campaign into the ditch— campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle and chief strategist Mark Penn—it was already too late. Obama had built a nearly insurmountable lead in the delegate count.

It is here that the rules matter.

If states had not moved up or “frontloaded” the date of their primaries and caucuses, under the misimpression that doing so would give them a greater voice in the 2008 nomination, Clinton might be the Democratic nominee.

She would have received more delegates from Florida and Michigan, two states that she would have likely won if all Democratic candidates had vigorously campaigned, but was denied a full slate because these states violated party rules by holding their elections too early. Counting these contests was important for her delegate count and to her argument that she had won more popular votes than Obama.

If states had not frontloaded their primaries and caucuses, she would have recovered from her early stumbles before it was too late. She would have minimized damage from her disastrous February, when Obama racked up an impressive string of victories even in Virginia, where she might have done better given her later strength.

The irony is that Clinton was expected to benefit from frontloading. Only a candidate with name recognition, money, and organization could compete. Lesser candidates like Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson and even John Edwards would be quickly weeded out of the field, leaving her with only one real opponent to dispense with.

The lesson is that frontloading does not well serve the nomination process. Running for president is an unrehearsed drill. Mistakes will be made. Candidates become better as they learn how to campaign and to craft messages that work. Democratic Party leaders will undoubtedly look hard over the next four years at what steps can be taken to even out the flow of the nomination contests.

While these lessons may resound loudly for Democrats, they apply equally well to Republicans. Democrats permitted the process to play out over a longer time by awarding delegates proportionately; Republicans brought their nomination to a faster close by awarding delegates by winner-take-all. John McCain became the inevitable winner of his party’s nomination without even winning a state’s vote majority before his opponents dropped like flies.

While Republicans have delighted in the continued fight among the Democrats, McCain has been in a holding pattern since winning his nomination. Unable to use his time effectively to make headway with the American public, he has incurred problems in his own party. As evidence, 30 percent of South Dakota and Montana Republican primary voters registered a protest vote by voting for someone else.

Perhaps McCain won his party’s nomination too soon. He lost to George Bush in 2000 and has yet to demonstrate that he can run an effective general election campaign. He would have benefited from being more strongly tested, making more mistakes, and learning from them in the primary season. Now, he and his campaign will have to learn on the job in the general election, while they face, in Obama, an opponent who has been tempered in his party’s nomination fire stoked by Clinton.

Plenty of time remains for McCain to make his mistakes and for Obama to make more—and for both to recover before November. Campaigns often become so knee-jerk reactive to criticisms of any mistake that they fail to recognize the value in the lessons that may be learned. The primary election season is thus a valuable period for candidates to plumb their strengths and shore up their weaknesses, and we need to find a way to restore it as such.

The impending presidential election may be the election of a century. Record primary voting, floods of new registrations, more small campaign donors and highly rated political conventions show that people are intensely interested.

These indicators augur a high turnout. Undoubtedly, more people will vote than the 60 percent who turned out four years ago, which was the highest rate since 1968. The question is, how many more? If participation tops the 1960 level of 64 percent, then we must go all the way back to 1908 — literally a century of American politics — to find the next highest rate: 66 percent.

Lessons from the 1960 and 1908 elections explain why 2008 may see a historical election. Many people recall the 1960 election that pitted two familiar names, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Kennedy won one of the closest presidential elections in American history. As in sports, people are interested when two contestants are evenly matched. Just like those in 1960, pre-election polls today show a tight race between Barack Obama and John McCain. People perceive that their vote will help determine big issues of peace and prosperity. Further, an African-American or a woman will be elected, for the first time, to one of the country’s highest offices. Contrast this to 1996: People tuned out when pre-election polls showed President Bill Clinton cruising to reelection over Bob Dole.

The 1908 election was not particularly close and did not involve big issues. Republican William Howard Taft won by a landslide over third-time Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan, whose “free silver” platform had lost its luster. What is notable is that the 1908 election occurred in the twilight of the political machines that dominated American politics throughout the latter half of the 19th century. These machines were built from the bottom up. Local ward bosses, who knew their neighbors intimately, dispensed jobs and favors for votes. (Ward bosses conjure images of big city politics, but rural political machines existed, too.) Political machines even paid supporters’ taxes in states that disenfranchised tax delinquents.

During the machine era, turnout rates routinely exceeded 80 percent. Paying people to vote, however, discomfited many. Progressive Era reforms near the turn of the 20th century rooted out the obvious corruption by creating a civil service to replace patronage jobs and adopting the secret ballot so that political machines could not monitor voting. The 1908 election was among the last where machines could still turn out voters.

There is mounting evidence that political machines had something right: Face-to-face contact is among the most effective means to activate voters. Today’s high-tech campaigns recreate the mobilization capacity of political machines. In place of ward bosses are local volunteers, and in place of bosses’ neighborly knowledge are sophisticated microtargeted voter profiles that reveal which voters are persuadable and which are loyal party supporters. The glue is the Internet, which provides an information infrastructure for campaigns to recruit and communicate with their volunteers.

It is tempting to give Democrats a mobilization edge. Obama’s efforts are highly visible, whereas McCain must rely on the tightlipped Republican National Committee. Obama does not employ the Democratic National Committee for this expensive campaign operation because he opted out of public financing. Indeed, recent presidential candidates — McCain included — usually raise money for voter mobilization through their national parties.

Before Obama is given an edge, we must caution that Republicans are better able to register themselves than are lower-income Democrats. Massive Democratic registration drives create a false impression that they are out-hustling Republicans. In 2004, Democratic-aligned organizations’ highly publicized efforts exceeded their voter turnout victory targets. These groups underestimated President Bush’s 72-hour voter mobilization efforts the weekend before the election, which effectively matched them voter for voter.

Still, Obama’s organization should not be discounted. Just four years ago, Democrats were still playing catch-up to Republicans. Now they are just as sophisticated and have recruited a large cadre of volunteers, including typically apathetic youth.

