Some NDAA Amendments

Here are some of the NDAA amendments. I will get back to the rest of them shortly.

This amendment would prohibit the Department of Defense from entering new biofuels contracts while sequestration remains law. If sequestration expires or is repealed, current law would be amended to require the Department of Defense to include calculations of any financial contributions from any other federal agencies. Under the Obama administration, the Department of Defense began a new policy to increase the use of biofuels. Since 2000, the Air Force had been leading the lead role in Department of Defense efforts for biofuels. The Air Force was supposed to be prepared by 2016 to acquire alternative biofuel that would equal 50% of its domestic requirements for aviation fuel. According to a 2011 Rand Corporation report, there is not a direct military benefit to switching to biofuels. The Heritage foundation was quick to point that out in their dismissal of using biofuels in the military. However, the Rand Corporation also pointed out that there were indirect benefits. I will quote them at length:

“If the Department of Defense were to encourage early production experience, government decisionmakers, technology developers, and investors would obtain important information about the technical, financial, and environmental performance of various alternative fuel options. If favorable, that information could lead to a commercial alternative-fuels industry producing strategically significant amounts of fuel in the United States. Once established, a large, commercially competitive alternative fuel industry in the United States and abroad would weaken the ability of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to assert its cartel power. Lower world oil prices would yield economic benefits to all fuel users—civilian and military alike. Lower prices would also decrease the incomes of “rogue” oil producers, and thereby likely decrease financial support to large terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hizballah.”

Heritage points out that the Department of Defense tries to mitigate the risk of cartel power and from getting oil from enemies, by saying that they receive oil from a number of different countries. Practicality is the driving factor, the Department of Defense tries to purchase fuel from the closest geographic location to where it is needed to help limit the risks. If the biofuels are needed to be produced domestically, there is some salience to the argument Heritage makes about the biofuels negatively impacting the military.

For those representing more rural areas or areas where they could grow more crops or agriculture for use in biofuels, it might make more sense to advocate for biofuels and more contracts from the Department of Defense. As the Rand corporation points out and I quote above, the military using more biofuels would be able to create more biofuel resources and a bigger biofuel economy which would be immensely positive to the economies of those communities. It is probably using this logic where Don Bacon came up with the idea to vote against the Conaway amendment. He joined 39 other Republicans in opposing the amendment. Nearly all Democrats who voted on the amendment voted against it. It failed 225-198.

Recommended vote: No

The Polis Amendment

Rep. Polis’s amendment was to reduce the Department of Defense’s budget by 1%. The amendment would exclude military, reserve, and National Guard personnel. It would also exclude the Defense Health Program account. While a lot of people like to say that there are “no sacred cows” when it comes to reducing the debt and deficit, there are very few members of Congress who do actually vote to reduce the spending for the Defense Department. Of course, the point of this NDAA was to greatly increase the spending for the military. The Polis Amendment would have done quite a bit to dismantle the other actions of the NDAA. Voting in favor of the Polis amendment, one that had no chance of passing, invited a number of criticisms of not supporting the troops. There were 4 Republicans who voted in favor of the amendment, there were 69 Democrats who voted in favor.

Recommended vote: Aye

The Nadler Amendment

The Nadler Amendment would strike a section from the NDAA. This section prohibited the use of funds appropriated to transfer or release prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to the United States. Transferring prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to the United States and trying those they wish to prosecute, is part of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)’s steps to closing Guantanamo Bay the correct way. For many Republicans, the closure of Guantanamo Bay should not happen.

As of January 2017, 41 men were still imprisoned, according to the ACLU. 5 of those men were cleared for release by the government but are still being imprisoned. 26 of the prisoners imprisoned have not been charged with a crime but still have not been cleared for release. The vast majority of the prisoners who have been released were released by the Bush administration (73%). According to the ACLU, it costs more than $7 million/year to imprison a single detainee in Guantanamo.

There is quite a bit of a disagreement with the rates of recidivism for released Guantanamo prisoners. The New America Foundation found that of the 620 Guantanamo prisoners released abroad there were 54 who were confirmed or were suspected of engaging in militant against the US or non-US targets. The House Armed Services Committee released a report in January of 2012 that 27% were confirmed or suspected to have been engaged in terrorist or insurgent activities. They noted that five of 66 detainees who left Guantanamo between February 2009 and October 2010 are confirmed or suspected of involvement in terrorist or insurgent activities. Perhaps I will write more at a later time about the transferring of prisoners to federal prisons instead of releasing them outright. But to close Guantanamo the correct way, there should be actual trials to determine if they should be prosecuted.

This is, perhaps, not surprising then that Republicans overwhelmingly voted against this amendment but then bragged about it on social media. Despite all of the norms that have supposedly changed in politics in the past two years, it is still a popular position for conservatives to be against closing Guantanamo Bay or transferring prisoners to have their day in court and for liberals, the opposite.

Recommended vote: Aye

The Jayapal Amendment

The Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund is, according to the National Priorities Project, “a separate pot of funding operated by the Department of Defense and the State Department, in addition to their ‘base’ budgets.” This funding has very little oversight and is commonly referred to as a slush fund. In addition, the OCO fund is not subject to sequestration. It is not out of the question that lawmakers would put additional money into the OCO fund to shield it from oversight and to provide the Department of Defense with money that sequestration is not supposed to allow.

Pramila Jayapal proposed an amendment that increases to the budgets of OCO and the National Defense Budget should be matched dollar-to-dollar in non-defense discretionary budget. She highlighted money that could be spent on infrastructure projects or for research. She argued on her speech on the House floor that this money would be put to good use by providing for domestic national security. Despite widespread beliefs that infrastructure spending would be good and its high polling numbers, almost no Republicans joined Democrats in voting in favor of this amendment. The amendment was rejected 245-179.

Recommended vote: Aye

Blumenauer Amendment I

Blumenauer Amendment II

Rep. Blumenauer proposed two separate amendments to the NDAA. The first one was H. Amendment 166. This amendment would have limitations on the development of an INF range ground-launched missile system. The second was H. Amendment 170. This would provide spending limits on the Long Range Standoff weapon until a Nuclear Posture Review is submitted to Congress including an assessment of the weapon.

Results – both amendments failed. H. amendment 166: 173-249. 1 Republican voted in favor. H. amendment 170: 169-254. 2 Republicans voted in favor.

Recommended vote: No recommended vote

Aguilar Amendment

This is amendment numbered 168. This would extend the CBO cost estimate on fielding, maintaining, modernization, replacement, and life extension of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons delivery systems from covering a 10-year period to covering a 30-year period. This would provide a longer range cost estimate of the nuclear weapons. For many, whatever the cost of the nuclear weapons, it is justified for the United States to maintain our status as a nuclear superpower. The CBO cost estimates will simply be a waste of time. Even worse, if the cost estimates show that it will be cost prohibitive for certain nuclear weapons or facilities, then there might be a push for closing of these facilities or reducing nuclear weapons. There might be a large reduction in weapons or jobs. This amendment failed 188-235. 7 Republicans joined with Democrats voting in favor of the amendment.

Recommended vote: Aye

Garamendi Amendment I

Garamendi Amendment II

The first Garamendi amendment is H. Amendment 169. This amendment would modify and expand the annual report on the plan for the nuclear weapons stockpile, nuclear weapons complex, nuclear weapons delivery systems, and nuclear weapons command and control system that was called for in the 2012 NDAA. Perhaps not surprising, it failed 192-232.

The other Garamendi amendment is H. Amendment 177 which would strike section 123 from the NDAA regarding icebreaker vessels. This amendment likewise failed.

Recommended vote: No recommended votes

The Hartzler Amendment

Background

In June of 2016, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced that the ban on transgender servicemembers would be lifted. Secretary Carter said that he would tell commanders to “start with the presumption that transgender people can serve openly without impact on military readiness.” With that he also outlined that those who are transgendered and in the early process of their transition would not be allowed to enlist. An individual would have to provide documentation from a doctor showing he has been living as his new gender identity for 18 months and is free of any distress. The announcement indicated that the military would begin recruiting new transgender recruits. US military services chiefs asked for an additional 6 months to “study the issue” and complete work to help integrate new transgender recruits. Under the new guidelines, transgender soldiers would be able to serve openly and could not be discharged just for being transgender.As a bit of background, after the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell”, while gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members were allowed to serve openly but as part of the exclusions, those who had “psyschosexual disorders” could not serve openly and could be medically discharged if they were suspected of being transgender.

As we know from past experience with the implementation of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and before, servicemembers serve with those ma not conform with the straight heterosexual identification. Prior to “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the subsequent repeal, many servicemembers served (and continue to serve) in the military honorably while identifying as something other than heterosexual. This is the case with transgender servicemembers, despite the fervent beliefs of others. The Williams Institute at University of California at Los Angeles estimates that there are over 15,000 transgender individuals serving on active duty or in the Guard or Reserve forces. Perhaps more surprisingly, they estimate that over 130,000 veterans or retired from Guard or Reserve service identify as transgender. The Rand corporation estimates that there are between 1,320 – 6,630 transgender service members in the active component.

Vicky Hartzler and the talking points

Rep. Vicky Hartzler, a Republican serving the 4th Congressional District of Missouri, initially introduced and then withdrew an amendment banning transgender people from serving in the military. She specified that if the military doesn’t block the new policy from being implemented, she would reintroduce her amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. She would allow the banning of transgender people from service into law. Facing some pressure, she decided to soften the language of her amendment. Instead of calling for a ban, she instead introduced an amendment that would prohibit funding from the Department of Defense to provide medical treatment (other than mental health treatment) related to gender transition. A senior House Democratic aide told Huffington Post that Jim Mattis called Hartzler and asked her to pull the amendment.

Rep. Hartzler made two objections to having trans soldiers serve openly and be recruited. The first is that it would be too expensive. She claimed that in the first 10 years, it will cost the military $1.35 billion to cover transition-related surgeries for new servicemembers. This $1.35 billion is part of “precious taxpayer money.”

This argument that the money from taxpayers should not be used to pay for transition surgeries is one that we will revisit, again.

Her other objection is that transgender individuals are not ready to serve because of their medical condition. If “flat feet, asthma, and sleepwalking are disqualifying, so too should being transgender, because it’s a medical condition.” She concludes her parade of horribles with an idea that if transgender individuals are recruited, there would be disturbing privacy issues because you have to shower with individuals born of the opposite sex.

Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, said “I could not imagine having to share berthing or showers with somebody who was a girl and din’t have the surgery to become a man but kept the girl stuff and now she’s with a bunch of guys or vice versa.”

Somewhat forgotten in these statements is the role of transgender individuals who have already served or are currently serving.

Rep. Hunter was also against ending the ban of gay soldiers in the military. He framed the argument, then, just as he does now, around the issue of privacy. In a 1993 talk, Dr. Frank quoted Hunter as saying

Why won’t you listen to the mothers and fathers, military leaders like General Schwarzkopf and hundreds of thousands of young Americans in uniform who are begging you not to force our young Marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen into close living quarters with homosexuals?

Of course this issue never really arose.

After the ban of gay soldiers was lifted in the UK, a press official at the Ministry of Defence released that the worries of privacy and sharing showers with gay soldiers was a dud. Despite widespread threats of resignations from the military, they did not see almost anyone resign because of the lack of privacy.

The final objection that is implicit in these critiques are the idea that the military should not be involved in “social experimentation.” This, if you know your military history, is the same argument that was previously used to argue against military integration and more recently the argument used to prevent gay or lesbian soldiers from serving openly.

The financial costs

Nobody really knows where Hartzler is getting her idea of how much it will cost. Her estimation of $1.35 billion over a ten year period is also based around a cost of $130,000 per surgery. Quick math would be that there would be just over 10,000 of the gender surgeries over the course of 10 years. Her estimation is that this is basing it off of 30% of those deciding to opt for the surgeries, which would mean about 3,000 trans soldiers to be recruited/year.

The Rand Corporation which put together a study on how transgender service members would affect the military. Based on their estimations from private health insurance data, they estimate that between 29-129 service members would utilize transition related health care. They also found that about 140 service members would initiate the transition-related hormone therapy. This is compared to 278,517 service members accessing mental health services in FY 2014.

The Rand Corporation’s estimation was that the health care cost by allowing transgender soldiers would increase between $2.4 to $8.4 million annually. This would hardly affect a $6 billion in FY 2014.

Military readiness

The critique that something would affect military readiness is a tried and true strategy. During the debates prior to the implementation of “don’t ask, don’t tell” Senator Sam Nunn and Colin Powell framed their objection to homosexuals serving in the military around troop readiness. In Unfriendly Fire by Dr. Nathaniel Frank, he notes that Senator Frank Murkowski framed his objection to homosexuals serving in the military around health issues. Even after being assured of HIV and AIDS screenings, he objected based on the strain to the Veterans Administration.

The Rand Corporation also took a look at what would happen for military readiness. They concluded that less than 0.0015% of the total available labor-years would be affected. This is, in part, because less than 0.1% of the total force would seek transition-related care that “could disrupt their ability to deploy.”

The Marine Corps who previously argued against ending the gay band released a report that concluded that lifting the gay ban is “unlikely to pose any significant risk to morale, good order, discipline, or cohesion.” I am going to echo the arguments from ending the ban of gay soldiers to ending the ban on transgender soldiers. As Lawrence Korb, the assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan wrote that “telling military members that they can’t deal with open gays, that they’re not mature enough or well disciplined enough is divisive.” I believe that telling soldiers that they are not mature enough to handle transgender soldiers is likewise divisive.

In fact, we know from the past that people have served with transgender soldiers and are currently serving with them. There has been nothing to show that troop readiness is lower because of it.

The arguments that cohesion for troops will disappear have been made each time that the expansion of military service has been expanded beyond straight white males. Each time, it has been decisively been shown to be wrong. Why would we assume that this will be the time that it will finally fail? Because…that’s what people say.

