Enlighten Me

Rodney Crouther (00:07):
Hi, welcome to a new season of Enlighten Me. This is Rodney Crouther.

Eddie Sanchez (00:10):
And this is Eddie Sanchez.

Rodney Crouther (00:11):
And it's not just a new season for Enlighten Me. We're heading to another important season that's not related to sports.

Eddie Sanchez (00:17):
Yeah, it's a new season for America too.

Rodney Crouther (00:19):
Yeah, it's election season folks. I'm sure it's not news to anybody if you're paying attention at all.

Eddie Sanchez (00:25):
Yeah, there has been a lot going on in the news, a lot of interesting events, some very historical events. This is definitely a monumental voting season for everybody, and in class that's something that I've been talking to the students about a little bit. This is for a lot of our freshmen, this is their first time having the opportunity to vote, especially at the federal level. And so that's something that I've been like, "Hey, go out there, get registered to make sure you participate because this is important." It's always going to be important, and it's just as important this season as ever before.

Rodney Crouther (00:58):
With that in mind, I thought for this month we would make voting our subject, and I thought a good way to approach this topic to be to look at the history of voting. I think it's changed a little bit since the Constitution was ratified more than 200 years ago,

Eddie Sanchez (01:11):
And I'm sure that we have a lot of faculty who are very invested in the history of voting. Were you able to find somebody that could speak a little bit more to the details of it all?

Rodney Crouther (01:21):
Oh, absolutely. I went to our wonderful political science department, and I talked to Dr. Michael Faber.

Michael Faber (01:28):
My name's Michael Faber. I'm an associate professor of political science.

Rodney Crouther (01:34):
So tell me a little bit about your background. How'd you get interested in the history of voting?

Michael Faber (01:37):
Well, my interest in history kind of stems from my interest in politics. I mean, they go together for me, but I remember, I can actually pinpoint exactly when it happened because the first presidential election I followed really closely was the 1992 elections. I was 12 years old at the time, but I was absolutely enamored of Ross Perot, the independent candidate

Rodney Crouther (02:01):
From Texas.

Michael Faber (02:02):
From Texas. Yeah, he was unusual. He was always entertaining, and in retrospect, I'm not convinced he was necessarily a great candidate, but at the time, I found him really interesting in part because he was doing something that others hadn't really done. He was really trying to break out of the two party system, and I became a lot more aware of this idea of third parties and some of the things involved there. But my older brother and I, my brother was 14, I was 12. We watched that election really closely, and Ross Perot used to have these, he would buy up blocks of airtime and put on these infomercials. It was just him with some charts explaining politics and policies to the American people. And my brother and I watched every one of those. He released two campaign books. We bought both and read them. We followed that campaign really closely. We were trying to convince our parents to vote for Perot. I think we convinced one of the two. But —

Rodney Crouther (03:00):
Effective lobby.

Michael Faber (03:01):
Yeah. Well, my dad has always been coy about who he voting for in that election. But at any rate, from that point, I was kind of hooked. I was fascinated by politics. I was fascinated by really all aspects of it. And I started to really learn a little bit more about the history, about how we got to the point of Ross Perot and what he represented. And from there, I mean, I started really studying politics a little bit back in high school. By the time I went to college, I decided to study political science and didn't really want to leave college. So I ended up getting a Ph.D. and teaching primarily American politics, a little bit of political theory as well.

Rodney Crouther (03:40):
I think a lot of us who grew up in America take for granted that America was founded on the principle of citizens get to choose their own leader in this nation. Was it just that simple at the beginning that every adult citizen could cast a vote for leadership of their city or the nation?

Michael Faber (03:56):
Well, no. By modern standards, the voting was very, very restricted initially. But by the standards of the day, it was actually very, very open. The American founders did believe in democracy, broadly speaking. It wasn't quite universal suffrage or not particularly close to it.

Eddie Sanchez (04:12):
Hey, Rodney, so we often hear the word suffrage in politics. Can you explain to our audience just what that means?

Rodney Crouther (04:18):
Yeah, I can't go deep on the etymology of the word suffrage, but it essentially means the right to vote in political elections.