American campaigns have undergone a paradigm shift. They no longer consist primarily of mass appeals through television advertising; grass-roots organizing is now a critical component. If elections stay close and interesting, we will likely observe higher turnouts. No longer will we wonder why turnout is declining; rather, we will wonder why it is climbing. A revitalized ground game will likely emerge as one explanation in the decade to come.

Scholars from the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute are collaborating to promote transparency in redistricting. In January 2010, an advisory board of experts and representatives of good government groups was convened in order to articulate principles for transparent redistricting and to identify barriers to the public and communities who wish to create redistricting plans. This document summarizes the principles for transparency in redistricting that were identified during that meeting.

Benefits of a Transparent, Participative Redistricting Process

The drawing of electoral districts is among the most easily manipulated and least transparent systems in democratic governance. All too often, redistricting authorities maintain their monopoly by imposing high barriers to transparency and public participation. Increasing transparency and public participation can be a powerful counterbalance by providing the public with information similar to that which is typically only available to official decision makers, which can lead to different outcomes and better representation.

Increasing transparency can empower the public to shape the representation for their communities, promote public commentary and discussion about redistricting, inform legislators and redistricting authorities which district configurations their constituents and the public support, and educate the public about the electoral process.  

Fostering public participation can enable the public to identify their neighborhoods and communities, promote the creation of alternative maps, and facilitate an exploration of a wide range of representational possibilities. The existence of publicly-drawn maps can provide a measuring stick against which an official plan can be compared, and promote the creation of a “market” for plans that support political fairness and community representational goals.

Transparency Principles

All redistricting plans should include sufficient information so the public can verify, reproduce, and evaluate a plan. Transparency thus requires that:

• Redistricting plans must be available in non-proprietary formats.
• Redistricting plans must be available in a format allowing them to be easily read and analyzed with commonly-used geographic information software.
• The criteria used as a basis for creating plans and individual districts must be clearly documented.

Creating and evaluating redistricting plans and community boundaries requires access to demographic, geographic, community, and electoral data. Transparency thus requires that:

• All data necessary to create legal redistricting plans and define community boundaries must be publicly available, under a license allowing reuse of these data for non-commercial purposes.
• All data must be accompanied by clear documentation stating the original source, the chain of ownership (provenance), and all modifications made to it.

Software systems used to generate or analyze redistricting plans can be complex, impossible to reproduce, or impossible to correctly understand without documentation. Transparency thus requires that:

• Software used to automatically create or improve redistricting plans must be either open-source or provide documentation sufficient for the public to replicate the results using independent software.
• Software used to generate reports that analyze redistricting plans must be accompanied by documentation of data, methods, and procedures sufficient for the reports to be verified by the public.

Services offered to the public to create or evaluate redistricting plans and community boundaries are often opaque and subject to misinterpretation unless adequately documented. Transparency thus requires that:

• Software necessary to replicate the creation or analysis of redistricting plans and community boundaries produced by the service must be publicly available.
• The service must provide the public with the ability to make available all published redistricting plans and community boundaries in non-proprietary formats that are easily read and analyzed with commonly-used geographic information software.
• Services must provide documentation of any organizations providing significant contributions to their operation.

Promoting Public Participation

New technologies provide opportunities to broaden public participation in the redistricting process. These technologies should aim to realize the potential benefits described and be consistent with the articulated transparency principles.

Official Endorsement from Organizations – Americans for Redistricting Reform, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, Campaign Legal Center, Center for Governmental Studies, Center for Voting and Democracy, Common Cause, Demos, and the League of Women Voters of the United States.

Attending board members – Nancy Bekavac, Director, Scientists and Engineers for America; Derek Cressman, Western Regional Director of State Operations, Common Cause; Anthony Fairfax, President, Census Channel; Representative Mike Fortner (R), Illinois General Assembly; Karin Mac Donald, Director, Statewide Database, Berkeley Law, University of California, Berkeley; Leah Rush, Executive Director, Midwest Democracy Network; Mary Wilson, President, League of Women Voters.

Editors – Micah Altman, Harvard University and the Brookings Institution; Thomas E. Mann, Brookings Institution; Michael P. McDonald, George Mason University and the Brookings Institution; Norman J. Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute.

This project is funded by a grant from the Sloan Foundation to the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute.

Every 10 years — unfortunately, sometimes more frequently — legislative district lines are redrawn to balance population for demographic changes revealed by the census. What goes on is much more than a simple technical adjustment of boundaries, with ramifications that largely escape public notice.

Politicians often use redistricting as an opportunity to cut unfavorable constituents and potential challengers out of their districts. Barack Obama, for example, learned the rough and tumble of redistricting politics when Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) carved Obama's Chicago home out of Rush's congressional district after losing a 2000 primary challenge to Obama, then a state senator.

Incumbents can also use redistricting to move favorable constituents into their districts. Obama himself used the state legislative redistricting to extend his predominantly African American district north into a wealthy area of Illinois known as the Gold Coast. This new constituency allowed Obama to hone an effective biracial campaigning style that served him well when he ran for the U.S. Senate and the presidency.

Critically, these decisions are made with little or no public input or accountability. While Arizona and California are among the few states that give the public a chance to see and participate in how the boundaries are set, by using open redistricting commissions, most states gerrymander legislative lines behind closed doors. Figures from both major parties tilt the electoral playing field so much that one party is essentially assured of winning a given district, controlling the state legislature or winning the most seats in the state's congressional delegation. In other words, the democratic process is subverted. In this system, politicians select voters rather than voters electing politicians.

A 2006 Pew survey found that 70 percent of registered voters had no opinion about congressional redistricting. Among the few that expressed an opinion, some mistook the question to be about school districts rather than congressional districts.

For many reasons it has been hard to fault the public. An immense amount of population data must be sifted and then assembled, much like a giant jigsaw puzzle, to ensure that districts satisfy complex federal requirements relating to equal population and the Voting Rights Act, and varying state requirements that may include compactness and respect for existing political boundaries or communities. And access to these data and the software necessary to assemble and analyze them have long been out of public reach.