Don Bacon

While the Hartzler Amendment is not overturning the decision put in place by the Pentagon under the Obama administration, the amendment trying to limit the healthcare provided to those willing to serve is a direct message to transgender soldiers that their sacrifice is not worth those of others. The reason that it is important to combat lies and misstatements is because people are being treated very differently and in a poor manner. They are being treated this way because certain people believe that they are having an adverse role in the military.

Rep. Bacon gave an interview on KFAB discussing the role of transgender soldiers. He praised Rep. Hartzler changing the scope of her amendment to not have taxpayer money pay for any “conversion surgery or anything like that.” It should be noted that conversion surgery is considered medically necessary for those who suffer from gender dysphoria. But there are more treatments than just surgery for those who suffer from gender dysphoria and there are more health related issues than just surgery. The American Medical Association, since 2008, has recognized that hormone therapy is also considered medically necessary for those who suffer from gender dysphoria. For some, gender-affirming surgery may be the only effective treatment.

He also called for respect to everyone, as he likes to do from time to time. This respect is limited to the impact that you have on taxpayers, however, and if you do something that he deems that the taxpayers do not want then that respect can be taken away. Effectively determining that some people are not worthy of being covered for health care coverage that they are entitled to through their sacrifice and willingness to serve the country is, in fact, the opposite of respect.

Rep. Bacon is concerned that a number of people would not be able to deploy because they are going through conversion therapy which does impact readiness, is his argument. Again, the Rand Corporation found that this is a miniscule number. He also then compares when he took too much painkillers and not being able to be around nuclear launch codes before deciding to reassert what the vote was about.

He could mention that transgender Americans have served openly in forward locations such as Camp Anaconda and Balad Air Base in Iraq, New Kabul Compound and Kandaha Air Base in Afghanistan, and aboard US Navy ships operating in the Persian Gulf. Currently 18 other countries, including 2 of our strongest allies in Britain and Israel, allow transgender soldiers. Certainly, Rep. Bacon understands this from his close military friendships with soldiers in Israel.

The vote was about whether US taxpayers should cover surgeries and things like that, he says. This is true. But the vote was whether or not transgender soldiers should have their care covered that they were entitled to when they signed up for military service or should they be treated like second class soldiers. And the answer for Rep. Bacon is that they should be treated like second class soldiers. By ensuring that their care is not taken care of, Rep. Bacon is effectively deciding that transgender people should not serve in the US military and retroactively degrades the service of those serving or who have previously served. Certainly, this is the conclusion of his vote, even if he refuses to state it outright. At the very least, he is discouraging those who are transgender from serving in the military. I wonder what degrades military readiness more, transgender soldiers or certainly, none at all.

The vote

Ultimately, this amendment failed. 209 Republicans voted in favor of the amendment, including Don Bacon. 24 Republicans joined all 190 Democrats in rejecting the amendment. While Bacon calls for an open discussion about the issue, perhaps he should talk to Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis regarding it.

This has been emblematic of Bacon’s tenure in office. He consistently calls for people to be “respectful” or civil while advocating and supporting policies that do anything but. While many members of Congress who are facing tough challenges in 2018 or represent moderate districts have tried to be moderating their stances so that they can get re-elected, Rep. Bacon has consistently voted the Republican leadership line. The idea, although not a hard and fast rule, is that you should represent your constituents and their ideology to get elected and re-elected. Certainly, people like Ron Johnson have shown that to be not 100% true.

Don Bacon: Pro life

When Rep. Don Bacon announced his candidacy, one of the ways he decided to attack Brad Ashford was on the issue of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Act. He released a statement regarding his support.

“I strongly support The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. I’m pro-life and I’m encouraged that Congress acted last night to help protect the unborn. Moreover, scientific evidence is overwhelming that an unborn child past 20 weeks has the ability to feel pain and the vast majority of the public believes that aborting a child at a late stage during pregnancy is flat out wrong.”

Of course, Bacon is just relying on the idea that the science is overwhelming because he is regurgitating the talking points of the National Right to Life Committee. The Journal of the American Medical Association based on a summary of the research makes the case that pain is not felt until nearly 30 weeks. But even if you accepted the National Right to Life Committee’s statement of the evidence, you would accept that pain is felt around 12-16 weeks. Most doctors that the National Right to Life quotes in their report argue against the position of the National Right to Life. For instance, Dr. Nicholas Fisk who was quoted 27 times, argued that until 24 weeks gestation, fetal pain is not possible at all. Even the argument that anesthesia is used to dull fetal pain is questioned, Dr. Mark Rosen and Dr. Scott Adzick argue that anesthesia is used to limit the dangerous movements of fetuses. The scientific evidence is not overwhelming, by any stretch of the imagination.

What is more important to many of the Republicans who support such a bill is the polling data. In a 2014, Quinnipiac University Poll, they found that 60% of respondents would support a 20 week ban. The National Right to Life Committee cited polling numbers repeatedly as to why such a bill would be passed. They found that 64% of respondents would support similar legislation.

It should be noted, that nowhere in Rep. Bacon’s statement on 20 week abortion ban does he state that life begins at conception. He argues that it is unpopular and that the fetuses feel pain after 20 weeks based on “overwhelming” scientific evidence.

Rep. Bacon also co-sponsored H.R. 681, Life at Conception Act. The Life at Conception Act would provide “equal protection under the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution for the right to life of each born and preborn human person.” The text of the bill goes further to say that human person and human being includes each member of the species at all states of life “including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.” Rand Paul who introduced similar legislation said that this would give every fetus the same right to life and is entitled legal protection. This would effectively outlaw abortion and provide a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.

In a recent poll in May of 2017 by Gallup, 79% of respondents agreed that abortions should either be always legal or sometimes legal. This is consistent with what we have seen for the last 13 years, about 80% of Americans believe abortions should be legal, at least in some cases. Over 60% of respondents, according to Quinnipiac believe that abortion should be legal in most cases. Only about 10-15% think that it should be illegal in all cases. Again, this is fairly consistent over the years. This legislation argues that abortion should always be illegal. About 70% of respondents in a Quinnipiac poll agree with the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.

Rep. Bacon cites, as part of his reasoning, the need for the 20 week abortion ban because of public polling numbers without referring to what he is thinking morally. But both him and the National Right to Life Committee run away from the polling numbers when the polls show that most Americans support Roe v. Wade.

Moreover, The Life at Conception Act does not have any exceptions for those who are rape victims, incest, or to protect the life of the mother. This legislation would effectively ask women who were raped and impregnated to bring to term the child who was the product of that rape. Or in circumstances where the mother would have a critical issue, the doctors would have to weigh which person has more of a right to live. This may delay necessary lifesaving procedures for either the mother or the child as they have to sort out the legality of their actions.

ENLIST and BRIDGE

The first day of Congress in 2017, Rep. Jeff Denham of California’s 10th District, introduced his priority legislation in the ENLIST Act. This bill is fairly simple, immigrants not lawfully present in the US can enlist in the armed services and can earn lawful permanent residency for doing so. This is assuming that the person was younger than 15 when they entered the United States. It’s a decent bill that would provide a path to legal residency for many immigrants in the United States here illegally.

Somewhat surprisingly, Rep. Don Bacon supported the bill by being a co-sponsor of the bill. There are 203 cosponsors of the bill, currently. It has widespread bipartisan support It is unlikely that it will be put up for a vote, much like it has not in the past. Rep. Denham introduces the bill fairly consistently and has been fairly moderate on immigration issues.

Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace testified before Congress “some eight, nine, or ten percent fewer immigrants wash out of our initial training programs than do those who are currently citizens.” In the ACLU’s report, “Discharged Then Discarded”, they note that this view is often repeated in other military reports. One report said “relative to citizen recruits, noncitizen recruits generally have a stronger attachment to serving the United States, which they now consider to be ‘their country’ and a better work ethic.” Noncitizen retention rates are higher than of U.S. citizens. According to the ACLU, the dropout rate for noncitizens are nearly half of that of U.S. citizens when service reaches four years.

The ACLU provides a brief history, in their report, about how noncitizens could serve in the military. In 2006, Congress limited eligibility to serve in the military to Lawful Permanent Residents. Prior to 2006, undocumented immigrants could enlist and be conscripted during wartime. Congress left a provision for the Secretary of Defense to determine if other noncitizens could serve, if it is vital to the national interest. The Department of Defense created the Military Accession Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI). This authorized a maximum of 1,500 of “legally present” noncitizens to join the military. In 2014, they expanded to included DACA individuals and came to the United States prior to the age of 16. By 2016, the cap increased from 1,500 to 5,000. Outside of MAVNI, Congress rejected efforts to expand the pool of eligible noncitizens. Despite that, other noncitizens have enlisted in the military outside of MAVNI by accident or due to “deceptive practices of military recruiters.”

Lawful permanent residents are eligible to naturalize after five years. The ACLU provides the relevant sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act. There are different requirements depending on if the noncitizen is serving during peacetime or wartime.

Peacetime naturalization

An LPR who serves in the military during peacetime can naturalize under Section 328 of the INA, if he or she served honorably in the armed forces for a period or periods aggregating one year. If separated from the service, the separation must be under honorable conditions. Both ‘Honorable’ and ‘General – Under Honorable Conditions’ discharges qualify; discharge types such as ‘Other than Honorable’ do not

US Customs and Immigration Services notes on their fact sheet about qualification for naturalization and citizenship. They write

The President signed an executive order on July 3, 2002, authorizing all noncitizens who have served honorably in the U.S. armed forces on or after Sept. 11 2001, to file for citizenship under section 329 of the INA. Section 329 also covers veterans of certain designated past wars and conflicts. The authorization related to the War on Terrorism will remain in effect until a date designated by a future presidential executive order.

USCIS has interpreted this statute to include a requirement of a separate and additional showing of “good moral character.” The ACLU and many reasonable people look at military service as its own showing of “good moral character.” The 9th Circuit, as the ACLU notes, agrees. There is not a mention of the good moral character in the statute. It would simply be easier legislatively to require that USCIS interprets the INA statute to equate military service with good moral character.

The ENLIST Act is a pretty good bill. I would like it to also codify the interpretation of the INA statute so that “good moral character” is not used to determine eligibility for either legal status or citizenship.

Bacon also co-sponsored legislation from Mike Coffman, the BRIDGE Act. The BRIDGE Act would make it possible for certain immigrants to receive “provisional protected presence” and work authorization. This protected presence and work authorization would only last, at most three years. There is not a path to citizenship for immigrants under the BRIDGE Act. To qualify for the BRIDGE Act,it is essentially the same requirements for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). From October of 2012 to October 2016, nearly 750,000 unauthorized immigrants received DACA.

The requirements for the BRIDGE Act and DACA would be that the person would have to be at least 15 years old; born after June 15, 1981; came to the US before their 16th birthday; lived continuously since June 15, 2007; been physically present since June 15, 2012; at the time of filing an application need to be in school or in a program aimed at receiving a high school diploma or passing a GED exam; have graduated; have received the GED; or be an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or U.S. Armed Forces; and not have been convicted of a felony, a significant misdemeanor, or three or more misdemeanor offenses.

This is not any type of comprehensive immigration plan nor does it provide for a path to citizenship. the bill would merely kick the can down the road for three years. Then perhaps hundreds of thousands of immigrants would feel their status in limbo under a new Presidential administration. Bacon opposes “amnesty” for those here illegally because he does not think it’s fair to those waiting to come here. His issue position from his campaign website said the following

“We need to have employer enforcement when it comes to hiring illegals. This is the root cause of our illegal immigration problem. We also need to secure our borders. It is a security disaster to have over 300,000 illegal immigrants crossing our border every year. Finally, we owe it to the 4.5 million people who are waiting to come to the United States legally to not give amnesty for citizenship to those who came here illegally.”

Rep. Bacon and others try to carve through a middle ground to give immigrants a legal status even if it is below citizenship status. I believe that in their mind, this moves undocumented immigrants out of the shadows. The problem is what happens after they are out of the shadows. In this bill, the answer is, well they’re out for three years. Without any details as to what happens after that. I’m not sure what the end goal of this type of legislation is. It’s a stopgap legislation leading to more comprehensive immigration reform.

After the Gang of Eight immigration did not advance any further in Congress due to inaction in the House of Representatives, Marco Rubio announced his newfound belief that we should address immigration in a piecemeal way. I disagree with the approach, as a matter of sound policy, but if it were to advance in such a way, the BRIDGE and ENLIST Act would provide paths forward to talk about how immigration should be fixed going forward.

At any rate, while Bacon likes to cite public support for some of his positions including some of his more prominent conservative positions, he is oddly silent about polling on a path to citizenship. About 50% of Republicans support a path to citizenship. In total about 65% of US adults support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. It seems odd to me that those who have either served in the military or are continuing with education would be excluded from a path to citizenship. It has become somewhat fashionable to make arguments in favor of naturalizing citizens is the argument based on merit. If someone is good enough, they should be able to get citizenship or at the very least legal status. I do not buy the argument on merit but I am making it to adopt the style that is being used, currently.

Repealing the estate tax

Deb Fischer and Don Bacon both co-sponsored legislation to repeal the estate tax. In an effort to make it sound more appealing, they use the language of calling the estate tax, the “death tax.” This gives Bacon and Fischer conservative credit. The estate tax is only levied on those above a certain threshold for their estate’s value, $5.45 million per person or $10.9 million per couple. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, there were 2.6 million deaths in the United States in 2013 and there were 4,700 estate tax returns filed.

Fischer and Bacon would likely argue that family farms and small businesses are unfairly attacked by the death tax. The Tax Policy Center estimated that 80 small farms and businesses will pay an estate tax in 2017. They further estimate that the total paid by these farms and businesses will be $30 million in 2017. The Congressional Budget Office noted that a family farm could lower the amount of estate tax owed by a special method of calculating the value.

According to the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities, repealing the estate tax would reduce revenues to the federal government by $270 billion over 10 years. Both Fischer and Bacon campaigned heavily on fixing the debt and deficit. They both think that this should be a top priority to fix. However, fixing it would now require an additional $27 billion per year for each of the next 10 years. While both Bacon and Fischer have endorsed and voted for spending cuts for the federal government, most of it is not enough to completely fix the budget. Even if there wasn’t a need for an additional $27 billion cut/year.