Michael Faber (04:25):
But the idea that at least adult white property owning males should all have some say in their elections was fairly widespread. Obviously, there's several categories that need to be opened up over time.

Rodney Crouther (04:37):
Certainly.

Michael Faber (04:38):
But the suffrage at the time was wider really than had been seen almost anywhere in the history of the world at that point.

Eddie Sanchez (04:45):
So historically, we are not the first country to have invented voting. This has been going on for millennia. Does he talk about some of the voting history from ancient times?

Rodney Crouther (04:57):
Yeah, he does, and we definitely do it uniquely, but there are definitely some ancient roots to voting.

Michael Faber (05:04):
Well, there's not many, at least with broad suffrage. I mean, there were parts of Greece and Rome that where voting was permitted. Of course, in Rome, only citizens of Rome itself were generally permitted to vote. The various conquered territories did not really get any say in their leaders. Greece had very, in particular city states like Athens had very particular voting rules. And again, it was very, very restricted that really only the upper classes got to vote. There have been a few points in European history before the United States that voters were able to help choose their leaders, but certainly nothing on the scale of what the American founders are trying to do.

Rodney Crouther (05:46):
I would guess that would be more similar to ancient Greece like the aristocracy.

Michael Faber (05:51):
Yeah, and it was often isolated pockets, essentially for local voting, but it was almost always just the upper classes that had any say.

Rodney Crouther (05:58):
How did that affect the way the voting would develop here that the idea that suffrage was something that maybe shouldn't just be for a select few? How did that idea grow to something similar to what we have today?

Michael Faber (06:10):
Well, the people in the American colonies, by and large, were very independent minded and very focused on the idea of self-government. They almost universally believed in the idea that people should be able to essentially chart their own course. And that's part of the reason they came over here. They were feeling, in many cases, they were feeling stifled by political processes in Europe as well as of course, religious persecution, number of other things. And so most of, at least white European settlers came over with this idea that they really ought to have a say. And anyone who questioned that tended to not do very well in American politics. Those who were more democratic in their inclinations tended to be more popular, and it became, so the idea of voting, not everyone voting yet. The idea of voting catches on very quickly, but over time, essentially what we see is various groups that do not have voting rights start to demand them, and those demands start to be heard in different ways for different groups.

Rodney Crouther (07:16):
I remember from my own middle school history learning that in early America, you had to be a landowner to cast a vote.

Michael Faber (07:23):
Well, it depends on where, different states had different rules as far as property ownership, but those property ownership rules actually largely fell by the wayside in the early 19th century.

Rodney Crouther (07:33):
So pretty quickly.

Michael Faber (07:34):
By the time we get to the mid 19th century, get to the beginning of the Civil War, property ownership requirements, they're not non-existent, but they're a lot more lax, a lot lighter than they were at the time of the founders. And in fact, new Western states as they joined, tended to have very, very loose rules and allow, again, most white male adults to vote in their elections.

Rodney Crouther (07:59):
As we moved into the 20th century, is that when we first started seeing other groups other than white male Europeans?

Michael Faber (08:07):
Well, it's actually shortly after the Civil War is where we start to see a big suffrage movement. Actually right before the Civil War, we see the beginnings of the women's suffrage movement, which of course takes 80 years to actually succeed with the 19th Amendment. But the women's suffrage movement starts to push for women's rights to vote even prior to the Civil War, and they're not making much progress at that point. But after the Civil War, after the adoption of the 13th and 14th amendments, there's a strong push to make sure that African Americans are able to vote, and in particular to also guarantee that former slaves are not denied their right to vote. Again, we're talking adult males. Women are kind of set aside for the moment. In fact, there is a bit of a clash between the civil rights movement at that moment and the women's rights movement because a lot of women's activists felt that they should tackle two things at once, that an amendment granting suffrage to African American men should extend to women as well of women of any race. And so when that doesn't work, there's enough political will to pass the 15th Amendment and at least constitutionally guarantee the franchise to African American voters. Women kind of get set aside again. And so it takes quite a while for that issue to come up again and really get the momentum in order to adopt voting for women nationwide.