In the previous round of redistricting, according to a 2002 survey of authorities we conducted with our colleague Karin Mac Donald, most states did not provide any tools, facilities, dedicated assistance or software to support the public in developing redistricting plans. Many states failed to provide even minimal transparency by making data available, providing information about their plans online or accepting publicly submitted plans. Many redistricting authorities have not made firm plans to support transparency or public participation in the current round of redistricting.

In the coming year, however, technological advancements will enable anyone with a Web browser and an interest in how he or she is represented to draw district maps of his or her community and state that meet the same requirements as official submissions. Under the direction of scholars at the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, and with consultation from an array of experts in redistricting issues, we have developed a set of principles for transparency and public participation. These principles have been endorsed by an array of stakeholders, including Common Cause and the League of Women Voters of the United States.

Americans will be able to participate directly in their democracy by offering plans to be compared with the politician-drawn maps. The public and even the courts will no longer have to accept that whatever is devised by politicians in the backroom.

The Wizard of Oz appeared powerful because he hid behind a curtain -- until it was pulled back. The time has come to pull back the curtain on redistricting. A good place to start is by passing Rep. John Tanner's Redistricting Transparency Act, which has 38 co-sponsors from both parties. If Congress will not act, state governments can follow the lead of the few states that provide for meaningful transparency and public participation. Failure to provide for transparency and public participation should be recognized for what it is: an obviously self-serving act, placing the interests of politicians above the public interest.

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As the recent primary in Delaware attests, this year's midterm elections continue to offer unexpected twists and raise large questions. Will the Republicans take over the House and possibly the Senate? Or has the Republican wave ebbed? What role will President Obama play in rallying seemingly dispirited Democrats -- and what effect will reaction to the sluggish economy play in rallying Republicans? Is the Tea Party more an asset or a liability to the G.O.P.'s hopes? What effect will the inevitably narrowed partisan majorities have in the last two year's of Obama's first term? And how will contests for governorships and state legislatures around the nation affect redistricting and the shape of politics to come?

On October 4, a panel of Brookings Governance Studies scholars, moderated by Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne, Jr., attempted to answer these questions. Senior Fellow Thomas Mann provided an overview. Senior Fellow Sarah Binder discussed congressional dynamics under shrunken majorities or divided government. Senior Fellow William Galston offered his views on the administration’s policy prospects during the 112th Congress. Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael McDonald addressed electoral reapportionment and redistricting around the country.

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• Partisan Gridlock post-Elections?
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With little time remaining until the midterm elections, campaigning is intensifying and the outcome for control of Congress remains uncertain. Voter enthusiasm and turnout will be big factors in the elections, where Republicans have demonstrated a leg up in the party’s primaries.

On October 20, Brookings expert Michael McDonald answered your questions about what the polls and early voting are telling us about the upcoming midterm elections, in a live web chat moderated by POLITICO Assistant Editor Seung Min Kim. McDonald, with Seth McKee, is author of "Revenge of the Moderates," in today's POLITICO.

The transcript of this chat follows:

12:30 Seung Min Kim: Good afternoon, everyone! We have just under two weeks until the Nov. 2 midterm elections, and the Brookings Institution's Michael McDonald is here to answer your questions. Thanks and welcome, Michael.

12:30 [Comment From Dale Dean (Arlington): ] I was wondering from the historical record how closely early results mirror the actual results. Are there systemic distortions in early voting that are the same over many elections or do they differ with each election?

12:30 Michael McDonald: Early voting does not necessarily correspond with Election Day voting. Several data sources suggest the following: Overall, prior to 2008, more Republicans tended to vote early. In 2008, it was Democrats who voted early. We have to see 2010 will be a continuation of 2008 or a reversion to previous elections.

12:30 Michael McDonald: Another important factor is the number of early votes. For high early voting states like Oregon and Washington, essentially ALL votes will be cast early. In other states that require an excuse to vote absentee, the early voting electorate will be much smaller, and have a partisan character more similar to pre-2008.

12:31 [Comment From Katy Steinmetz: ] Are black voters going to turn out for Obama like they did in 2008? Why or why not? How big of a difference do you think this will make?

12:31 Michael McDonald: Since we started surveying, pollsters have found that midterm electorates -- compared to presidential electorates -- tend to be older, wealthier, better educated, and composed of fewer minorities. Sometimes Democrats can overcome this hurdle, as they did in 2006, of course. It would be highly unusual for African-Americans to vote at the same rate as they did in 2008. In some key races, in states with large minority populations, lowered levels of minority voting could be a critical determinant to the outcome.

12:32 [Comment From tim: ] Do the polls accurately reflect the relative turnout of Democrats, GOP and Independents?

12:33 Michael McDonald: Pollsters try as best they can. They try to forecast who is likely to vote by various methods that are not consistent across polling firms. So, this is as much as art as a science. There are a number of factors that may further affect the partisan composition of polls, such as if people are interviewed by live interviewers or automatically or whether or not cell phones are interviewed.

12:34 [Comment From Katy Steinmetz: ] When Republican pundits like Karl Rove predict gains of 60 or so seats in the House, does that help or hurt them (in terms of making Republicans complacent and driving Democrats to the polls)?

12:36 Michael McDonald: One of the big questions in this election is the relative effects of enthusiasm versus voter mobilization. Republicans are hoping the enthusiasm gap will help them to victory, while Democrats are banking on their organization to GOTV. So far as I can tell, neither side has a distinct edge yet.

12:37 [Comment From Casey (DC): ] I have a question about the margin of error. Let's say candidate A has been consistently polling a point above candidate B, with a 3% margin of error. Is the fact that A has beaten B in all recent polls statistically significant, even with a margin of error? That is, wouldn't it be misleading to claim that A and B are tied (due to the margin of error) since A has been beating B consistently in the same poll, even by just a point? If they're truly tied, wouldn't we see A beating B half the time and B beating A the other half??

12:41 Michael McDonald: To quickly review, the MoE is determined by the number of respondents to a survey, and it does not linearly decline as the number of respondents increases [it declines by a factor of 1/sqrt(# of respondents)]. Suppose you have two polls with 1,000 persons each, then. You may treat them as two polls of 2,000. So, the MoE would decline, but it may not decline as much as you might think. Further, as I describe above, different pollsters use different techniques to create likely voter screens (and many other survey issues), so the polls themselves are not entirely comparable.