Mandatory E-Verify

E-Verify began as a pilot program as part of the Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA). It began in November of 1997 and has been extended multiple times. The electronic verification process was used to strengthen the process of employment verification that was initially used with the I-9 forms. Since 2003, E-Verify has been administered by the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (DHS/USCIS). While it is mostly a voluntary program, certain federal contractors since 2009 have to commit to use E-Verify going forward.

So what is it? Employers collect information on the employee including name, date of birth, social security number, and immigration or citizenship status. The information is sent electronically and compared to the information to the Social Security Administration (SSA) and possibly to DHS to confirm identity and employment eligibility. If the information matches what is in the SSA’s system, then the employee is eligible to work provided that the electronic image of the worker’s ID “reasonably” matches the worker’s actual ID. If there is not a match, a Tentative Nonconfirmation (TNC) notice is issued. If an employee gets a TNC, the worker has eight federal working days to contact DHS or SSA to figure out the problem. If the worker does not do so, the employee receives a Final Nonconfirmation notice (FNC) and the employer is required by law to fire the employee.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) found that 8% of employers participate in E-Verify. In FY2012, the number of E-Verify requests were over 21 million according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 52 million nonfarm hires in 2012. E-Verify currently represents a significant portion of nonfarm hires currently in the United States. The point of E-Verify is to limit the number of unauthorized workers working in the United States. Supporters of it point out that it works by being a deterrence for those applying to jobs that do not have proper authorization and that most people receiving FNC’s are, in fact, not authorized to work. It follows that a massive increase in E-Verify would be a bigger deterrent in unauthorized workers and would take those unauthorized workers out of the workforce.

In the past few years, there has been an increased push for mandatory E-Verify for all jobs and hires whether it is on the federal level or at the state level. If implemented without serious reforms, it would be a massive increase in government bureaucracy and place a significant burden on many workers who may erroneously be prevented from working.

An increase in government bureaucracy

Perhaps the most popular policy agenda item of the Republican Party is the idea that the Federal Government is much too large with too large of bureaucracies able to make decisions that affect too many of our daily lives. Currently, neither DHS nor SSA are capable to be handle such an increase in E-Verify. They would have to greatly expand their offices by hiring more employees and more training. In the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) report “Prove Yourself to Work: The 10 Big Problems with E-Verify”, they note that AARP has expressed concern about further expanding SSA’s administrative burdens. The AARP is concerned that a further expansion of the role of the SSA in E-Verify would prevent them from being able to provide timely services to beneficiaries. As our population ages and many Baby Boomers are set to retire and increase the claims for Social Security, taking employees away from helping those retirees to help administer E-Verify seems like a poor choice.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have tried to run on the idea of cutting government spending and stopping waste. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that legislation expanding to mandatory E-Verify would have a significant impact on federal spending, according to the Congressional Budget Office. To comply with the increased workload and upgraded computer systems, DHS would need to spend $454 million over the next 5 years. SSA would need to spend an additional $161 million over the first 5 years. Over the 10 years, the CBO projected that direct spending would increase by about $9 billion over a 10 year period. Further, they project that a number of unauthorized workers will leave the normal workforce, the revenues for the federal government would decrease by $39 billion over a 10 year period.

One of the things that we need to think about when we think about government policies, if we are to even consider the idea that we are fiscally conscious, is the cost of programs and whether or not it is worth it. For instance, the cost of E-Verify over the course of 10 years is about $50 billion. What can we for the cost of $5 billion/year? And is it worth the cost to run a mandatory program, especially one that would place a significant burden on businesses and a number of individuals?

A significant burden

Not surprising to anyone who has ever had to work with a data set, a small typo, a mistake, or an extra keystroke can cause information not to show up when it is supposed to. The ACLU tells the story of Jessica St. Pierre in their report. St. Pierre was a U.S. citizen who was told there was a problem with her E-Verify. She was fortunate in that she was able to visit the local SSA office. She was told that everything was correct and received a printout to that effect. The E-Verify representative at the SSA office promised that the he would call the employer. But the issue was still there. St. Pierre contacted several government offices and eventually was told to contact the E-Verify hotline. She was, again, told that the information in the system was correct. The E-Verify hotline representative promised to call the employer. St. Pierre was unable to correct the issue in the system and was fired from her job for not being authorized to work. The issue? The employer submitted her information with two spaces after her last name.

According to the USCIS, in 2012, 1 in every 400 cases submitted to E-Verify regarding a TNC determination were reversed upon appeal by the worker. The ACLU is correct to note that while it does not seem like that many people but with over 150 million workers in our country, that would be 400,000 people would have been deprived of their ability to work. While employers are not supposed to be able to take adverse action against those who contest their TNC status, some employers end up doing so. For instance, in the Westat study for the USCIS, 17.1% of employers admitted to restricting work assignments until authorization was confirmed, 15.4% reported delaying training until authorization was confirmed, and 2.5% reported reducing pay during the verification process. In one survey of immigrant workers in Arizona, a third were immediately fired after receiving a TNC violating the rules that were already in effect. Even worse, since the employee has to take the matter into his own hands to contest the TNC, a worker is often at the mercy of the employer to get time off to do so. Since the hotlines are only open from 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM and the local offices are only open during normal business hours, it is fairly difficult for a worker to do so.

Per the ACLU, “The GAO found that from April through June of 2008, the TNC rate for employees who were eventually authorized to work was approximately 20 times higher for foreign-born employees than for U.s. – born employees.” The Migration Policy Institute notes that “erroneous nonconfirmations will disproportionately affect citizens with foreign names, naturalized citizens, and legal immigrants.” So while it will disproportionately affect people in those categories, the GAO predicted that 164,000 citizens per year will receive a TNC for issues related to name changes. The erroneous thought is that it will only impact those who are unauthorized to work under the false premise that if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. But there will almost certainly be an impact on nearly every American.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce often complains about the number of rules and regulations that small businesses have to follow that bury the businesses without a way of getting out to create much needed jobs. The National Immigration Law Center points out the potential impacts on small businesses with mandatory E-Verify. An Arizona small business owner Mike Castillo stated “the program isn’t user-friendly for small business owners.” Arizona is one of the states that requires employers to use E-Verify. Castillo complained about a technical glitch that took several days to fix made it difficult for him to make a part-time hire taking time away from his core business. According to the National Immigration Law Center, only 12% of E-Verify users are small businesses, noting that many farms and small businesses do not have high-speed internet access. A Bloomberg analysis found that the use of E-Verify would have cost small businesses $2.6 billion in 2010. Bloomberg estimates that E-Verify cost small businesses currently in E-Verify $81 million. One small business in Maryland stated that it would cost $27,000 for the company to use E-Verify for one year.

The National Immigration Law Center estimates that between 50 and 75% of the U.S. agricultural labor force is made up of unauthorized workers. The National Immigration Law Center compiled testimony from Rick Roth, a farmer in Florida who said that he could not get legal residents to harvest his crops and a mandatory E-Verify bill would bankrupt farmers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that for every 1 on-farm job there are about 3.1 upstream and downstream jobs, that support and are created by the growing of agricultural products.

The unicameral scorecard

One of the ways that we can keep our politicians accountable is to keep scrupulous notes on how they vote. Luckily, we live in the age of internet where such a thing is fairly easy to accomplish if you have the motivation and a strict sense of what is important to yourself as a voter. I like to keep track of the legislators in my community the best I can.

The problem is, if you are keeping track of such a thing, what you think is important may not be as important to another person trying to research the information. So while public scorecards are important, in my opinion, they may not be all together as helpful as those calculating the scorecards think. Beyond that, there is the inherent bias from those calculating the scorecard. For instance, when you see the scorecard that I put together, I have a bias in choosing what bills that I think are important and how I score those bills. It may not be of the most importance to you whether or not your state legislator supports E-Verify for all businesses in the state of Nebraska or you may think it’s very important and disagree with my grading. That’s fine. I’m hoping to be fairly transparent with what I am presenting to give you the best incomplete information out there.

A few notes. I provided a score of +3 if the legislator either sponsored, co-sponsored, voted in favor of legislation, or voted in favor of advancing the legislation for legislation that I think is favorable. If a legislator voted against the legislation or against advancing the legislation, the legislator received a score of -3.

If the legislation was unfavorable, I provided a score of -3 for sponsoring, co-sponsoring, voting in favor of advancing the legislation, or for voting in favor of the legislation.

I placed a premium of trying to override a governor’s veto. For legislation that I deemed favorable, if a legislator voted to override the veto, they received +5. They received -5 if they voted to sustain the veto.

For those who voted present or were excused from voting on legislation, they received a score of 0 regardless of how I feel about the legislation. But if they voted present on an override, they received a score of -2. They would receive this score, regardless of how I feel about the legislation.

I am going to try and write some more about a number of these bills at a later time but I thought I should provide this, first.

Scorecard can be found here

One easy trick to help our electoral process

The Nebraska unicameral passed LB75 this week. This was a priority bill from State Senator Justin Wayne. This bill would eliminate the 2 year waiting period for felons in Nebraska to be able to vote in Nebraska. Prior to 2005, felons were required to apply for a pardon from the State of Nebraska Board of Pardons. Based on the report for the Vote Nebraska Initiative Report, they found that “[the] process can be so lengthy and overwhelming, that many ex-offenders do not apply for a pardon.” At the time of the report, they estimated that 9,427 Nebraskans were disenfranchised based on their felony convictions. According to a 2003 study, 13% of the Latino population was ineligible to vote due to disenfranchisement. In a 1998 study from Demos, they found that 10.2% of African American men in Nebraska were disenfranchised. Seantor DiAnna Schimek introduced LB 53 in 2005 to restore the rights of felons to be able to vote.

The bill was passed with a supermajority able to withstand a gubeneratorial veto. However, despite not having a single witness in opposition to the bill in testimony, there was a compromise made to get out of committee. The compromise would only restore a felon’s right to vote after a two year waiting period. Despite it being a decade after this bill was signed into law the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nebraska found that only half of the counties in Nebraska were able to provide the correct information that a former felon could register to vote after two years. Since the ACLU’s report came out in 2016, the Nebraska Secretary of State has included a FAQ that includes the language that you can register to vote if it has been two years or more.

The ACLU ultimately concludes in their report that the simplest way to make sure these ex-felons can vote is to automatically reinstate the right to vote at the conclusion of the sentence. They argue that the rules of reinstating after 2 years serves as de facto disenfranchisement if not all the counties know the actual rules.

Why it matters

But why do we care if ex-felons get their civil rights restored? Throughout the country, more than 6 million Americans are unable to vote because of a felony conviction, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Going further, the Brennan Center for Justice notes that one in every 13 voting-age African Americans have lost their right to vote.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell argued in a 2002 Senate Debate that “states have a significant interest in reserving the vote for those who have abided by the social contract that forms the foundation of representative democracy…those who break our laws should not dilute the votes of law-abiding citizens.” This argument is premised on the idea that voting is a privilege rather than a right. There are a number of people who advance this argument who really believe that voting should be only held by a select few. This is undermined by civil rights, women’s suffrage, etc. that have been fought for the last 140 years. Not to mention, the Constitution has generally expanded the right to vote since the Constitution was adopted. The authors of various amendments have done quite a bit of work to expand the right to vote and to take down previous impediments to vote. There are 4 Amendments added to the Constitution that expanded the right to votes, covering the race, gender, and age while also prohibiting poll taxes.

The goal of these Amendments have been to greatly expand who can vote in elections and to give protection for those people. There is not an affirmative right in the Constitution to vote; however, the right to vote is mentioned multiple times in the Constitution as one can see if he looks at the text of the amendments. The idea of voting as a privilege is simply incompatible with our Constitution.

One of the equalizing and underlying principles of our society is the idea of “one person, one vote.” Regardless of how much money you may have or your status in society, your vote is just as equal as any other person’s vote. Denying franchise to ex-felons undermines this principle. As the Brennan Center for Justice writes “a strong, vibrant democracy requires the broadest possible base of voter participation, across all sectors of society.”

When prisoners leave prison, we are hopeful that they will reintegrate themselves into society. We ask them to clean up their lives, to find a job, to work to become productive citizens. We have long held, in our country, that we are a country of second chances for those willing to change. Christy Visher and Jeremy Travis found that the identity of a responsible citizen is important to proper rehabilitation into an ex-prisoner’s new life. The Brennan Center for Justice noted that ex-prisoners viewed themselves as not full citizens until they had their rights to vote had been given back to them.

Revoking the right to vote from felons has a ripple effect on urban and minority communities. Many children learn their civic engagement from their parents. The parents might take their children to vote or watch political news together. Going further, parents can provide information such as how to register to vote, how easy it is to vote, and where to vote. According to Eric Plutzer in Becoming a Habitual Voter: Inertia, Resources, and Growth in Young Adulthood, “the parent’s political participation had the greatest effect on the child’s initial decision to vote.” Plutzer goes forward to argue that voters and non-voters develop habits that help determine whether or not they will vote based on habits. By preventing ex-felons from being able to vote, we are robbing future generations from being able to form good civic habits and to develop “inertia” to vote in future elections. This lack of inertia hurts families and communities alike. As young voters are unlikely to form the habits to vote, the community loses political power and their voice in the political process.

Beyond that, with the loss of political voice and power, the impact of ex-felons losing their right to vote can be seen on who will run for office. One of the biggest factors in someone running for office, is the belief that she can win an election. In a 2013 article, Luke Keele, Paru Shah, Ismail White, and Kristine Kay note that “serious black candidates do not enter races where they expect to lose.” They study whether or not the race of a candidate impacts the turnout rate. In their research of who will run as a candidate, they write “black candidates for mayor might not only attempt to run in places with large African American populations, but might also choose to run in places with above average turnout in that black population.” The disenfranchisement of ex-felons disproportionately affect the black population and as a result may prevent strong black candidates from running for office. Not only may it prevent some black candidates from running, it may be an impact on whoever does run. People bemoan the idea of bad candidates running for office but one of the many ways that we can push back and have better candidates is to give back the right to vote for ex-felons.