Rodney Crouther (09:37):
And that makes me think of another thing. I think we tend to think of the key dates and the eras where these movements start, but some of these discussions actually were going on in pockets and places in the 1700s. I think I remember letters from John Adams' wife pointing out that you guys are making lots of speeches in Philadelphia about freedom while two thirds of the people on this continent aren't free.

Michael Faber (10:03):
Yeah, there's a wonderful exchange between John and Abigail Adams while John is at the second Continental Congress and they're building up towards the Declaration of Independence, and there's talk about having to create a new national government. Now, John Adams was by modern standards, we'd probably call him a feminist. I mean, he really did see, I mean more feminist than most of his contemporary, most of his contemporaries. Anyway, he did see the importance of educating women. He did very much respect the opinions of his wife. In fact, his wife became probably his primary advisor during his presidency. But she wrote to him a letter which was, it was tongue in cheek, but there was something, some seriousness behind it, which she advised him to remember the ladies. And he wrote back with, again, very much a playful tone saying, we don't dare give women the right to vote because they would dominate the men.

(11:00):
The men would have a chance then. And I mean, given the context, if you read the words on paper, it sounds bad. Given the context and understanding the relationship, it is very clearly sort of a playful nod to the fact that there's no way politically that's going to happen anytime soon. But I mean, even then there are people clamoring for women to have the right to vote when the founding generations debating the Constitution. There is talk about extending votes to women, but again, there just isn't nearly enough support to make it happen by the late 1800s, some of the Western states, I believe Wyoming was the first actually start to grant the vote to women.

Rodney Crouther (11:41):
I did not know that.

Michael Faber (11:43):
The Constitution leaves it up to the states to decide who can vote, decide what the requirements are, and the only limitations that come in there are the amendments that guarantee votes to certain people. And also the Constitution specifically says that voting for members of Congress cannot be any more restrictive than voting for the state legislature. So states can't have a more open voting process for the legislature and less open for Congress. But some of the Western states, and again, I believe it was Wyoming was the first, and there were several others that adopted this in the late 1800s, did actually extend the franchise to women before the 19th Amendment. And that's part of what helped the 19th, 19th Amendment get passed because it became clear that there wasn't anything apocalyptic going on here, giving women the right to vote was not causing rifts in society. It was not leading to any kind of ridiculous legislative outcomes. Women in general were not getting elected to office, but that helps to assuage some of those fears, really undefined fears about what's going to happen if women get the right to vote.

Rodney Crouther (12:49):
Why Wyoming? Was there something particular happening in Wyoming at the time that?

Michael Faber (12:54):
Well, it may be hard to think of it this way today, but the Western states in general were at the time very progressive. I mean, they were very pro-democratic. The Western states were often some of the first to adopt direct democracy measures, allow the people to vote directly on laws via ballots, and just in general having a broader idea of civil rights and the rights of people. So it was just part of the built-in culture out there. Part of what happens in the whole frontier area is it becomes very clear that, I mean, women are doing a lot of the work, the homesteading and everything else, and they very much are part of social and economic life, and it seemed just seemed logical to make them part of civic life as well.

Rodney Crouther (13:44):
I guess in the area that we would then refer to as the American frontier. The people that are there initially aren't bound by as many of the institutions that they left behind back on the East Coast or the Midwest.

Michael Faber (13:57):
A lot of the frontier settlers actually took pride in rejecting some certain old traditions. They felt like they could kind of carve out their own way, and they weren't bound by the way things had been done in the past. Now in general, they adopted the same kinds of institutions. They weren't that radical in the changes they made, but they certainly were not going to, refused to do something just because it hadn't been done before. If they thought it made sense, they would adopt those kinds of policies. And again, we see that with votes for women, we see this with direct democracy. There was a certain radicalism there, which is interesting. I don't think we generally think of Western states as more progressive states today.

Rodney Crouther (14:37):
Even though we think of a lot of our rights being set in the Constitution. We've been working out a lot of these ideals over the last two centuries plus a few decades.