12:42 Michael McDonald: As a general rule, I like averaging polls and looking at trends among the same pollster. If all the polls are moving in the same direction, I tend to believe that a trend is real and not just statistical noise.

12:43 Michael McDonald: Finally (I know a long answer!): never trust a single poll. Unfortunately, the media tend to report their poll, or a surprising poll, and disregard others.

12:43 [Comment From Jazziette Devereaux (AZ): ] Do you think that early voting can prevent voters from learning facts about candidates that are presented in the feverish last two weeks of the election?

12:44 Michael McDonald: My favorite example is a John Edwards voter who was upset in 2008 that he had cast his vote before he dropped out of the race.

12:46 Michael McDonald: Early voting has certainly changed campaign dynamics. No longer can an opponent release the October surprise the last week. Their opponent gets a chance to respond. And it makes elections more expensive since campaigns need to be active throughout the entire election period. So, there are pluses and minuses.

12:46 [Comment From Mark, Greenbelt: ] Is it your feeling that early voting favors one party over another generally, or is it all case-by-case?

12:48 Michael McDonald: Prior to 2008, more Republicans voted early. In 2010, more Democrats voted early. So, far more Democrats are voting early in 2008, so it may be that 2008 was a watershed election for early voting. Still, in a state-by-state basis, Republicans tend to do better among early voters in states that require an excuse to vote an absentee ballot (early voting rates are much lower, too!).

12:48 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] How do you think negative campaigning impacts turnout?

12:50 Michael McDonald: It used to be that people thought negative campaigning decreased turnout, but since then, numerous studies have shown it increases turnout. People are apt to be interested in slowing down and watching the accident on the side of the road. The media certainly enjoy covering the most negative campaigns, too.

12:50 [Comment From Malcolm, DC: ] Do you have any stats about early voting so far, and can you draw any conclusions?

12:50 Michael McDonald: They are here. So far, over 2 million people have already voted!

12:52 [Comment From Borys Ortega: ] How do you see the Obama support base (liberals, young people, etc) in terms of enthusiasm?

12:52 Seung Min Kim: And in addition to that, it seems like the White House and Democrats are doing a lot more outreach to young voters, with the MTV/BET town halls and the large rallies at universities. Do you think that will have any effect, considering young people have a low turnout rate for midterm elections?

12:53 Michael McDonald: Since we began surveying, polls consistently show that young people, minorities, the poor and uneducated tend to vote at lower rates -- perhaps the most ironic thing about this election is that the people most affected by the economic downturn are the least likely to vote.

12:55 Michael McDonald: The Democrats need to counter the Republican enthusiasm by expanding the electorate. Their strategy is to do voter mobilization targeted at the low propensity midterm voters, like the youth. We will again have to see how effective the Democrat's mobilization will be compared to the Republican's enthusiasm.

12:55 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] Has there been any correlation between the level and campaign spending (especially on advertising) and the results?

12:57 Michael McDonald: A funny statistic is that the more an incumbent spends, the worse they do. This is because they are spending to counter a threat from a viable challenger. This is why this is one of the most difficult questions to answer -- surprisingly. We do not know the marginal effect of another dollar spent because the other campaign is also spending money.

12:57 [Comment From Sally: ] There was a flap this week about Univision airing ads that seek to depress Hispanic voter turnout. How common is that practice?

12:59 Michael McDonald: Voter suppression targeted at minorities has a long and ignoble history in American politics. Generally, I think everyone should vote since democracy works best when its citizens are engaged. This particular episode may ultimately backfire since it may rile up Nevada Latinos in a campaign that has had many racial overtones.

1:00 [Comment From Drew C.: ] What's your evaluation of early vote-by-mail, vs. in-person voting? Are both being done well?

1:00 Michael McDonald: In 2008, approximately 500,000 mail ballots were rejected. These were people who thought they voted by their vote did not count.

1:02 Michael McDonald: Why does this happen? People do not follow the procedures properly -- the return the ballot in the wrong envelope, they do not sign the envelope, etc. I do like California's method of allowing voters to drop their ballots off on election day at their polling places. This allows poll workers to check that the voter followed procedures.

1:03 Michael McDonald: An advantage of in-person early voting is that these problems do not occur, and their is a chance for a voter and election administrators to fix any problems, such as a first time voter forgetting to bring mandatory ID.

1:03 [Comment From Nick, DC: ] Along the lines of what Sally was asking about, we hear a lot about voter suppression, and we also hear a lot about alleged voter fraud. Are either of them really very common? And are voting machines more subject to tampering than the old paper ballots?

1:05 Michael McDonald: Vote fraud -- someone actually intentionally casting an illegal vote -- is extremely rare. When it happens, it tend to happen among mail ballots. Although there are potentially security flaws with electronic machines, there is little evidence of tampering (of course, that may be because there is no way to check!).

1:06 [Comment From Peter G.: ] If you could make one voting reform nationwide to make the system work better, what would it be?

1:08 Michael McDonald: Universal voter registration. There is plenty of evidence that our system of requiring voters to register themselves does not work well. Just about every other advanced democracy registers their own voters. In states with Election Day registration, turnout is much higher (5 to 7 percentage points). So, not only would we increase turnout, but we would get third party organizations like the now-defunct ACORN our of the business of registering voters.

1:09 [Comment From Ben Griffiths: ] You said incumbents fare worse when they spend more. is the same true of challengers? I'm thinking this year of Sharron Angle's $14 million in Nevada. Is it even possible to spend that much in the time left?

1:10 Michael McDonald: The spending in Nevada is tremendous. Despite that likely about half the voters will have already voted by Election Day -- Nevada is a high turnout state -- I think the campaigns will continue spending to the end since the election appears to be going down to the wire.

1:11 Michael McDonald: As for your first question, there is a point where a challenger spends enough money to become viable, which triggers a response in spending from an incumbent.

1:11 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] Is overall turnout higher in states that allow early voting?