The path forward

LB75 has passed the Nebraska Unicameral with a vote of 27-13. Governor Pete Ricketts has announced that he will not sign the bill into law. If he does not veto the bill within 5 days, the bill will have the same effect as if he does sign the bill. If the bill is vetoed, there are three state senators who will need to vote to override the veto, assuming nobody defects. This may be problematic as Governor Ricketts has handpicked challengers to those who have voted to override his vetoes in the past. According to Nebraskans for Civic Reform, there are 7,069 Nebraskans who have completed their sentences and are disenfranchised who will receive their civil rights back if the bill becomes law. If you have not done so already, I urge you to contact your Unicameral representative to ask for their support.

Nebraska is certainly not the most onerous of the stats out there to prevent ex-felons from voting. Governor Terry McAuliffe has restored the rights of thousands of ex-felons in Virginia. The biggest offender of this type of law seems to be in Florida, where 1 in 5 African Americans are disenfranchised. 1.6 million Floridians are denied their rights. This is the highest rate in the country. Floridians are collecting signatures to put this issue on the ballot as a constitutional amendment. Governor Steve Beshear of Kentucky signed an executive order giving the right to vote back to thousands of ex-felons. Matt Bevin signed an executive order one month later reversing this decision. Notably Republican Senator Rand Paul does support restoring of the rights of ex-felons. The Democracy Restoration Act was introduced in 2016 by Rep. John Conyers do do this on a federal level. I have not seen it introduced in this session of Congress and will update as soon as I do. If you are interested in this issue, I do urge you to contact your representative to support similar bills going forward.

A precinct level look at Douglas County

This is the meta post with all of the parts somewhat organized into one post that will be updated as I go forward.

Since the election in November, I have been working intermittently on a project to look at how the various precincts in Omaha voted. My goal was to try to find information that would help explain what I thought was going to be a certain defeat by Donald Trump in Nebraska’s 2^nd Congressional District. I thought that in Douglas County (the main portion of the district), it would be around a 10,000 vote victory for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. It ended up being around 6,000. I thought with this lead, Rep. Brad Ashford would certainly get over a 10,000 vote to help get him re-elected. He ended up getting around a 9,000 vote lead. And I certainly thought “retain” would be closer than a 14,000 vote defeat in the county. All of these stack on each other. At the end of Election Day, the people and policies I had supported ended up losing, thanks in part to more conservative Sarpy County. I wanted to know why. This analysis and report has taken way too much of my time and has become an obsession of mine in the last few months. I hope that it gives you some insights going forward.

What this isn’t is a replacement for actually meeting and talking with voters. Rep. Brad Ashford lost his election by a little over 3,000 votes. If 16 voters in each of the precincts in Douglas County switched their votes to Brad Ashford instead of Don Bacon, he would have won re-election. That’s how close it was. Hopefully, what this gives us is a blueprint going forward. Hopefully, we find precincts or areas that we were ignoring, previously.

Regions

Douglas County for those not intimately aware has a number of distinct regions in it. Separated by class and race, the county seems often that it is several distinct cities. There are a few towns in Douglas County outside of Omaha but they don’t seem as different as North Omaha compared to West Omaha. Omaha has been described as one of the most segregated cities in America. The western part of the city resembles white flight.

South Omaha: South Omaha is typically defined by many in Omaha as being the more heavily Latino area of the city. There is not a great definition of the region that is uniform in every person’s mind. I think there is a very distinct difference between South Omaha, east of around 72^nd St compared to what many people consider to be West of there. I did go through the precincts that Tony Vargas and Mike McDonnell represent in the unicameral and included all of his precincts as South Omaha. For the most part, for the city proper (outside of Elkhorn, Waterloo, and Valley), I will be using street line boundaries as best I can to define the area.

North Omaha: North Omaha is typically viewed as the black area of Omaha. Again, there is not a uniform definition to explain what many mean when they refer to North Omaha. I cut my boundaries around 48^th St and East. I went through and included the precincts that Ernie Chambers and Justin Wayne represent to include North Omaha.

Old Northwest Omaha: Thanks to the nature of Omaha and the annexation of many smaller towns for years, there are distinct regions throughout the city beyond the typical north-south boundary lines. I drew the boundaries of Old Northwest Omaha from about 72^nd and Maple – 108^th Fort including the streets West and North inbetween.

Northwest Omaha: While it does not have a distinguishing racial or class breakdown, Northwest Omaha that we refer to now, seems very different than what we would look at when we refer to the Old Northwest Omaha. West of 108^th seems to refer to a different part of town, in my mind, at least. This also goes to the boundary lines around Pacific. So this extends 108^th and Dodge – 180^th and Maple encompassing the streets inbetween.

Millard: This is the large suburb in Douglas County. There are some arguments over what Millard encompasses. I include Millard from 96^th and Harrison – 159^th and Dodge, in my mind. There is a bit of an overlap in the North area with Northwest Omaha. Some parts of Millard are in the lower middle class to the upper extremes of higher middle class. While it does not necessarily follow, the area tends to get nicer as you go more West (towards the higher numbers).

West Omaha: I did kind of arbitrarily draw a line separating out Millard and what I consider West Omaha. I see West Omaha as beginning at around 160^th and going west to 192^nd. I believe it starts at Harrison and runs up to about Dodge. You can certainly argue that parts of Northwest Omaha should be included in my definition of West Omaha and I wouldn’t argue too hard. West Omaha is typically seen as the richer parts of Omaha and they are not wrong.

Midtown: I’ll be honest, I don’t have a good grasp of what people consider to be midtown. I went through and added all of the precincts that Sara Howard represents in the unicameral. I believe that midtown is around 48^th-72^nd L St – Maple St. But I’m open for more.

The rest of the towns and outlying areas like Ralston, Bennington, Elkhorn, Waterloo, and Valley have fairly set definitions. I consider Elkhorn to be west of 192^nd and north to Fort. Waterloo is out Northwest there, as is Valley. Bennington is North of Fort beginning around 156^th in my mind.

I have Ralston on its defined boundaries – Precinct 08-01, 08-02, 08-05, and 08-06.

As I have said, outside of the outlying areas of Douglas County, I will try my best to give the street boundaries when I talk about a precinct, as best I can, to give people a visualization of where they are.

The Trump areas

For the most part, the areas of Douglas County that most heavily voted for Donald Trump are in the Western areas of Douglas County that are typically considered out of Omaha. There are 33 precincts that gave 60% or more of the four party vote share. Of those 33, 26 are west of 160^th St. Of the other 7 precincts, only two are east of 108^th St.

In these 33 precincts, 36,750 votes were cast for one of the four political parties running. Here were the results:

	Republican	Democratic	Libertarian	Green
Votes cast	23,630	11,397	1,466	257
% of votes	64.3%	31.0%	4.0%	0.7%

There were clearly areas of these 33 precincts that either did not feel comfortable voting for Donald Trump as President. There were 262 more votes cast for Congress than for the Presidential candidate of one of the four parties. Even more startling if you begin to look at it, is that that there were another 600 voters or so who came home from either the Libertarian Party or who crossed Presidential lines. Somewhat surprising is that there were about 500 voters for Democrat Brad Ashford who did not vote for Hillary Clinton for President. Perhaps this is not so surprising if you believe that these two Presidential candidates were the two most disliked candidates in history.

Here were the results of the precincts at the Congressional level. There were 37,012 votes cast for the three parties running for Congress.

	Republican	Democratic	Libertarian
Votes cast	24,234	11,875	903
% of votes cast	65.5%	32.1%	2.4%

Donald Trump was an outspoken supporter for the death penalty. In Nebraska, we had a referendum on whether or not we should follow through with the legislature’s repeal of the death penalty or if we should reinstate the death penalty. The language on the ballot was not confusing if you read through the referendum on the ballot but was slightly confusing to explain to someone who hadn’t looked at it. Retain would be a vote to keep the repeal of the death penalty. Repeal would reinstate the death penalty.

	Retain	Repeal
Votes cast	13,607	22,239
% of votes cast	38.0%	62.0%

These are all pretty high margins and seems unlikely to be able to be overcome in all of the precincts. But, again, that is not my goal. My goal is to simply cut margins where we can, even if it is as small as 16 votes/precinct. So we will look at individual precincts if there is a way for us to cut into the margin going forward.

Precincts where Trump outperformed Don Bacon

There are four precincts where Trump was able to outperform Republican Congressional candidate Don Bacon by 3 or more points in these precincts where he got 60% or more of the four party vote share. They were with the difference in parentheses 08-41 (6.9); 08-09 (5.2); 08-40 (4.1); and 08-14 (3.6).

08-41: This is on the Northwest side of Douglas County. I refer to it as Waterloo, even if it may be incorrect. This would play on one of the more popular narratives that Trump was able to do extremely well in areas with more rural areas or areas that were out of the way of the typical suburban community and do well with white voters with lower education levels.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
Votes	791	274	40	6
% of votes cast	71.2%	24.7%	3.6%	0.5%

Trump was able to get a number of voters who crossed party lines to vote for him and then went back to vote for Ashford in the Congressional races. There were 5 voters in this precinct who did not vote for one of the four parties running for President but voted for Congress:

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	-74	+94	-7

So we need to figure out why so many of those voters went for Trump and then were able to vote for Ashford. This may or not be repeatable without Trump on the ballot for the Democratic challenger in 2018 to replicate what Ashford was able to do. It seems probable to me that the Trump/Ashford voters are on their way to shifting their allegiances from Democratic candidates to Republican. The only problem with this idea is that Lou Ann Linehan, former chief of staff for Chuck Hagel, defeated Democratic candidate Bill Armbrust 54.05% – 45.95%. Linehan ran slightly behind what she did in the rest of her legislative district in this precinct. This is one of the precincts, in particular, where I would like more data to see the trends.

08-09: This is one of the precincts that stick out like a sore thumb for the precincts that gave Trump so much of the four-party vote share. This precinct is primarily located from 48^th-72^nd St and from Sargent-Northern Hills. This is one of only two precincts with the majority of it east of 108^th St. This precinct only had 660 votes cast for one of the four Presidential candidates.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
Votes	426	209	24	1
% of votes cast	64.5%	31.7%	3.6%	0.2%

There were only 3 voters who voted for one of those Presidential candidates who did not vote for Congress.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	-36	+33	+1

Again, we have a precinct where Trump managed to convince a number of voters that voted for Ashford to vote for him in the Presidential portion of the ballot. There is not a good explanation to this precinct. Jill Brown, who is probably more liberal than Justin Wayne, won the precinct 54.86% -45.14% of the vote, even though there were only 53 less votes for legislature compared to the Presidential election.

08-40: I have this listed in my spreadsheet as Valley. Valley was 95% white in the 2010 census. 22% of the residents of Valley have a bachelor’s degree or higher. The unemployment rate in Valley is 3.8%. The average of residents in Valley is just over 42 years old. There were 1,407 votes cast in the Presidential election for one of the four candidates:

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
Votes	986	363	49	9
% of votes cast	70.1	25.8	3.5	0.6

Again, we see voters choosing Trump at the Presidential level but reverting back to giving Ashford a vote at the Congressional level.

There were 1406 votes cast at the Congressional level in this precinct.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	-58	+68	-2

With 179 votes being lost from the Presidential ballot to the Legislative ballot, Lou Ann Linehan won the precinct 54.72% – 45.28%. Armbrust received nearly 200 more votes than Clinton did in this precinct.

08-14: In the Northwest area of Douglas County, if you go far enough North you reach Bennington. And you run into this precinct. This precinct is only a part of what I classify as Bennington. There were 876 votes cast in this precinct for the four party Presidential vote.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
Votes	582	252	36	6
% of votes cast	66.4%	28.8%	4.1%	0.7%

And again, what we see is Trump was able to convince a number of voters to choose him and allow them to vote for Ashford at the Congressional level. With 1 more vote cast at the Congressional level than with the four party Presidential ballot, we see just how successful Trump was able to be over Bacon.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	-31	+42	-4

A somewhat conclusion of the Trump precincts

I’ll be honest about what I thought I was going to find. I thought what I was going to find was that the Trump voters simply did not show up to vote at the Congressional level and that was what was causing him to overperform relative to Bacon’s numbers or even Linehan’s numbers. I was also expecting a small swing of voters deciding to vote for Trump/Laird.

But that is not what we’re seeing. We’re seeing a number of Trump voters deciding that they didn’t want to vote for Bacon in Congress and wanted to support Ashford. This can be true for a number of reasons. My guess is that there is not an insignificant amount of voters who simply wanted a split ballot. They could not pull the ballot trigger for Clinton but did not think that the Republicans should pick up a seat there.

I think there are some voters out there who were upset about voting for Clinton and seeing that they are in a roughly safe area to vote, decided that they could vote for Trump and then Ashford. But I do not know this for certain.

One of the more likely explanations is that Trump was able to connect at some level with these voters who may have lower education and are white in a way that Clinton was not able to. The reasons may range from they think Trump is a secret liberal, they want a crackdown on immigration, they believe he will get things done, or simple dislike for Clinton.

The organizing principle of the Democratic Party is that we are all in this together. The goal should be to engage these voters. They may range from slightly misinformed to openly hostile to Democratic principles. But we do owe it to ourselves to see if they can be reached. Cutting into margins in areas where we performed the worst at the Presidential level can provide significant results. A number of these voters are willing to vote for Democratic policies and we must figure out why, if we want to remain competitive.

One thing I will reiterate throughout this series is the need for positive engagement with voters in every area by the Democratic Party and staff. We need to be going out into these communities and figure out why they can reconcile a vote for Trump/Ashford. And what we can do to vote Democratic on each line. But more importantly, we need to engage them to figure out what is important to them and highlight how we either have the best solution to the problem or how we are working on it.

West Omaha

While it is not completely true that West Omaha is the area of the upper middle class citizens of Douglas County, it is a good enough starting point. I arbitrarily made a decision to divide Millard from West Omaha at 160^th St and separated Northwest Omaha from West Omaha inbetween Pacific and Dodge St. So what can we figure out by the way they voted?