Michael Faber (14:46):
And if you look at American history as a whole, what we see really is a story of continual progress towards that ideal, more popular involvement, more people brought into the system. Now there's setbacks, there's a lot of setbacks. And looking back during the founding era, we were really far away from universal suffrage. We were really far away from an idea of the people really ruling. And you can argue that even today, popular involvement in government maybe is not what we want it to be, depending on how you want to look at it. But if you look again at history as a whole and kind of smooth out some of those rough edges, it is a general trend towards more democracy, towards more popular involvement. And there's lots of different examples of that that we see over time

Rodney Crouther (15:31):
Each of these movements to kind of expand voting rights with the women's suffrage movement in the late 1800s, and then later on, the movement for non-whites to have the right to vote all started way before the flash points where they actually happen.

Michael Faber (15:48):
So the way this works, and a lot of people don't really understand how this worked originally because I think the way we teach this history is a little off, but at the Constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787, there's discussion of how to apportion seats in the House. It's basically just seats in the House we're talking about because electoral votes draw from that. But this question of how to apportion seats in the House, it wasn't necessarily going to be by population. There was some talk of dividing up representation based on net property value, for example, which would've been extraordinarily difficult to calculate. So I'm not sure exactly how that would've worked, but it was suggested, but when it came to population, the question was, well, how do we count slaves? Obviously the slaves are not going to be allowed to vote at this point, but the question is, do they count as property or people, which of course today is an extraordinarily offensive question, but —

Rodney Crouther (16:41):
Right.

Michael Faber (16:41):
At the time was very central to how they were going to do this. And the compromise they settled on was not in any way a principled compromise. It was essentially just meeting somewhere in the middle. It was that three fifths of slaves would count towards the population for the purpose of apportionment, but they wouldn't vote. And so the votes of Southern white landholders were magnified by that, which was probably part of the price of the Constitution being ratified. In the absence of that, chances are the Southern states do not agree to it, and everything kind of falls apart. So it was very much a pragmatic and not principled approach there, which is the case for actually a lot of the Constitution. If you stop and look at it from a philosophical standpoint, it doesn't hold together that well. There's a hodgepodge of different things, but what happens is over the first half century here of the United States, under of the Constitution is that counting three fifths of slaves starts to have a substantial impact, particularly on presidential elections, also on congressional decision making. Although the South starts to become very much outnumbered in the House of Representatives. Despite that, they lean on the Senate very heavily, where for a long time there's an even split of free states and slave states. And so a lot of the slavery battles are taking place there instead of the House, because the North is a majority in the House, even though you have that representative difference.

Rodney Crouther (18:10):
Right, that's where you get all the fights leading up to the Civil War. Over each new state admitted to the union, whether or not it's slave or free.

Michael Faber (18:17):
Every single new state became a fight. And in fact, what became the standard practice was to admit one free state and one slave state at the same time. And that isn't broken until California's admitted in 1850, at which point the South essentially demands, since it's a new free state coming in, essentially demands a whole lot of concessions, including a much stronger fugitive slave clause. And essentially some promises that Congress is not going to interfere in slavery.

Rodney Crouther (18:46):
I don't mean to be reductive, but deciding who gets to vote and who gets how many representatives is really kind of underpins a lot of the evolution of us as a nation.

Michael Faber (18:57):
Oh, yeah. It is very much tied to just about everything that comes later. Of course, the three fifths clause becomes irrelevant once slavery has ended, and former slaves are now entitled to vote. But that, I mean, the battle over representation actually continues pretty substantially because one of the funny things about, one of the unusual things about that post-Civil war era is by ending slavery and effectively getting rid of the three-fifths clause, the South actually got more representation because now these former slaves are being counted instead of three-fifths of them. And so representation for the South actually increased considerably, and the Southern states took measures to try to prevent former slaves and African Americans in general from voting and very successful measures in terms of keeping them out of that process. We don't really see that change for another century after that.

Eddie Sanchez (20:00):
Rodney, so there were a lot of concepts that you guys talked about that I was not really completely clear about previously. But then after hearing this conversation, it really brought everything into, I guess, clearer view for me, especially the three-fifths of a man concept. I always perceived it in a certain way, but the way that he explained everything, it made more sense to me in that way. So I appreciated that part of you guys' conversation for sure.