1:13 Michael McDonald: I testified to the U.S. Senate that I believe the answer is yes, though the turnout effects are a modest one to two points in presidential elections. There are studies that find big turnout increases in non-presidential elections. Indeed, the very first usage of all-mail ballot elections was in local jurisdictions that needed to meet threshold turnout rates to pass local bond measures.

1:13 [Comment From Nancy: ] Which party gets the early bragging rights?

1:14 Michael McDonald: So far, Democrats have jack rabbited out of the starting line in most states where we have a clue of which party's registrants are voting early. Nevada is an interesting departure, where Democrats have a lead, but it is not as great as 2008.

1:14 [Comment From Carson P.: ] One of your Brookings colleagues - Bill Galston - has proposed the idea of mandatory voting, like they do in Australia. Could that work here? Is it a good idea?

1:15 Michael McDonald: Good luck trying to convince Americans that they will be fined if they do not vote. I do not think this is practical for the U.S., though it obviously increases turnout.

1:15 [Comment From Don: ] What are the prospects for Lisa Murkowski come election day? Do you think she has a realistic shot at beating Joe Miler?

1:16 Michael McDonald: The polls are close. I think it is anyone's game in Alaska. In fact, I wrote an op-ed with my co-author Seth McKee, which was published at Politico today.

1:16 [Comment From Greg Dworkin: ] Thanks for all your hard work on this! How 'institutionalized' do you see the early vote by the parties? are they incorporating early voting as part of GOTV or are they behind in realizing so many people vote early these days?

1:19 Michael McDonald: As I document with another co-author -- Tom Schaller -- the Democrats created a strong early voting GOTV organization in 2008, and Republicans only belatedly tried to mobilize their voters to vote early. We will have to see how well Democrats will roll over this organization to 2010. Eventually, I believe the Republicans will have to build as strong as an organization. Early voting allows a party to mobilize over a longer period of time.

1:19 [Comment From Mary H. Hager, PhD: ] Please clarify polling methodology. Who is reached; who is not. The role of technology (email, telephonic, etc.) in defining the subpopulation for polling data.

1:20 Michael McDonald: That is quite a tall order for a chat :) We discuss many of these issues on Pollster -- which now has a home in the politics section of Huffington Post (I also blog at Pollster).

1:21 [Comment From Don (Ossning, NY): ] Does Christine O'Donnell have a chance in Delaware?

1:21 Michael McDonald: No.

1:21 [Comment From Geoffrey V.: ] Over the years, I've gotten the sense that campaigns are moving faster, that there are more undecided voters and that many voters don't make up their minds until the last minute. Is that supported by the data?

1:23 Michael McDonald: Well, given the tremendous increase of early voting from 20% in 2004 to 30% in 2008, it appears that many voters are making up their minds sooner, not later. Still, in a midterm election, the rule has generally been that people tend to hold their ballots longer because they do not have as much information about the candidates. It appears that this election may break that previous pattern.

1:23 [Comment From Joan: ] Do you think compromise will come back to Congress after the midterms?

1:24 Michael McDonald: No. Historically, we still have a ways to go before we reach the highest levels of polarization in our politics observed in the late 19th century.

1:24 [Comment From Al Amundson, ND: ] It seems sometimes that pollsters are "surprised" by wins. Polling is so scientific these days, and there's so much money behind it -- how often does a real surprise actually occur?

1:25 Michael McDonald: Surprises more often occur in primary elections, where the electorate is difficult to predict and information is fluid. I do not expect we will be greatly surprised by the 2010 election outcomes.

1:25 [Comment From Rosemarie (NH): ] Do you think that even with early voting, people just want to get it over with, go in to vote and make up their minds while they read the ballot?

1:27 Michael McDonald: Want the campaigns to stop bugging you? Vote early if you can. Election officials track who has a mail ballot in hand and who has voted, and they share this information with the campaigns.

1:27 [Comment From Bert C.: ] How is Sharron Angle still holding on in Nevada even after her numerous public gaffes?

1:27 Michael McDonald: The economic crisis has hit Nevada VERY hard (and I don't often write in caps!).

1:28 [Comment From Peggy: ] What role do you think the Tea Party will play in future elections? Is this a one-off movement or something more serious in American politics?

1:30 Michael McDonald: Shameless plug: see my Politico op-ed. A conservative/populist movement is nothing new to American politics. At least in the short run, I expect the tea party to continue to be influential, especially if Republicans take the House -- I do not expect they will take the Senate as of today. Victories will further embolden the activists.

1:31 Michael McDonald: Thanks to everyone for your questions. Sorry I could not answer them all!

1:31 Seung Min Kim: And that's it for today. Thanks for all the great questions as we count down the days until Election Day. And thanks to Michael for his insightful answers!

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s write-in candidacy for reelection makes her the latest to join a growing number of prominent politicians who have shed political affiliations in the hopes of winning public office.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is running as an independent for the Senate, former Sen. Lincoln Chafee is running as an independent for Rhode Island governor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg became an independent to run New York City, and, of course, Sen. Joe Lieberman lost the 2006 Democratic Senate primary — but won in the general as an independent.

The trend of moderate independent candidates who have forsworn party affiliations is not new to U.S. politics. Since the Civil War, when the modern Republican Party was established to compete against the Democratic Party, minor party or unaffiliated candidates have won election to the House or Senate a total of 697 times. Of these, 89 percent of elected minor party candidates had voting records ideologically between the two major parties.

Despite the recent polarization of U.S. politics, history tells us that moderates make winners. Consider the Wisconsin Progressive Party. Its development has a familiar ring to today’s politics. Extremist elements flourished in the Republican Party during the Great Depression, growing out of our nation’s economic anxieties. GOP moderates responded by creating this Wisconsin group, focused on issues of reform and pragmatic governance.

It started when Wisconsin Gov. Philip La Follette ran for reelection in 1932 as the GOP nominee. He was heckled throughout his speeches by Republican ‘Stalwarts’ on his political right. They “had their Phil” and were angered by his policies of perceived higher taxes to support government spending. La Follette lost the Republican primary to Stalwart-backed Walter Kohler amid then-record turnout. Kohler lost to the Democrat in the general election.