For the Presidential share of the vote, we have the following with 24,631 votes cast in this region:

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
Number of votes	14,361	8,920	1,159	191
% of votes cast	58.3	36.2	4.7	0.8

There were a number of people in West Omaha who could not vote for Trump or Clinton but managed to find their way to vote for Congress. Based on the numbers that we are going to see in the next table, it seems fairly clear that the people unable to vote for one of the Presidential candidates, they were less likely to be able to vote for Donald Trump.

There were 24,850 votes cast for the three candidates for Congress.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Number of votes	15,266	8,994	590
% of votes cast	61.4	36.2	2.4

Trump was simply unacceptable to nearly 1,000 voters in West Omaha. That’s certainly not enough to be able to win the district for Hillary Clinton or make a dent in the statewide race. But it’s enough to give us a starting point to how to make West Omaha more competitive. Ashford was unable to run too far ahead of Clinton’s numbers only netting about 75 votes over her, despite her seeming unpopularity.

What could Ashford or another Democratic challenger do to be able to make this area of Omaha more competitive? Why is Trump unacceptable for nearly 1,000 voters but they can turn around and vote for a Republican who deleted his press release where he denounced him?

This is where we need to look at individual precincts to see what we can do and if there’s any hope going forward.

Overperformance of Bacon

In nearly all of the precincts in West Omaha, Don Bacon ran ahead of Donald Trump by more than 2 points (15 out of 21 precincts). Bacon ran ahead of Trump by more than 3 points in 12 of 21 precincts. In 4 of these precincts, Bacon was able to run ahead of Trump by 5 points. Let’s look them, shall we?

08-31: This precinct is roughly located from 174^th-180^th L-Center. This was not the best precinct for Trump. Out of 766 votes in the precinct, this is what we have.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes cast	407	299	56	4
% of votes cast	53.1	39.0	7.3	0.5

While the voters here didn’t skip the Presidential election or write in a candidate (for the most part), they did voice their displeasure by voting for Gary Johnson, it would appear. There were 772 votes cast for the three candidates running for Congress. This is how they shook out with the net votes compared to their respective Presidential candidate.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	+52	+2	-44

This still looks like a fairly heavily Republican area. Don Bacon managed to get 59.46% of the vote for Congress and Ashford was unable to crack the 40% mark.

Even on the referendum, nearly 60% of voters in the precinct wanted to reinstate the penalty. 40% of the voters wanted to keep the repeal the death penalty.

But there was some hope and why I think this area may be prime for targeting. State Senator Rick Kolowski. Kolowski is the former principal for Millard West High School and has primarily focused on building relationships throughout his legislative district. He consistently outperformed the expected numbers in his legislative district. I hope to have a meeting with him and his staff soon, which will make me sound like a gushing fanboy.

Kolowski supported Nebraska’s ENDA; he supported the repeal of the death penalty; he supported giving professional licenses to immigrants affected by DACA. He ran against a candidate that was more or less hand-picked by the Republican establishment, Ian Swanson. Swanson was endorsed by Lee Terry, Pete Ricketts, if you can name a Republican, he supported Ian Swanson.

Swanson’s campaign was very similar to what you would consider from a Republican trying to run in a Conservative area. I wrote more about his website and campaign somewhere else. Swanson’s ideological differences between Bacon are infinitely small. Kolowski and Ashford are also kindred moderate spirits.

Kolowski won 57.7% of the vote in the precinct over Swanson’s 42.3%.

How did Kolowski do it? I’d like to meet with his staff before I write a definitive account but I have an idea. In politics, as in life, we often use heuristics to make sense of our world. When we look at the ballot, we see that someone has our preferred political party next to their name and we are more likely to vote for them. We see that another politician is with a different political party, we begin to demonize him or her.

All of a sudden, we don’t really care what their ideas are. If they are aligned with the correct political party, it does not really matter if they do not seem like a good person for the most part. As you discover their political party or their policy beliefs your opinion of them might change. But if you have developed a relationship with them or if you have strong bonds with them, it does not change very much. All of a sudden you are voting for that person instead of voting for a party.

Kolowski’s strength, in my opinion, is based around the idea that he is able to build relationships with people. They don’t see themselves as voting for a moderate Democrat but for Rick Kolowski, their kids’ former principal or neighbor.

08-37: This is one of my favorite precincts in all of Douglas County. So is 08-31, to be honest. This precinct is roughly 174^th-180^th St Harrison-Q.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes	613	437	57	7
% of votes cast	55.0%	39.2%	5.1%	0.6%

There were a number of people who could not pull themselves to vote for Trump on Election Day. There were 1,114 votes cast for one of the four Presidential candidates. There were 1,125 votes cast for the three candidates for Congress. Bacon was able to get a larger vote total than Trump

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	+76	-22	-36

Bacon was able to consolidate a number of the voters who voted Johnson as part of some form of protest and a number of what I assume are Republican leaning voters who voted Clinton.

But this is another area that Democrats could target with relationship building. This is another Kolowski precinct. Kolowski was able to win the precinct with 647 votes garnering more votes than Trump and fairly close to Don Bacon’s vote total.

08-35: This precinct is located roughly on 156^th-163^rd St and Y St – Q St. This is yet another precinct that Trump underperformed what you would think. There was not a lot of votes cast in this precinct, 482 for the four Presidential candidates.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes	250	189	34	9
% of votes cast	51.9%	39.2%	7.1%	1.9%

Again, what we see is Trump being unacceptable but Bacon able to pick up the struggling Republicans who could not find it in themselves to vote for Trump. With 480 votes cast for the three Congressional candidates, we have the following net votes:

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	+26	-6	-13

And this is the third Kolowski precinct that we’re looking at. There were 430 votes cast in the Legislative race. Kolowski was able to receive 247 votes or 57.4% of the votes cast in the race defeating Swanson 57.4-42.6.

This is also on the list of potential targets where new votes can come from.

05-20: This precinct is different than the rest of the ones that we looked at for a couple of reasons. It’s more North and West of the other 3 precincts. It’s located from 180^th – 192^nd St and B-Cedar. First, this is not an area where Trump really struggled. There were 1,143 votes cast for the four Presidential candidates.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes cast	750	355	36	2
% of votes cast	65.6%	31.1%	3.1%	0.2%

While Trump was very successful in this precinct, there were still a few voters who couldn’t find it in theirselves to be able to vote for Trump. There were 1,138 votes for the Congressional candidates in this precinct.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	+54	-35	-22

Bacon was still able to convince a number of voters to vote for him instead of voting for Trump. Second, this is not a Rick Kolowski precinct. Lou Ann Linehan, a Republican, defeated Bill Armbrust, a Democrat 62.8% – 37.2% in the precinct. That’s with a number of voters not voting in the state legislature race. The area is still very conservative but even then we see that there are a number of voters who could not vote for Trump for President.

If we are serious about reaching new voters, we have to figure out why voters were willing to not vote for Trump on the Presidential line but vote for candidates who supported them in all other ways.

Ralston

There is a town in Douglas County that is surrounded on most sides by Omaha located around 72^nd and Harrison St. This town is Ralston. The median household income in 2015 was $57,453. The median gross rent was $772 and the mean price of housing units was $171,015. From the census bureau, 85% of the town is white. 10% of the population is Hispanic and 2% of the Ralston population is black. For the population of Ralston that is 25 or older, 29% of the population has a Bachelor’s Degree or higher and nearly 88% of the population has high school education or higher. The unemployment rate in the town is 2.5%.

There are six precincts in the town. Donald Trump won all six of the precincts. Gary Johnson got considerable support in the town. In three of the precincts, we have a very close election between Trump and Clinton. Here are the totals for the town for the four Presidential candidates.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Green
# of votes cast	1484	1233	158	24
% of votes	51.2	42.5	5.5	0.8

Like most of the precincts that we’ve looked at, there are more people voting for the three Congressional candidates over the Presidential candidates. This seems odd, since in general, there are more votes for President than there are for Congress. This is typically true, even if we exclude write-in votes, like we are doing here.

There were 2937 votes cast for one of the three candidates running for Congress compared to 2899 votes cast for the four presidential candidates. Here is how they voted with the net votes for the Congressional candidates compared to their Presidential candidate.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	-55	+172	-55

Ashford lost the town of Ralston by 24 votes overall.

So why did Ashford do so much better in Ralston than Clinton? I think there’s something to the explanation that Trump was able to do well with the white working class voters or middle class voters. For some reason, Trump was able to connect with these voters in a way that Clinton was not able to. This is another time that I wish I had more data to compare this to. I would love to see how they voted in a previous election.

There are quite a bit of Trump/Ashford voters in the town. I would love to talk to them to see why they voted the way they did. Perhaps, they believe that Ashford will help get things done in Washington in a way that they don’t think Bacon could. Or if they simply believe that we should have a split government. This is a belief that is fairly pervasive in Nebraska, in my experience. But certainly not the best explanation.

Ashford was able to win three of the precincts. He received over 50% of the vote in two of them. He ran ahead of Clinton in all of the precincts. His worst precinct there was him only running by 1.8 points ahead of Clinton.

The Democratic Party of Douglas County and of Nebraska should probably set a goal of winning Ralston in the next Congressional election. There seems to be distrust of Bacon in this area, so it should be a way to communicate to them, compared to areas where they have to link Bacon to the unpopularity of Trump.

It’s possible that in this area what will sell is the fact that Bacon is not a resident of Omaha and is more of a carpetbagger. At the end of the day, what is going to convince people to vote against a President and his or her party if they like him will be if their lives are not improved in 20 months.

I can tell you an issue that will not move the needle in Ralston – the death penalty. There were 2,862 votes on Referendum 426. They voted to reinstate the death penalty by a wide margin. For the next table, retain is keeping the repeal of the death penalty. Repeal is reinstating the death penalty.

	Retain	Repeal
# of votes cast	1217	1645
% of votes	42.5	57.5

What issues will reach out to Trump/Ashford voters? Which way are they headed? Are they headed TOWARD the Republican Party by breaking party lines by voting for a Republican for President? Or are they headed TOWARD the Democratic Party by breaking party lines by voting for a Democrat for Congress?

That is what we need to find out to net more votes.

South Omaha

South Omaha is typically referred to as the heavily Latino area of Omaha. There’s a bit of confusion when I asked people for their definition of where South Omaha really is. I went through the precincts that are represented by Tony Vargas and Mike McDonell in the unicameral and added them into my definition of South Omaha. Even still, I think I may have gone too far west in saying where South Omaha is on the map (which sounds like a paradox if you are not familiar) by including some areas all the way to 72^nd St and Harrison. I also may have gone too far North stretching to Douglas St. But I will be fairly upfront with the problematic areas in this analysis and let you know where the areas are that I had problems identifying. I think it is critical for us to have a shared definition of regions if we are going through this exercise.

What we will refer to as North and South Omaha are two of the areas that gave Hillary Clinton the most of her margin in Douglas County. The 24 precincts that I’ve highlighted as South Omaha had 21,798 votes cast for the four Presidential candidates.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes cast	7,288	11,956	949	372
% of votes cast	35.4	58.1	4.6	1.8

Trump won two of the precincts there. It is debatable whether or not you would either consider these two precincts as part of South Omaha.

04-12: This precinct is located from 48^th-60^th St from about Harrison to Q St. This could be too far west for a number of people to really consider it South Omaha but it is represented by Mike McDonnell, so I included it here. But Trump still managed to win the precinct. There were 1,043 votes cast for the four presidential candidates there.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes	558	429	36	20
% of votes cast	53.5	41.1	3.5	1.9

In the Congressional race, there were about the same number of votes cast for the three person Congressional race, 1,039. Ashford was able to run well ahead of Clinton. While this was his worst precinct in South Omaha, he still managed to win.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	-80	+78	+18

It’s not immediately obvious to me how Trump was able to win in this area. My assumption is that the more West you go in this precinct the whiter the area is. But unfortunately, I do not go in this area too often. The reason why I say it is not immediately obvious to me why he won is because we have Democrat Mike McDonnell winning the precinct with just under 58% of the vote. Of course, there were about 300 less votes in the state legislature race. Gilbert Ayala who ran a very conservative campaign for the state legislature had a poor showing.

But then, again. There were 1,006 votes cast on Referendum 426. 693 votes were cast to reinstate the death penalty. Only 313 votes were cast to keep the repeal of the death penalty. There were a number of fairly conservative votes in this area.

04-05: This is the other Trump precinct in this area. This is another area that was added to my spreadsheet with South Omaha as the region as it is represented by Mike McDonnell. This precinct is located around 42^nd-50^th St G St – Oak St. This is a really strange precinct on their vote totals. There were 1,322 votes cast in the precinct for the four Presidential candidates.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes	653	600	53	16
% of votes cast	49.4	45.4	4.0	1.2

There are a number of Trump-Ashford voters in this precinct. There were 1,348 votes cast in the Congressional elections for the three candidates with the net votes.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	-61	+112	-9

It just gets a little stranger. This was Mike McDonnell’s best precinct. He got 964 votes in this precinct. Ayala only received 243 votes. But it was also a precinct that voted to reinstate the death penalty by a 52.7-47.2 margin.

This is an area that can be improved upon for 2020 and could be an area that could be improved upon for 2018, as well. The question that we have to answer is why did Trump resonate in this area to such a degree and why did Mike McDonnell do the same. To my untrained eye, as Trump did better, McDonnell should have done worse. But it simply did not happen, here.

Death penalty repeal

One of the things I am most fascinated by was how poor the death penalty referendum performed in Douglas County. Douglas County has a fairly sizable Catholic population. Traditionally, Catholicism has been linked to the abolition of capital punishment. In 1974, the U.S. Catholic conference voted to declare its opposition to the death penalty. Pope St. John Paul II wrote in the 1990s that to narrow the death penalty. He wrote that the cases in which a prisoner must be executed “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.” Pope Francis wrote in 2015 to state the case for the abolition of the death penalty. He wrote that capital punishment “contradicts God’s plan for man and society.” But the Catholic Church has not necessarily called for the statewide abolition of death penalty even if there is opposition to the death penalty. Catholic teaching usually leaves no question that the right to the execution of prisoners is a right left to state. Pope Francis went further, writing, in 2015 that “today the death penalty is inadmissible, no matter how serious the crime committed.”

