Stidmatt's Views: December 2017

Monday, December 18, 2017

DuPont AMTRAK Cascades Train crash

This morning in my home state of Washington, an AMTRAK Cascades train crashed on the new line between DuPont and Olympia. This is a route I frequently take to get between my home of Bellingham and Olympia, where my parents live.

This lies on the most important rail route in the Northwest, and one of the most important in the country. 6.3 million people live on the AMTRAK Cascades route, a not insignificant sum, and we are growing quickly. We need to have alternatives to driving and flying in this part of the country, and AMTRAK offers us the ability to do this.

Every day, there are over 300 AMTRAK trains making their normal routes every day in the United States, or about 110,000 per year. This is the 2nd accident this year on AMTRAK. 99.9982% of AMTRAK trains this year have gone without incident.

It is important to understand also how this happened. First of all, the section of track is between two tight bends as the new track crosses I-5. The speed limit here is 64 km/hr, but the train was going 130 km/hr. This is why the train crash occurred. As a consequence of a windy section, this means the train cannot go even at highway speed until it is past the second bend, but the conductor on this train did not follow the rules.

This was absolutely avoidable. Positive Train Control is a method which monitors a train's speed and automatically slows a train down when it goes through a dangerous section, to avoid driver error. On the vast majority of train rides, 99.999% this year, trains have successfully avoided this type of accident by the conductor slowing the train down on their own accord, and there is no problem. However, in this particular situation the conductor didn't, which is why we saw a disaster on the first higher-speed trip in Washington State history.

We need to keep higher-speed rail in my home state, and use this to implement and require Positive Train Control nationwide to prevent future accidents. These are extremely rare, and thousands of Americans over the next week are going to use AMTRAK to go to their family for Christmas, and they should. This accident is notable because it is rare.

Don't let one accident by one fool damn an entire region to traffic.

Sunday, December 3, 2017

The Most American Candidate, part 2, 2017 edition

If we were to design a candidate who could speak to the majority of Americans today, an interesting intellectual exercise could determine the political positions of a presidential candidate who could win their first election with ease. This candidate would not be a centrist but would adopt policy positions which the majority of Americans agree with. These are based on the most recent poll on the issues I can find.

Here is the platform:
Social:

Employers must provide health insurance which covers birth control regardless of personal beliefs. Pew
Transgender people should be required to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with. Pew
Homosexual behavior, Same-Sex Marriage, abortion, and condoms are all appropriate. Pew
Partisan Gerrymandering should be restricted. 71% of Americans agree

Economics

Implement a $15 minimum wage. Pew
We should increase spending for veterans benefits, education, and health care, we shouldn't reduce spending on anything. Pew
The rich do not pay their fair share, and should see an increase in their tax rates. Pew
Light Rail is essential to the building of a modern city. SJSU
Global Warming is real and we need policies to reverse it. People say this in every single state. NY Times

Foreign

ISIS is a major concern. Pew

This is a winning platform. What is most striking about this is that it is not "moderate", halfway between Democrats and Republicans. In fact, most Americans agree with several of the core policies of the Democratic Party and none of the policies of the Republican Party.

This says a few things,

The Republican Party is in danger if it is to survive as a party, with its main positions being unpopular when polled.
The Democratic Party needs to focus not on moving to the center (which is the effect of Median Voter Theorem) but to increase turnout among its natural voter base, which involves the majority of Americans.

The Democratic Strategy for 2018 needs to be to fight in every single district for every legislative and congressional seat. A winning candidate is going to be clear about their values and represent the majority of people, falling neatly in the progressive camp.

I do not know how many progressives are going to win next year, hopefully many. But if candidates stay reasonable, science focused, and honest to their values, they can win elections nationwide. The particular emphasis candidates have on their campaigns will change, but I do believe that with Congress sitting at 13% right now, Trump sitting at 40% approval, and both parties having less than 50% approval, our country needs some major political changes.

We have seen multiple elections in my life time where the Democratic Party running on the values most Americans share will win the majority of the vote, but still lose the House and Presidency. It is not because Americans are not voting or caring, its because we have a rigged election system. Gerrymandering combined with first past the post for the House and the Electoral College prevent us from having policies which the majority of us want.

This is where ranked voting comes in. We need to fight from the grassroots to help break the two party system. We need new voices which represent Americans accurately and have more incentives to be bold, or be forced to leave. Neither the Green Party or Libertarian Party fill this role. We need more candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren running for office nationwide. We need people like Kamala Harris and Martin O'Malley to rise as high as they can go, and we need these people in local politics right now.

Breaking the partisan duopoly will offer candidates the ability to be more true to their values and more responsive to voters. Ending single member districts and first past the post will allow more voices to be heard nationally, which will be a more healthy politic. Ending the presidential primary system and electing the President using IRV is the eventual goal.

I have been thinking about this issue for years (as this blog shows), and the only way I can see to break the partisan duopoly is to reform our entire election system. Getting money out of politics is more tricky because you have to be clear about the relationship between money and speech, but changing our election system is relatively easy. Washington State has already done it, though top two primaries do not allow third parties to have a real chance to form, neither does it guarantee results which represents the views of the majority. The top two primary in Seattle this year and Attorney General's race last year have made that abundantly obvious. It has not broken the toxic two party system in our state because it can't.

This is how we are going to get the most American candidate who represents the people elected. Right now it is clear to me that candidates who follow this message precisely still don't necessarily win because people have to be strategic about their voting, especially in crowded elections.

Some will say this is impossible to do, but I refer those people to the 12th amendment which radically changed how the Electoral College works. Most Americans do not remember this today, but before 1913 Senators were not elected by the people but appointed by State Legislatures. The 17th Amendment changed this completely, making the Senators directly elected by the people. Let us not also forget that Slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person in the House of Representatives until the 13th amendment. The Senate is directly elected by the people, The Electoral College works differently, the calculation method for how many representatives each states gets in the House of Representatives has changed as well. None of our original election system survives today.

Abolishing the Electoral College is no more radical than directly voting for Senators. We have already completely eliminated one indirect election method our government.

Ranked voting is a far simpler system to understand than what is written in the 12th amendment today.

Having multiple representatives in a district has historical precedence. We once had them in my home, Washington State.

For those places which require districting due to their size (looking at you, California) we should use algorithmic districting to prevent Gerrymandering. The Shortest splitline method combined with STV would be an unhackable system.

We need to do this work now, and then we can get the candidates we deserve, and the politics which the vast majority of Americans desire.

Together, we can do this.

Please get connected with Fairvote today. We deserve better elections.

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Swing States

A series of maps to illustrate swing states, defined as states which have not voted for the same party for the preceding 4 Presidential elections.