La Follette is a famous political name. Gov. Philip La Follette and Sen. Robert La Follette Jr. were sons of the leading GOP politician, Sen. Robert La Follette Sr. Republican progressives had supported him for the party’s presidential nomination in 1912 and 1916. He eventually ran for president in 1924 — on his own Independent Progressive Party ticket. But while the father’s exploits are well-known, his sons’ reactions to Wisconsin’s political climate are more relevant to today’s politics.

Frustrated by the GOP extremists, the La Follette brothers created the Wisconsin Progressive Party, and they ran as party candidates when successfully elected governor and senator in 1934. Today’s independent candidates share a similar frustration with the ideological purists on their right and left. The extremists in the Democratic and Republican primary electorates are rejecting centrist candidates who might be better positioned to win general elections.

Consider the words of Crist when he declared his Independent candidacy. “If you want somebody on the right or you want somebody on the left,” Crist said, “you have the former speaker, Rubio, or the congressman, Meek. If you want somebody who has common sense, who puts the will of the people first, who wants to fight for the people first, now you've got Charlie Crist. You have a choice.”

With all the attention paid to the successes of Tea Party activists during the GOP primaries, it is easy to forget that these are not like general elections. Primary voters tend to be more ideologically extreme. So these Republican primary voters may end up denying the party several general election victories.

For example, many political observers agree that Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.), a moderate, would have been a stronger candidate for Senate than the GOP primary victor, Christine O’Donnell, his tea party-backed opponent. General elections have traditionally been won in the center -- where most voters still reside.

Minor party successes usually arise when the two major political parties become ideologically polarized. Moderates can usually find a seat under a big tent, but when party activists are unable to tolerate dissent, moderates are shut out and left to their own devices. So it isn’t surprising that strong candidates holding moderate positions realize they are electorally viable by abandoning their party and appealing to the center in general elections.

History tells us that conditions now are favorable for moderates like Chafee, Crist, Lieberman, and Murkowski. They step into a political vacuum at the center that the major parties created by moving to the political extremes. With room left for further polarization, this may be just the beginning of the rise of moderate independent candidates.

History also tells us the political party that first figures out how to recapture the middle -- and bring these candidates and their supporters into the fold -- is the one most likely to emerge as dominant.

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The drawing of legislative district boundaries is among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democratic governance. All too often, formal redistricting authorities maintain their control by imposing high barriers to transparency and to public participation in the process. Reform advocates believe that opening that process to the public could lead to different outcomes and better representation.

On January 20, Brookings hosted a briefing to review how redistricting in the 50 states will unfold in the months ahead and present a number of state-based initiatives designed to increase transparency and public participation in redistricting. Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellows Micah Altman and Michael McDonald unveiled open source mapping software which enables users to create and submit their own plans, based on current census and historical election data, to redistricting authorities and to disseminate them widely. Such alternative public maps could offer viable input to the formal redistricting process.

After each presentation, participants took audience questions.

Learn more about Michael McDonald's Public Mapping Project »

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• Injecting Transparency into Redistricting
• GOP Could Re-Draw 145 Districts
• Towards a New Political Culture
• Coalitions Pushing for Greater Transparency
• The Public Mapping Project

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• Toward Public Participation in Redistricting
• Toward Public Participation in Redistricting
• Toward Public Participation in Redistricting

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• Download Micah Altman's and Michael McDonald's Presentation (.pdf)
• Download Tim Storey's Presentation (.pdf)
• Download Clare Dyer's Presentation (.pdf)
• Download the Redistricting Authority in the States Factsheet (.pdf)
• Download Micah Altman's and Michael McDonald's Report (.pdf)
• Download the District Builder Summary (.pdf)

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Now that the 2010 Census is concluded, states will begin the process of reapportionment—re-drawing voting district lines to account for population shifts. Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael McDonald says redistricting has been fraught with controversy and corruption since the nation’s early days, when the first “gerrymandered” district was drawn. Two states—Arizona and California—have instituted redistricting commissions intended to insulate the process from political shenanigans, but politicians everywhere will continue to work the system to gain electoral advantage and the best chance of re-election for themselves and their parties.

Subscribe to audio and video podcasts of Brookings events and policy research »

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• States Attempt to Reform Redistricting

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• @ Brookings Podcast: The Politics and Process of Congressional Redistricting

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Full video archive of this event is also available via C-SPAN here.

The drawing of legislative district boundaries is arguably among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democracy. Every ten years redistricting authorities, usually state legislatures, redraw congressional and legislative lines in accordance with Census reapportionment and population shifts within states. Most state redistricting authorities are in the midst of their redistricting process, while others have already finished redrawing their state and congressional boundaries. A number of initiatives—from public mapping competitions to independent shadow commissions—have been launched to open up the process to the public during this round of redrawing district lines.

On July 18, Brookings hosted a panel of experts to review the results coming in from the states and discuss how the rest of the process is likely to unfold. Panelists focused on evidence of partisan or bipartisan gerrymandering, the outcome of transparency and public mapping initiatives, and minority redistricting.

After the panel discussion, participants took audience questions.

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• Full Event Video Archive

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• A Status Report on Congressional Redistricting

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Thousands of Americans are already casting their votes in the 2012 elections through a variety of vote-by-mail and in-person balloting that allows citizens to cast their votes well in advance of November 6. From military personnel posted overseas to absentee voters, these early voting opportunities give voters the opportunity to make their voices heard even when they can’t stand in line on Election Day. However, there are pitfalls in the process.

Expert Michael McDonald says that while a great deal of attention has been focused on voter fraud, the untold story is that during the last presidential election, some 400,000 absentee ballots were discarded as improperly submitted. How can early voters make sure their voices are heard? What effect will absentee and other early voting programs have in this election year? On September 26, McDonald took your questions and comments in a live web chat moderated by Vivyan Tran of POLITICO.

12:30 Vivyan Tran: Welcome everyone, let's get started.