Beyond the Pope, a number of American Catholic publications including America Magazine, National Catholic Register, National Catholic Reporter, Our Sunday Visitor, and Patheos Catholic came out together to support the abolition of the death penalty in 2015. I am not sure of the popularity of Catholic publications in traditional Catholic families especially here in Omaha.

I want to preface something before this next paragraph. I’m not Catholic, myself. I don’t know how much weight I would give what the Pope says either in his writing or his speeches, especially if it contradicts my already held belief. In other denominations, it is more common for people to already arrive at a political belief and then use their religious beliefs to provide support to it.

One of the interesting things that I think gets overlooked is how opposition to abortion spread. Evangelical and protestant Christian groups did not originally view abortion as such an important issue for a while. In the 1970s, the consensus in the Evangelical community was that abortion was warranted in many circumstances. In 1979, Christianity Today, published an article that concluded that the fetus is not reckoned as a soul. In the 1970s the biggest defender of pro-life issues was Ted Kennedy. Richard Nixon and even George H.W. Bush were pro-choice. For most people, they simply did not think about abortion. If they did, they primarily saw it as a Catholic issue.

Pat Buchanan argued in a memo to Richard Nixon that Nixon should try to peel off Catholic Democrats by appealing to them on abortion and switching to pro-life. The argument was basically that Nixon would force Ed Muskie to choose between Catholics and liberals if Nixon came out in favor pro-life policies. Soon after, Nixon spoke of his “personal belief in the sanctity of human life-including the life of the yet unborn.” As we have seen, it did not take root for a while.

Republican strategists Richard Viguerie and Paul Weyrich recruited Jerry Falwell to lead a coalition around economic and social conservatives. The idea was to focus on abortion as the most important issue. They viewed it as a way to divide the Democratic Party. Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979. But even then, the voting patterns in Congress and the voters themselves were not as partisan until the late 1980s. Political scientist Greg Adams demonstrated that “Republicans were more pro-choice than Democrats up until the late 1980s.”

But if you ask any pro-life voter Protestant or even Catholic, they will tell you that the reason that they are pro-life is because the Bible tells them that the fetus has a soul and the Bible tells them that it is murder. The Bible hasn’t changed in the last 30 years. What has changed is people’s personal beliefs and their own partisan beliefs. For many, Republican politicians are seen as pro-life and Democrats are pro-choice, regardless of their actual stance. They use the partisan divide and then dress it up with religious connotations.

I say all this to say this. People are complex and have many different ideas floating around their head at a given time. People use flawed reasoning to explain answers to complex questions. It’s not to say who is right or wrong on a given issue, just highlighting how people’s views changed on an issue like abortion with the backdrop of their church.

Anyway, one would think in a Catholic area that they would be more likely to oppose the death penalty. But we don’t necessarily see that. In the Elkhorn area, which is over 25% Catholic, they overwhelmingly voted to reinstate the death penalty on Referendum 426. According to Pew Research, 54% of White Catholics favor the death penalty for persons convicted of murder. 39% of White Catholics oppose the death penalty. 43% of all Catholics support the death penalty compared to 46% who oppose it. Elizabeth Bruening uses a Pew study from 2013 to show that only 37% of Hispanic Catholics support the death penalty. She argues that it is white Catholics who are the ones not supporting the abolition of the death penalty contra the Catholic church teachings.

But this isn’t exactly what we see when we look at the precincts that are predominantly Latino and what, I’m presuming, is Catholic. In the South Omaha area, that I’ve identified, as a whole, we find that the community is evenly split between reinstating the death penalty to keeping the repeal of the death penalty. There were 19,671 votes cast for this referendum in this area. Remember, retain would be to keep the death penalty repeal and repeal would be to reinstate it.

	Retain	Repeal
Votes cast	9,298	10,373
% of votes cast	47.3	52.7

This does not fall upon party lines or is necessarily caused by lack of voters. There are 800 less voters on the referendum than for the 4 party Presidential vote or for Congressional vote. Hillary Clinton received 7,337 votes and 58.9% of the vote. Brad Ashford received 7,758 votes or 62.1% of the votes for Congress. Pew Research found that 36% of Latinos support the death penalty compared to 50% who oppose.

South Omaha remains to be a very Democratic stronghold but it is worth looking into the way Latinos respond to the death penalty and by extension how Catholics view the death penalty.

Millard

The great suburban area of Omaha is Millard. Known for its nice schools and because of it, nice property value, these mostly lily white neighborhoods make up a large chunk of the population in Omaha. There’s a bit of a difference between Millard and what is more or less known as West Omaha. One of the things that I’ve been thinking about while I’ve been researching this, is that the idea of West Omaha or large chunks of how Omaha is laid out is based on class and is based on race. For many people, if you are in a nice neighborhood west of 72^nd Street will announce that it is part of West Omaha. If you are not in a nice neighborhood and you are east of about 144^th St, they’ll say it’s not really West Omaha, yet.

I tried to separate out what would be considered West Omaha and Millard by drawing a line around 160^th St. This is not totally accurate because, for instance, Millard West (a high school) is located at 180^th and Q. So I also did another run with the numbers that included West Omaha, West of 160^th. The one area that I tried to leave intact without including it in this data is the Westside area.

There were 33 precincts in my initial run with Millard (it’s still a little problematic but we’ll get there). Out of those 33, Hillary Clinton won three precincts. She did not receive more than 50% of the four party Presidential vote in any precinct. Brad Ashford won four precincts in the area, receiving 50% or more in three of the precincts. Four precincts voted to hold the repeal of the death penalty.

The three precincts that Clinton won may not be considered a part of Millard by everyone.

05-04: This is the main one that I would not necessarily consider as part of Millard but it doesn’t really fit into any other classification. The precinct is located from 72^nd-90^th St L St – F St and U St – F St. It is basically just North of Ralston. By vote percentage of the four party presidential vote, this was Hillary Clinton’s best precinct. There were 916 votes cast for one of the four Presidential candidates.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes	412	451	41	12
% of votes cast	45.0	49.2	4.5	1.3

Somewhat surprising, considering what we have seen in other places where we have Republican voters who were not willing to vote for Trump but followed through downballot, we have basically the same amount of votes cast downballot and not a big swing for anybody. There were only 5 more votes cast for one of the three Congressional candidates

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	+4	+10	+3

Without trying to contact each individual voter on who they voted for, it seems fairly intuitive how people voted.

05-05: This precinct is located around 90^th-108^th St and Q-Center. It’s a little bit East of where most people consider to be Millard. But I still think it’s a good example of Millard. And again, we don’t see Republican voters who are just not voting for Trump but voting downballot for Republican voters.

We just have two fairly unpopular candidates going against each other. If anything, we have more reluctant Democratic voters who did not want to vote for Clinton but would vote for Ashford. There were 904 votes for one of the four Presidential candidates.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes cast	398	444	45	17
% of votes cast	44.0	49.1	5.0	1.9

There were 6 more votes cast for one of the three Congressional candidates. Looking at who was able to benefit the most, we see Brad Ashford.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	-4	+27	0

It looks like there were 4 Trump/Ashford supporters and then he was able to pick up the Stein voters and the 6 voters who decided not to vote for one of the four options. Of course, I could be sorely mistaken.

There has not been a great example that we’ve looked at so far where we have seen non-Hillary Democratic voters. This is probably the best one that we’ve seen, so far.

05-08: This one is on the edge of my demarcations for Millard in both the East direction and is necessarily on the southern border as Harrison is the dividing line between Douglas and Sarpy. It is 96^th – 102^nd St Harrison – Q St. Here we see a bunch of voters who could not vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. They found a home with Gary Johnson. There were 1,056 votes cast for one of the four Presidential candidates.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes cast	429	512	97	18
% of votes cast	40.6	48.4	9.2	1.7

Ashford and Bacon both got more raw votes than the Presidential candidates despite there only being 6 more votes cast for one of the three Congressional candidates.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	+20	+45	-40

The question going forward for the Democratic Party is, is this sustainable? Can a Democratic challenger in this precinct win by more than 120 votes (Ashford won by 108)? Can a Democratic candidate for President reach and get a number of those Johnson voters to vote for them in a year when the candidate is not so unpopular? What can we do to ensure that to happen? Those are the questions we need to be asking and answering if we want to net more votes.

Stony Brook

In my mind, one of the better examples of the working class area in Millard is the Stony Brook neighborhood. This area is mainly located from about 144^th-156^th Harrison-Q. I guess I don’t really like the concept of working class neighborhoods because so much of what we consider to be working class is based upon income or house prices. There are those who make a lot of money doing more blue collar type of labor and those who do white collar work who are highly educated and do not make much in terms of income. Maybe this is just me. The houses in this area are not terribly large or expensive which would tend to indicate that it is a working class neighborhood. But who really knows these things. I also think of this neighborhood area, rightly or wrongly, as an area where there are older white voters who have lived there for a while.

One of the questions that I wanted an answer to when I started this project or had this idea was to investigate areas that I think of as working class areas and see if Trump had unique appeal in those areas because there were a lot of thinkpieces about this phenomenon.

The precinct in this area is 05-18. While Donald Trump easily won the precinct, there were quite a few libertarian-curious voters and there were a number of voters who could not find it in themselves to vote for Clinton, as we’ll see.

There were 1,367 total votes cast for one of the four presidential candidates.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes	732	544	73	18
% of votes	53.5	39.8	5.3	1.3

It does not seem once we get to the Congressional vote that Trump had a unique way of appealing to these voters. Rather, this was just a more conservative area. There were 1,380 votes cast for one of the three Congressional candidates.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	+9	+40	-18

This was a conservative precinct and would have voted for the Republican candidates for federal office, pretty much regardless if this is any indication.

Just to further drive this point home, voters in this precinct overwhelmingly voted to reinstate the death penalty for the state of Nebraska. 63% of the 1,325 voters who voted on the referendum voted to reinstate the death penalty.

Millard Oaks

This is my old neighborhood area. It’s not an exact match for the precinct. But we’re looking at the area from 156^th-163^rd from Harrison-Q St. The area is more of the area of Millard that would be considered upper middle class portion of the region. There are other areas that are a better description of upper-middle class of Millard but this is one I’m more familiar with. In addition, this area is home to a number of families that move to this area to be able to attend their choice of the Millard High Schools. Also, this area once had me playing hide and seek as a 20 year old being interrogated by someone just a few years my senior about what I was doing to his house. The answer was nothing but it did not satisfy him.

Perhaps, not surprisingly, based on all of that information, we have a fairly conservative area for the three precincts – 05-19; 05-33; and 08-35. These three precincts cast 1,829 votes for one of the four Presidential candidates.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes	1000	711	98	20
% of votes cast	54.7	38.9	5.4	1.1

There’s a fairly common thought that has been shown in these precinct looks that Trump does worse with what we think of as higher income areas. This idea was fairly prevalent when you looked at Congressional districts that were more highly educated in the suburbs of other cities. Some of the ones that were more interesting was Georgia’s 6^th Congressional District where Trump only managed to win by 1 point. There is a clear mark where Trump fails with voters. Unfortunately, there is not many journalists going to these suburbs to talk to voters to determine why they could not vote for Trump. And we have another precinct here where there was quite a few number of voters who could not vote for Donald Trump and there are some Trump/Ashford voters, as well.

08-35: The first one that I want to look at is precinct 08-35. This is located from about 156^th-163^rd St and located Y St – Q St. There were 482 voters who cast a vote for one of the four Presidential candidates.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes cast	250	189	34	9
% of votes cast	51.9	39.2	7.1	1.1

Johnson outperformed his overall numbers for Douglas County and even in these three precincts. This would be understandable. Libertarianism is overrepresented by white more affluent citizens. But when we look at their votes for Congress, we see that there are a number of them who are not willing to vote for a libertarian at the Congressional level. There were two less votes for one of the Congressional candidates.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	+26	-6	-13

While this is a conservative precinct there are a few voters in the area who were not willing to vote for Trump when it came to Election Day.

For those of you who have read thus far, you may in your mind trying to construct if this is a precinct represented by Rick Kolowski. And it was. As I’ve talked about before Kolowski was able to outperform in a number of precincts where conservatives were more able to succeed. This precinct was one of his best. He was able to get 57.4% of the votes over Ian Swanson who received 42.6% of the vote. This, again, was not entirely a product of voters simply not voting at the state legislative level. There were only 50 less votes cast for legislature than for President. He only received 3 less votes than Trump did in this precinct.

05-19: This is the heart of Millard Oaks. This is also the best of the three Trump precincts.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes	581	384	49	5
% of votes	57.0	37.7	4.8	0.5

There were 14 more votes cast for one of the three Congressional candidates. Brad Ashford outperformed Clinton in this precinct. Trump was able to do better than Bacon, as well. There were quite a few of the Trump/Ashford voters. I’ll be honest, Trump/Ashford voters fascinate me.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	-28	+54	-7

Even more surprising, this area was also represented by Kolowski. He won the precinct pretty handily garnering 54.4% of the vote over Ian Swanson.

The area is not a great example of “working class” based on the income of the area or with their house values. It simply does not seem like an area that anybody would really assume that it is a “working class” neighborhood. This is yet another example of an area that I would like to see data for more than just this election data. Unfortunately, I do not have this data.

Trump – retain voters

When I first started to look at this data, I made a little comment that there are quite a few Trump supporters who also voted to keep the repeal of the death penalty. I initially thought that there were quite a few Catholic Trump supporters who thought that they could follow the Church’s teachings by voting for Trump and then voting to keep the repeal of the death penalty. This would require actual investigation by someone who gets paid to do this to determine why these voters could vote for Trump who was an avowed supporter of the death penalty but also could vote to keep the repeal of the death penalty. Overall, in Douglas County, keeping the repeal of the death penalty outperformed Trump by 1 point.