12:30 Michael McDonald: Early voting was 30% of all votes cast in the 2008 election. My expectation is that 35% of all votes in 2012 will be cast prior to Election Day. In some states, the volume will be much higher. In the battleground state of CO, about 85% of the votes will be cast early; 70% in FL; and 45% in Ohio.

What does it all mean? Hopefully I will be able to answer that question in today's chat!

12:30 Comment from JMC: At what point do you think that the in person early voters become less partisan types eager to cast their vote and more "regular folks" who would be more swayed by debate performances, TV ads, and the like?

12:30 Comment from Jason: 400,000 absentee ballots were discarded in 2008? How?

12:30 Michael McDonald: Reasons why election officials reject mail ballots: unsigned, envelope not sealed, multiple ballots in one envelope, etc. 400K rejected in 2008 does not include the higher rate of spoiled ballots that typically occur with paper mail ballots compared to electronic recording devices used in polling places. Moral: make sure you follow closely the proper procedures to cast your mail ballot!

12:31 Michael McDonald: @JMC: If they are going to vote early, most people wait until the week prior to the election. Those voting now have already made up their minds. But, the polls indicate many people have already done so, so maybe we see more early voting in 2012 as a consequence.

12:31 Comment from User: It was my understanding that absentee ballots are never counted unless the race is incredibly close in a particular state? Is that true - or do the rules for that vary by state?

12:32 Michael McDonald: No, all early votes are counted. What may not be counted, depending on state law and if the election is close enough for them to matter, are provisional ballots.

12:33 Comment from Damion: The blurb here says 400,000 early votes were discarded. Shouldn't the board of elections be reprimanded for that? Who was at fault and what consequences were there?

12:33: Michael McDonald: No, these are ballots "discarded" because people did not follow proper procedures and they must be rejected by law.

12:33 Comment from Shirley: Can you Facebook your vote in?

12:34 Michael McDonald: No. However, election officials are transmitting ballots electronically to overseas citizens and military voters. Voters must print the ballot, fill it out, sign it, scan it, and return. There are ways for these voters to verify that their ballot was received.

12:35 Comment from Karen K: What kind of impact could these discards have on the 2012 election?

12:36 Michael McDonald: Difficult to say. More Republicans vote by mail (excluding all mail ballot states). But, we don't know much about those who fail to follow the procedures. They might be less educated or elderly, and thus might counter the overall trend we see in mail balloting. Who knows?

12:37 Comment from User: This is the first I've heard of so many early votes getting discarded. Is this an issue people are addressing in a serious way?

12:38 Michael McDonald: Unfortunately, we are too focused on issues like voter fraud, which are low occurrence events, when there are many more important ways in which votes are lost in the system. Hopefully we can get the message out so fewer people disenfranchise themselves.

12:39 Comment from Anonymous: What do we know so far about absentee votes for 2012? Can we tell who they're leaning toward in specific states and how?

12:40 Michael McDonald: It's a little early :) yet. One of the major changes from 2008 is that the overseas civilian ballots -- a population that leans D -- was sent ballots much earlier this year than in 2008. We'll get a much better sense of the state of play in the two weeks prior to the election.

12:41 Michael McDonald: That said, the number of absentee ballot requests is running about the same as in 2008, if not a little higher, suggesting that the early vote will indeed be higher than in 2008, and perhaps that overall turnout will be on par with 2008, too.

12:41 Comment from Leslie: So, how can I ensure my early ballot is counted? There are so many rules and regulations, I'm never sure I've brought/filled out the paperwork.

12:42 Michael McDonald: Many states and localities allow people to check on-line the status of their ballot. Do a search for your local election official's webpage to see if that is available to you.

12:42 Comment from Daryyl: Can you define provisional ballots then?

12:44 Michael McDonald: Provisional ballots are required under federal law to allow people to vote if there is a problem with their voter registration. Election officials work after the election to resolve the situation.

If you vote in-person early, then you can resolve provisional ballot situations much sooner, which is good.

12:45 Michael McDonald: Some states use provisional ballots for other purposes: e.g., for a person who does not have the required id or to manage a change in voter registration address. One of the untold stories of this cycle is that FL will manage change of reg. address through provisional ballots. OH does so, and 200K provisionals were cast in 2008. Expect 300K in FL, which may mean we will not know the outcome in FL until weeks after the election. Can you say 2000?

12:45 Comment from Mark, Greenbelt: Is early voting a new phenomenon, or is it increasing? It seems we should make it easier for people to vote when they can.

12:46 Michael McDonald: We are seeing more people vote early, particularly in states that offer the option. However, only MD changed its law from 2008 to allow in-person early voting. OH is sending absentee ballot requests to all registered voters, which is not a change in law, but a change in procedure that is expected to significantly increase early voting there.

12:47 Comment from Jennifer S. : Why do we vote on Tuesday? It seems inconvenient. Wouldn't more people vote if we did it on the weekend? Or over a period of days that offered both morning and evening hours?

12:48 Michael McDonald: We used to have early voting in the US! Back at the Founding, elections were held over several days to allow people living in remote areas to get to the courthouse (the polling place back in the day) to vote. In the mid-1840s, the federal gov't set the current single day for voting because -- what else? -- claims of vote fraud. That people could vote more than once.

12:49 Comment from Winston: What percentage of the U.S. population votes? And, if you could make one change that would increase voting in the U.S. what would be?

12:50 Michael McDonald: I also calculate turnout rates for the country for the media and academics. 62.2% of the eligible voters cast a ballot that counted in 2008. If I were to wave a magic wand, I would have election day registration. California just adopted it yesterday (but starting 2015). States with EDR have +5-7 percentage points of turnout.

12:50 Comment from Bernie S.: One of your colleagues at Brookings, Bill Galston, has suggested that we make voting mandatory, as they do in Australia. What do you think of that idea? Is it even possible here?

12:51 Michael McDonald: That will never happen in a county that values individual freedom so deeply as the US. Fun fact: a few years back, AZ voters rejected a ballot initiative to have voters entered into a lottery.

12:51 Comment from James: If early voting becomes more and more common, shouldn't candidates start campaigning earlier?