So what I wanted to do was look at the precincts that Trump was able to win and then look at the precincts where “retain” outperformed Trump. There were 9 such precincts in Douglas County. I’m ignoring one of them because there simply was not very many voters in the precinct. That precinct is 08-27 which is located from 144^th-156^th Center-Pacific. There were 107 votes for one of the four Presidential candidates and only 102 votes for Referendum 426.

06-26: This precinct is located from 114^th-132^nd and Harney-Dodge. It is actually located next to 08-27 which is interesting for what we’re going to talk about in a little bit. This is labeled in my spreadsheet as the Jewish Community Center area. Beth Israel Synagogue is located just south of this precinct, closer to Pierce St. The Jewish Community Center is located just west of this precinct. I bring this up because as I began to look at the precincts who voted for Trump and wanted to retain the death penalty repeal, they were focused in this area. The areas that were around this area were 08-27; 06-04; 06-28; 06-10; 06-26; 06-03; and 06-09. The next table is how the precincts voted for Trump and then for retain on Referendum 426 and then if retain was able to overperform and by how much (essentially retain minus Trump).

Precinct	Trump	Retain	Retain – Trump
08-27	50.5	60.8	+10.3
06-04	50.7	53.0	+2.3
06-28	55.0	46.4	-8.6
06-10	50.9	45.6	-5.3
06-26	47.4	52.1	+4.7
06-03	54.2	49.0	-5.2
06-09	51.3	50.6	-0.7

It’s not perfect if you just have those precincts but it’s rather interesting that these precincts were able to stomach voting for Trump and for retaining the repeal of the death penalty. If we were able to segment these areas from the precincts down to the street level analysis. I would be willing to bet that the areas that were closer to be able to walk to Beth Israel Synagogue would be more likely to vote to retain on Referendum 426.

06-06: This precinct is located a little to the South and a little to the East of the precincts (at least the Western portion of this precinct). There’s not a good explanation of this precinct. It is located from 72^nd-78^th St and I-80 – Oak St. I have it listed as Midtown but not exactly what I would describe it as that. Trump won the precinct by 5 votes over Hillary Clinton. He happens to be the most popular of the candidates listed on the ballot. Don Bacon lost this precinct to Brad Ashford. It seems to indicate that in this area there were a number of people who could not bring themselves to vote for Clinton but were leaning Democratic. There were 20 more votes for the three Congressional candidates than for the four party Presidential candidates. Ashford got 55 more votes than Clinton did in the precinct and won it outright. But even still, retain did not win in the precinct. It got 49.1% of the vote. It lost by 16 votes. This is a precinct where I would want to talk to the voters. They did not vote on ideological lines.

06-08: This precinct could have easily been listed in the table above. It is located from 108^th-114^th St Center-Pacific. So it is just outside of the tabled precincts I looked at. It just strengthens my idea that the voters who voted for Trump and then voted to keep the repeal of the death penalty were clustered. Trump won this precinct by 4 points or 50 votes out of 1,330 cast. Bacon got 682 votes in the precinct as there were 31 more votes cast in the precinct for Congressional candidates compared to the four party Presidential vote. Even with all of that, there were a number of voters who crossed party lines to keep the repeal of the death penalty.

06-02: This is yet another one of the areas that could have easily been considered in that table I have of the Jewish Community Center area. It is located from 96^th St – 108^th St Pacific – Dodge St. Unlike a couple of the precincts that we have been looking at, it wasn’t particularly close. Trump got nearly 54% of the vote compared to Hillary’s 42.5%. Bacon won by 3 points, as well. And retain was not very close either. There were 55% of voters in this precinct who voted to keep the repeal of the death penalty compared to only 45% who wanted to reinstate the death penalty.

05-23: I could even consider this precinct as part of the same are. It’s a very narrow precinct located from 104^th -108^th St F St – Pacific St. This was a very close precinct in the Presidential vote where Trump defeated Clinton by a mere 8 votes out of 1,165 votes cast. This is another one of the precincts where we have Democrats who were unwilling to vote for Clinton. Brad Ashford got 50.6% of the Congressional three party votes. But then they crossed the line again to vote to reinstate the death penalty. Although, 48.5% of voters wanted to keep the repeal of the death penalty.

So why are all these voters who supported Trump but also wanted to keep the repeal of the death penalty? There are a couple of different possible explanations. My favorite one based on the table above is heavily influenced by religion. Judaism, at least some denominations, oppose the death penalty. Shabbot observant Jews need to live within walking distance of their synagogues to be able to attend services and be able to walk home.

The other explanation is one that we should consider, as well. Voting is inherently a social phenomenon. We kind of ignore this, to some extent. If your family or your friends support a particular cause or candidate and are passionate about it, they will talk to you about it. If you end your friendship with them or sever ties with your family over it, you are the ones that are considered a jerk. If you start arguments at get togethers, people will not invite you back. Overall, it is polite to just allow for the ones who are passionate to express their beliefs. These beliefs extend to a certain point where they are saturated by an area. Friendships, by and large, are not chosen because of ideas or shared interests, they are largely formed and cultivated because of proximity. What good is it if you are a Democrat living in a fairly conservative area to express support for a Democratic candidate that you don’t feel passionate about? You may lose friends, lose invitations to neighborhood get togethers, or family get togethers. It is easier to just accept it. And to a certain point, you may bring that baggage in with you when you vote. You may not feel comfortable, necessarily, voting for Trump but you may just choose not to vote for Clinton. If that same area is heavily invested in the idea of keeping the repeal of the death penalty, you may accept it, too.

But it’s definitely worth exploring this area to see if it can be flipped. It’s certainly interesting.

Northwest Omaha

The last area in Douglas County that I spent a lot of time has been Northwest Omaha. There’s not any significant difference between most of West Omaha and Northwest Omaha. The main difference is that large portions of West Omaha are in the Millard School District and many of the high school graduates continue onto Millard University (University of Nebraska – Lincoln).

For the most part, I’ve designated Northwest Omaha as West of I-80 which is roughly 108^th St and North of Dodge St. I tried to not go too far north or west in order to not to run into Bennington or Elkhorn.

There were 37,771 votes cast for one of the four Presidential candidates.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes	19,228	16,327	1,818	398
% of votes cast	50.9	43.2	4.8	1.1

This is a pretty conservative area with the Presidential votes. But even still, there were a number of voters in the area that did not want to vote for Trump, for whatever reason, but would still want to vote for a Republican for Congress. There were 38,253 votes cast for one of the three Congressional candidates. So there were about 500 voters in the area who could not find it within themselves to vote for one of the four Presidential candidates. As we’ll see from their Congressional votes, there’s even more voters who did not feel comfortable voting for Trump at the top of the ticket. Here is their Congressional votes with the net votes.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	+1,037	+533	-690

There were a number of Ashford supporters who could not find it within themselves to vote for Clinton. The largest section, though, by far, was non Trump supporting Republicans.

There were a number of precincts in the area that Clinton won. Most of her victories were in the more Eastern part of the precinct. She won precincts 07-19 (120^th-125^th Dodge-Parker); 07-18 (104^th-118^th Dodge-Parker); 07-15 (104^th-122^nd Parker-Maple); 07-05 (108^th-120^th Hilltop-Fort); 07-09 (102^nd=108^th Maple-Fort); 07-02 (106^th-109^th Military-Newport); 07-25 (120^th-125^th Ohio-Maple); 07-10 (108^th-120^th Maple-Hilltop); 07-23 (90^th-96^th Maple-Boyd); 07-11 (120^th-132^nd Maple – Fort) and 07-03 109^th-120^th Fort-Redick). It is simply amazing to see the divide crop up between the Eastern part of NW Omaha compared to the rest of the precincts. There is a clear line between about 125^th and the rest of the area. Those areas have a high population of African-Americans. This area primarily goes to Burke High School. Even still, there is one precinct that also voted for Don Bacon.

These precincts cast 13,192 votes for one of the four Presidential candidates and 13,369 votes for one of the three Congressional candidates:

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes	5,675	6,624	717	176
% of votes	43.0	50.2	5.4	1.3

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
# of votes	5,901	6,932	536
% of votes	44.1	51.9	4.0
Net votes	+226	+308	-181

07-02: This precinct is located in the Northeast part of the precinct from 106^th-109^th Military-Newport. There were 1,278 votes cast for one of the four presidential candidates:

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes	578	624	68	8
% of votes cast	45.2	48.8	5.3	0.6

There were a few voters who could not bring themselves to vote for one of the four presidential candidate but who still voted for one of the three Congressional candidates. There were 1,298 votes cast for one of the three Congressional candidates. Here is how they voted with the candidates’ net votes.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	+64	-4	-32

Trump may not have been acceptable to a number of the voters there. But Bacon only won the precinct by 22 votes.

One of the nicer parts in all of Douglas County includes the neighborhood of Huntington Park. Houses in this neighborhood have an average list price of $375,000 and range from $275,000 – $500,000. When I think of the rich suburbs of NW Omaha, I think of Huntington Park. It is roughly west of 156^th and Blondo. The precinct that best encapsulates this area id 07-34 which is located from 156^th-162^nd Parker- Maple.

There were 1,002 votes cast in this precinct for one of the four Presidential candidates.

	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes	585	367	43	7
% of votes cast	58.4	36.6	4.3	0.7

As we see, this is a pretty conservative area. There were 1,030 votes cast for one of the three candidates running for Congress.

	Bacon	Ashford	Laird
Net votes	+80	-10	-25

In the nicer parts of Douglas County, time and time again, we see that the areas are very conservative but still have a problem voting for Trump. Maybe there is a social stigma with voting for Trump but they feel comfortable supporting Republicans, anyway. For many, party id simply outweighs social stigma.

LD31

State Senator Rick Kolowski represents this legislative district. It is located in Millard and parts of West Omaha. As I’ve mentioned a few times, Kolowski is a moderate in the unicameral who often takes progressive positions there. Thanks to the Daily Kos’s election team, we have some numbers about how this district voted in 2012. Based on my own research, I have the numbers for how this area voted in 2016.

According to the Daily Kos’s findings, they found that there were 19,579 votes cast in this legislative district. There were only 231 votes cast for one of the non two party candidates for President.

2012	Romney	Obama
# of votes	12,734	6,614
% of votes	65.0	33.8

There were more votes cast in 2016 in this legislative district despite what people assumed. There were 20,067 votes cast for one of the four Presidential candidates.

2016	Trump	Clinton	Johnson	Stein
# of votes	11,525	7,410	943	189
% of votes	57.4	36.9	4.7	0.9

There were a number of voters in this legislative district that did not feel comfortable voting for Trump after voting for Romney in 2012. Gary Johnson had a significant increase in his vote share, as did Jill Stein. Despite what we were told about Hillary Clinton’s extreme unpopularity, the one who seems to be hurt the most by their unpopularity was Donald Trump. Some journalists need to write about suburban voters who couldn’t find it in themselves to vote for Trump in November.

An inherent energy: Citizenship by birth

To make it easier to read, I’ve assembled my posts in this series in one spot. This took me a lot longer than I thought it would be. Hence the reference to President elect.

Citizenship by birth

If you are born in the United States, you are a citizen of the country, regardless of the citizenship status of your parents. This is known as jus soli (“right of soil). Advocates for ending birthright citizenship talk about moving the United States to the same doctrine as many of the other countries in the world to change citizenship based on the status of your parents, this is known as jus sanguinis (“right of blood”). This is why when an undocumented immigrant has a child here, the child is a citizen. This is the legal doctrine that creates the idea and derogatory term as “anchor baby.” According to the Pew Hispanic Center, about 340,000 babies in 2008 were born to those here illegally.

More recently, in the last few years, at least, there has been increased scrutiny on maternity hotels in the United States. This is where immigrants from other countries will come to the United States for the expressed purpose of having their child so that the child can gain citizenship in the United States. Even those opposed to ending birthright citizenship note how this causes an increased difficulty for mothers and babies because the babies might not be properly cared for.

Some seemingly moderate Republicans have a view on ending birthright citizenship, such as Judge Richard Posner and Senator Lindsey Graham or Rand Paul. All think that it would be better practice to end this immigration practice in an effort to curb immigration. But these views have mainly been on the fringes of the Republican Party and outside the mainstream of the Democratic Party, as well.

There are many reasons, looking back, where we should have known that the Republican Party, writ large, would captulate to their party’s nominee, whoever it was. The one that probably stood out the most at the time, that was undercovered was when Donald Trump talked about ending birthright citizenship. May of the Republicans who were running decided to try to appease the leader in the polls instead of standing up for what they previously thought was right.

The most egregious example of one of the candidates bending over backwards waas former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Jindal claimed his citizenship through his parents, almost explicitly through the idea of birthright citizenship. Jindal’s parents were not citizens but he was able to claim citizenship because of the fact that he was born in the United States.

Chris Christie and Scott Walker also came out in favor of ending birthright citizenship to gain favor with the Republican base that they needed to continue in their presidential runs.

Some of the Republican candidates had previous issues with the idea of birthright citizenship. This included the South Carolina Senator, Lindsey Graham, who once said that immigrants could “drop their babies and leave.”. This also included Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. Both of these Senators sponsored legislation ending birthright citizenship in the Senate.

The principled Conservative, John Kasich, previously supported ending birthright citizenship but ended up denouncing that end in his presidential run, this time around. He talked about reforming the immigration system that we have, including a path to citizenship for many of the undocumented immigrants, out there.

And some tried to hold strong to their values such as former Florida Governor, Jeb Bush and Florida Senator, Marco Rubio.

I’m not trying to pick on Republicans with this idea. Senator Harry Reid once offered up legislation to end birthright citizenship but over the course of the last 20 years, has moved from immigration hawk to an immigration reform advocate.

Ending birthright citizenship is not really an idea that can be laughed off, at this point. Republicans hold a trifecta in the federal government and will hold a majority on the Supreme Court once Trump puts his nomination through. Representative Steve King of Iowa will likely push his legislation of ending birthright citizenship the first day the House is in session, like he does seemingly every session, now.

The ending of birthright citizenship is a direct assault on the 14th Amendment of our Constitution that was passed at the end of the Civil War.