12:53 Michael McDonald: They do. In fact, you will see the presidential candidates visit battleground states that have in-person early voting at the start of the period. In 2008, you could see how early voting increased in places where Obama held rallies.

12:53 Comment from Devi P. : What are the factors that drive turnout? How do we get people to the polls? And what can you say about the "microtargeting" strategies the political parties are using to get their voters out?

12:54 Michael McDonald: One of the major ways in which elections have changed in the past decade is that campaigns now place more effort into voter contacts. Over 50% of people reported a contact in 2008. These contacts are known to increase turnout rates by upwards of 10 percentage points. Even contacts from Facebook friends seems to matter!

12:54 Comment from Wendy P, Ohio: What's your position on electronic voting? Can't every voting machine be hacked? Isn't plain old paper balloting more secure?

12:56 Michael McDonald: I went to Caltech, so I am sensitive to the potential for hacking. That said, I encourage experimentation so that we can build a better system. There are counties that do hold electronic elections!

12:56 Comment from Leslie: 400,000 seems like a lot - does this actually have impact on the electoral votes, and if so, should we be worried in this coming election that a lengthy recall may occur?

12:57 Michael McDonald: It could affect the outcome. So please spread the word through your networks. This is the #1 way in which votes are lost in the system!

12:57 Comment from JVotes: Perhaps we should microtarget with ballot issues. Many Americans seem disappointed with the two candidates we have to choose from.

12:58 Michael McDonald: Actually, ballot issues are known to increase turnout. But only a small amount in a presidential election, about 1 percentage point. People vote in the main show: the presidential election.

12:58 Michael McDonald: Interesting aside on that: early voting seems to have a small turnout effect in presidential election, but a larger effect in state and local elections.

12:58 Comment from Jaime Ravenet: Is there a reading of the new voter ID requirements (in at least the 9 most contested states) that does not constitute an "abridgment" of citizens' voting rights?

1:00 Michael McDonald: Perhaps under state constitutions. But the US Supreme Court has already ruled in favor of Indiana's id law. Still, that does not mean that lawyers will try to find some way under federal law to overturn them. TX was blocked because their law was determined to be discriminatory, per Sec. 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

1:00 Vivyan Tran: Thanks for the questions everyone, see you next week!

Analysis of dozens of publicly created redistricting plans shows that map-making technology can improve political representation and detect a gerrymander.  In 2012, President Obama won the vote in Ohio by three percentage points, while Republicans held a 13-to-5 majority in Ohio’s delegation to the U.S. House. After redistricting in 2013, Republicans held 12 of Ohio’s House seats while Democrats held four. As is typical in these races, few were competitive; the average margin of victory was 32 points. Is this simply a result of demography, the need to create a majority-minority district, and the constraints traditional redistricting principles impose on election lines—or did the legislature intend to create a gerrymander?

Crowd-Sourced Redistricting Maps

In the Ohio elections, we have a new source of information that opens a window into the legislature’s choice: Large numbers of publicly created redistricting plans.

During the last round of redistricting, across the country thousands of people in over a dozen states created hundreds of legal redistricting plans. Advances in information technology and the engagement of grassroots reform groups made these changes possible. To promote these efforts we created the DistrictBuilder open redistricting platform and many of these groups used this tool to create their plans.

Over the last several years, we have used the trove of information produced by public redistricting to gain insight into the politics of representation. In previous work that analyzed public redistricting in Virginia^[1], and in Florida^[2], we discovered that members of the public are capable of creating legal redistricting plans that outperform those maps created by legislatures in a number of ways.

Public redistricting in Ohio shows something new—the likely motives of the legislature. This can be seen through using information visualization methods to show the ways in which redistricting goals can be balanced (or traded-off) in Ohio , revealing the particular trade-offs made by the legislature.

The figure below, from our new research paper^[3], shows 21 plots—each of which compares legislative and publicly-created plans using a pair of scores—altogether covering seven different traditional and representational criteria. A tiny ‘A’ shows the adopted plan. The top-right corner of each mini-plot shows the best theoretically possible score. When examined by itself, the legislative plan meets a few criteria: it minimizes population deviation, creates an expected majority-minority seat, and creates a substantial majority of districts that would theoretically be competitive in an open-seat race in which the statewide vote was evenly split.

Figure 1: Pairwise Congressional Score Comparisons (Scatterplots) - Standardized Scores

In previous rounds of redistricting, empirical analysis would stop here—unless experts were called in to draw alternative plans in litigation. However, the large number of public plans now available allows us to see other options, plans the legislature could readily have created had it desired to do so. Comparison of the adopted plans and public plans reveal the weakness of the legislature’s choice. Members of the public were able to find plans that soundly beat the legislative plan on almost every pair of criteria, including competitive districts.

So why was the adopted plan chosen? Information visualization can help here, as well, but we need to add another criterion—partisan advantage:

Pareto Frontier: Standard Criteria vs. Democratic Surplus

When we visualize the number of expected Democratic seats that was likely to result from each plan, and compare this to the other score, we can see that the adopted plan is the best at something— producing Republican seats.

Was Ohio gerrymandered? Applying our proposed gerrymandering detection method, the adopted plans stands in high contrast to the public sample of plans, even if the overall competition scoring formula is slightly biased towards the Democrats, as strongly biased towards the Republicans on any measure of partisan fairness. Moreover analyzing the tradeoffs among redistricting criteria illuminate empirically demonstrates what is often suspected, but is typically impossible to demonstrate—that had the legislature desired to improve any good-government criterion—it could have done so, simply by sacrificing some partisan advantage. In light of this new body of evidence, the political intent of the legislature is clearly displayed.

However, when politics and technology mix, beware of Kranzberg’s first law: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”^[4] Indeed there is an unexpected and hopeful lesson on reform revealed by the public participation that was enabled by new technology. The public plans show that, in Ohio, it is possible to improve the expected competitiveness, and to improve compliance with traditional districting principles such as county integrity, without threatening majority-minority districts simply by reducing partisan advantage—this is a tradeoff we should gladly accept.