Because of this and because of the possibly high importance on this issue from both Congressional Republicans and the President elect, what I want to do is look at the history of birthright citizenship and why I think it is so important and ultimately talk about why the attacks on it are misguided and unfounded.

Rep. Steve King (IA-4) introduced H.R. 140, the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2017 on January 3, 2017. He has attracted 17 co-sponsors, so far. This bill, if passed, and enacted would only allow children born in the United States a citizen if they are born to at least one parent who is a citizen or national of the United States, a lawful permanent resident, or alien performing active service in the armed force. While President Donald Trump has talked about ending birthright citizenship, it is by no guarantee that this would pass the House much less make it through the Senate. Ultimately, the legislative filibuster is likely to be nuked, but I don’t believe this would be the legislation that causes the filibuster to die.

Birthright citizenship prior to the 14th Amendment

Strangely enough, the United States Constitution is remarkably silent on the issue of who is considered a citizen in the United States. It references citizenship in defining who is eligible to run for the House of Representatives, the Senate, and President of the United States. Our founding document did give the power to Congress to determine naturalization. While the constitution is silent on the issue of what makes a person a citizen, the courts routinely were able to use English common law to set a precedent for jus soli citizenship. Alexandra Wyatt wrote in her report for the Congressional Research Service titled “Birthright Citizenship and Children Born in the United States to Alien Parents: An Overview of the Legal Debate”, noted that the Supreme Court in Smith v. Alabama opined “[t]he interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, are to be read in the light of its history.” Wyatt found that in Inglis v. Sailor’s Snug Harbor, Justice Story wrote in a dissent (on other grounds) that “nothing is better settled at the common law than the doctrine that the children even of aliens born in a country, while the parents are resident there under the protection of the government, and owing a temporary allegiance thereto, are subjects by birth.” But these are not the best examples for a number of reasons to say that the case is settled. The New York Court case of Lynch v. Clarke was probably a better example.

Julia Lynch was born to Irish aliens during a “temporary sojourn” in 1819. She, with her parents, departed to their native country and lived there continuously from then on. The court was asked to rule on the claim of Julia Lynch, if she was a citizen, because if she was, she was set to inherit real estate. Her father did not state any intention of becoming a citizen of the United States and even though he had a daughter while in the United States, they had no real intention of staying. They moved back to Ireland. The New York Court held that Julia Lynch was a citizen of the United States. In the opinion, the justice wrote “the right of citizenship, as distinguished from alienage, is a national right or condition. It pertains to the confederated sovereignty, the United States; and not to the individual states…the policy and the legislation of the American Colonies, from their earliest times until the Revolution was adapted to foster immigration, and to bestow upon foreigners all the rights of natural born subjects…the uniform course was to extend, not to abridge, the right of citizenship.” The justice continued until ultimately concluding “I can entertain no doubt, but that by the law of the United States, every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United Stats, whatever were the situation of his parents, is a natural born citizen.”

In one of the most infamous rulings in the United States Supreme Court’s history, the Taney court, in Dred Scott opined that the class of citizenship could not be given to descendants of slaves and to people of African descent, in general. The Dred Scott case is one of the worst decisions that the Supreme Court has issued and is rarely cited as any precedent outside of hiding in Shelby County v. Holder and by Trump confidante and anti-birthright citizenship crusader Kris Kobach. After the Civil War, which more or less repudiated the decision in Dred Scott, it was still up to Congress to determine who could be naturalized and become a citizen.

Civil Rights Act of 1866

After the Civil War, there was a question of what would happen with the now freed slaves. The Civil War freed them but the rights of the freed slaves were not immediately clear. Nor was it clear how they should be protected.

Proceeding the 14th Amendment, Congress worked to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866. In a Congressional Research Service report titled Birthright Citizenship and Children Born in the United States to Alien Parents, Legislative Attorney Alexandra M. Wyatt researched the debates from the Congressional Globe for the session in 1866. Wyatt reports the following from this debate:

Senator Edgar Cowan, often cited by modern opponents of birthright citizenship–objected to the citizenship provision by asking whether “it will not have the effect of naturalizing the children of the Chinese and Gypsies born in this country.” Senator Trumbull stated that it would, “undoubtedly.” As Trumbull stated clearly in the face of Cowan’s xenophobic remarks, “the child of an Asiatic is just as much a citizen as the child of a European.” Echoing Trumbull’s definitive statement, Senator Morrill asked the Congress, “As a matter of law, does anybody deny here or anywhere that the native born is a citizen, and a citizen by birth alone?” Morrill cited,” the grand principle both of nature and nations, both of law and politics, that the native born is a citizen, and a citizen by virtue of his birth alone.” To erase any doubt, he went on to state that “birth by its inherent energy and force gives citizenship.”

President Andrew Johnson who had ascended to the presidency because of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Johnson noted in his veto message his understanding of the citizenship clause of the bill. He wrote that “every individual of those races, born in the United States, is by the bill made a citizen of the United States.” Because Andrew Johnson was a terrible president, he vetoed the bill.

Undeterred by the President’s veto, Congress overrode the veto and two months later, Congress moved forward with making the citizenship clause permanent in the 14th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment

Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan was the one who proposed the language of the citizenship clause. In his explanation, he said that the clause would declare “that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States.”

Senator Edgar Cowan opposed Howard’s citizenship language because he agreed that it would give citizenship to children born of foreign aliens on US soil. His fear was that it would increase the number of Chinese in California and Gypsies in Pennsylvania.

I’ll pause here. The fears of Gypsy immigrants and Chinese immigrants are comparable to the fearmongering that we currently have over immigrants from Latin America and to a certain extent the fear of refugees from war-torn Middle East countries. The charges of immigrants stealing jobs was explicit with Chinese immigrants, specifically. This eventually led to the Chinese Exclusion Acts. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first exclusionary law that our country passed. I would argue that prior to this law, there was no illegal immigration. While Gypsy immigrants were not typically referred to as jobs-stealers, they were often attacked for not being sufficiently American and were fairly regularly discriminated against.

Senator Cowan’s objection to the Citizenship Clause was understood to be factually accurate. Further, other Senators argued that making these children was a matter of sound policy. Senator John Conness of California:

The proposition before us…relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens…I am in favor of doing so…We are entirely ready to accept the provision proposed in this constitutional amendment, that the children-born here of Mongolian parents shall be declared by the Constitution of the United States to be entitled to civil rights and to equal protection before the law with others.

Of course, there are some who would jump on the debates of the 14th Amendment to show that children of undocumented immigrants would not be citizens. They argue that Senator Howard when proposing the citizenship clause made a mistake to prove that they are correct. He noted that the amendment would

not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.

This seems damning to my argument. Except, if we look at it. Elizabeth Wydra, in her report, Born Under the Constitution: Why Recent Atacks on Birthright Citizenship are Unfounded, notes that it doesn’t make the argument anti-citizenship clause proponents make. In her report, she argues that this is not a list of several categories of excluded persons because he did not say, foreigners, aliens, or families of diplomats.

Instead what Senator Howard was arguing, which was part of the debate at the time, is that diplomats and ambassadors while being physically here remain in their home country. This is the concept behind diplomatic immunity. Even if, as Wydra notes, it is a legal fiction.

She may get this term from a debate regarding the citizenship clause. Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio, during an argument about who would not be automatically granted citizenship said the following:

I know that is so in one instance, in the case of the children of foreign ministers who reside ‘near’ the United States, in the diplomatic language…By a fiction of law such persons are not supposed to be residing here here, under that fiction of law their children would not be citizens of the United States.

The arguments surrounding the 14th Amendment do not seem to indicate that the children of foreign aliens should not be citizens. Further, as we’ll see, by making it an actual Amendment to the Constitution, they were trying to protect citizens from the whims of a majority controlled Congress to revoke citizenship.

Based on the arguments from the Congressional Globe, Wyatt argues that “the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment believed that providing citizenship to persons born in the United States, without regard to race or color was a long-overdue fulfillment of the promise of inalienable freedom and liberty in the Declaration of Independence.” We do not put inalienable freedoms put to a vote. As the Senators argued when they passed it, the 14th Amendment was intended to establish “a constitutional right that cannot be wrested from any class of citizens, or from the citizens of any State by mere legislation.”

Birthright citizenship after the 14th Amendment

During the arguments of the 14th Amendment, there were many arguments about the potential for a rise in immigration. Many were afraid that some immigrants would try to come here specifically to get the citizenship status of the United States. This was not an unforeseeable problem, as some has suggested. The Framers of this Amendment argued that legislation by itself would not be enough to revoke the 14th Amendment because it is an inalienable right.

The discussion of the constitutionality of revoking birthright citizenship is largely predicated on the Supreme Court case of Wong Kim Ark v. United States.

Wong Kim Ark

A lot of this section comes from Charting the Future by John Semonche. Wong Kim Ark was born in 1873 in San Francisco to Chinese parents. The family continued to live there until 1890. At that point, he and his parents left for China. Wong Kim Ark returned to the United States in 1890 and was admitted on the claim that he was a natural born citizen of the United States. He went to and back from China in 1891 and was barred from entry upon his return.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law by President Chester Arthur in May of 1882. This was the first major piece of immigration legislation that was passed and signed to halt immigration. Prior to this law, there were not any major immigration laws. Some on the right even admit that there was not any immigration laws prior to this legislation. The law would effectively bar immigration from China for 10 years and prevent Chinese from being citizen. It was extended through the Geary Act of 1892 for another 10 years and was made permanent in 1902.

Under the Chinese Exclusion Act, Wong Kim Ark was barred from entry. This case eventually found its way to the Supreme Court. Justice Horace Gray became the justice to save the case for Wong Kim Ark. Justice Gray began to look at the claim of citizenship against the wording of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment. Then he began to look at what the rule of citizenship was prior to the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment. He saw in the Constitution the phrase natural born citizen without any sort of definition of what it actually meant. Justice Gray began to look for the examples of common law.

After a while, he was able to locate a principle where the birth within the jurisdiction of the king conferred nationality, with only children born to foreign diplomats and to enemy aliens being excepted. Working through that, Justice Gray stated that this rule was in force in all of the British colonies, he argued that at the time of the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution, that this principle was continuing at that point.

Justice Gray did face a dilemma, though. The purpose of the Amendment, according to some at the time, was that it was largely focused on race and granting citizenship to freed slaves. This is, still, part of the argument today. Justice Gray noted that all members of the Supreme Court in 1873, clearly recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment related to place and jurisdiction of birth and not to race or color. He went further citing the opinions of Attorneys General since the time of the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment that consistently find that birth within the country confers citizenship.

Justice Gray still had to deal with the pesky issue of being able to stop natualization based on race, as the Supreme Court found that to be a constitutional act of Congress, and being to stop citizenship. Justice Gray wrote in his opinion that Congress could confer citizenship but not take it away. If they were allowed to take citizenship away, he wrote, “it would be i nthe power of Congress, at any time, by striking negros out of the naturalization laws, and limiting those laws, as they were formerly limited, to white persons only, to defeat the main purpose of the Constitutional Amendment.”

While there has not been a court case that directly challenges the 14th Amendment, there have been court cases that affirms the citizenship clause and the idea behind birthright citizenship. Further, any legislation that targets specific nationalities or tries to revoke already held citizenship by children of immigrants would not be constitutional.

In 1982, Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court found that the 14th Amendment extends anyone “who is subject to the laws of a state.” This case was brought because the state of Texas was withholding funds for children who were not legally admitted and permitted schools to deny enrollment to children who were not legally admitted. In a 1985 case, INS v. Rios-Pineda, the court found that a child born on U.S. soil to an undocumented immigrant was a U.S. citizen from birth.

The consequences of ending birthright citizenship

Margaret Stock in a paper for Cato, argued that birthright citizenship is arguably the reason that the United States has become the superpower that we are. Without birthright citizenship, thousands of children who are born by undocumented immigrants or who otherwise are illegally in the United States would become stateless. These children will have no ties to any one country. They will likely be deported, at our expense. If they are not deported, they will be able to attend school through high school. Again, at our expense.

Upon graduating high school, they will be unable to join the workforce in an official way. They will not be able to go to college. They will not be able to serve in the military. They will not be able to start their businesses or receive bank loans. They will not be able to contribute to Social Security, Medicaid, or other payroll taxes. They will not pay federal income taxes.

Losing these taxpayers will be significant because there will be a larger bureaucracy that would handle the birth of children as different classes of citizens. Currently, I can present my birth certificate or certificate of live birth to be able to claim that I am a citizen. This is issued by a state or local government. In order to ensure that my child is a citizen, I will have to present this information as well as my partner’s to ensure that we receive the birth certificate and eventually the Social Security Number and Card. Who will I present this information to, though? Will it be presented to my OBGYN? The birthing team? Will I have to prove this to the Social Security Administration? Or Health and Human Services? What information is going to be safeguarded to ensure that my documentation is not fraudulent? What if the father of a child with an undocumented immigrant mother turns out to be someone different than who is listed? Will citizenship be revoked, if not, what mechanisms are in place to ensure it is not?

This is an undue burden on those of color and who are poor. Millions of people in the United States will be flagged as illegally being here or have questions about the eligibility. They will disproportionately have to prove their citizenship to confer the rights of citizenship to their children.

Further, for those who are here via illegal immigration, whether it is undocumented immigration or overstaying of the visa or what have you, this could potentially move them to have their children away from hospitals and to be at home to not be subjected to discriminatory laws or enforcement of immigration laws. This could potentially lead to the deaths of many children and mothers.

As it stands, the revocation of birthright citizenship is ahistorical, immoral, and unconstitutional. The idea of not conferring citizenship by birth is not in the traditions of the United States and goes against the blatant text of the Constitution to assauge misguided fears of immigrants stealing jobs or being criminals.

I will not stand for it.

A More Perfect Union

Category: Policy

Some NDAA Amendments

The Hartzler Amendment

Don Bacon: Pro life

ENLIST and BRIDGE

Repealing the estate tax

Mandatory E-Verify

The unicameral scorecard

One easy trick to help our electoral process

A precinct level look at Douglas County

An inherent energy: Citizenship by birth

Menu