Rodney Crouther (20:24):
Yeah, I mean, he really brought home that how who gets to vote, how many seats there are for each state, and Congress has really driven a lot of American history and American politics for good and bad, and people have used that for good and bad and tried to leverage it. I was particularly fascinated by him pointing out that the out actually counting African Americans as whole people benefited the South as far as the representation in Congress. That's something you don't really think about when you're talking about—

Eddie Sanchez (20:56):
Yeah, that was an interesting point.

Rodney Crouther (20:57):
Civil War and pre-Civil War politics.

Eddie Sanchez (20:59):
And then how they were essentially provided them more power in a sense, the South more power, but also they tried to inhibit the people that would give them that power in a lot of ways.

Rodney Crouther (21:10):
Literally trying to have your cake and eat it too.

Eddie Sanchez (21:12):
Yeah, exactly. So besides the voting history in America, were you able to talk to anybody else about voting across the world?

Rodney Crouther (21:19):
Yeah, actually, that's exactly what I went into next. We're not the only country that votes today for certain, and elections in other countries, particularly some of our neighbors, can have a big impact on life in America.

Eddie Sanchez (21:33):
Who did you get a chance to speak with about that?

Paul Hart (21:37):
My name is Paul Hart, professor of history, director of the Center for International Studies.

Rodney Crouther (21:43):
What drew you to that particular field?

Paul Hart (21:46):
Good question. When I was younger, I was interested in a lot of different things. I eventually got a degree in history, and then I ended up with a Ph.D. in history, and I was interested in Latin America. I was informed by a lot of the social movements taking place in back in the day, and so then I ended up studying Mexico. And then international studies has always been attractive to me. I was curious about international law and was always considering that as a career trajectory. And so when I was able to still do history but also migrate over international studies, it was kind of the best of both worlds. And so I jumped at that opportunity and now I get to study Latin America more broadly in contemporary ways, not just in history.

Rodney Crouther (22:30):
This month we're talking about voting, obviously in America in an election year and a presidential election year. What happens in other countries also affects things in America, and I think sometimes we get nearsighted in our country and only think about elections here, but other countries, many of our neighbors also have some form of representative democracy, even if it's not a mirror image of our own. Could you tell us a little bit about how representative democracy kind of evolved and looks in Latin America?

Paul Hart (23:00):
So right now, this year is obviously a big election year here in the United States, but there are two other major elections that just took place recently in Latin America, one in Venezuela, which is super problematic and a little bit difficult to discuss because it's hard to get to verifiable facts. And the other one's in Mexico where the first woman president of Mexico was elected. Matter of fact, the two leading candidates were both women. So that was a major shift in the Mexican political landscape.

Rodney Crouther (23:33):
How does the structure of the Mexican system compare to Americans? I think a lot of Americans struggle to understand how voting works here sometimes.

Paul Hart (23:41):
Right? Yeah. Particularly with the good old electoral college.

Rodney Crouther (23:45):
Yes.

Paul Hart (23:46):
Where you kind of think "one person, one vote," however, you could have more votes than me and I could still win. So yeah, every system has its quirks. In Mexico, the movement for democracy came about, and I'll try and make this super succinct, but they had a revolution from 1910 to 1920, more or less, and out of that came a party that coalesced the various factions and major parts of societies and the PRI party of the institutionalized revolution, which is obviously kind of oxymoronic ruled for about 70 years in Mexico. And so Mexico had what they call a one party democracy. So obviously it wasn't particularly democratic right? Then in around, oh gosh, the late in the 1980s, there was a strong push to correct the situation of the one party rule.

Rodney Crouther (24:45):
An opposition developed?

Paul Hart (24:46):
An opposition developed from both the right and the left, and eventually the PAN, which is the party that leans to the right, the more conservative party, won an election with Vicente Fox becoming president in the year 2000. And from then on, Mexico's had a very functioning, if initially fragile democracy and the PAN. So the right leaning party and the old standard bearing party that presented itself as an umbrella basically traded elections, kind of conspired to marginalize the party on the left, which they never let win elections. Then that led to most recently the creation of a new party called the Movement of National Regeneration or Morena in Spanish, led by a guy named Lopez Obrador, who goes by AMLO for short. It's just his initials. And then that party is just a coalescence of a bunch of center and left-leaning parties like the Green Party and whatnot, and they've emerged, displaced the PRI and emerged as the dominant party in Mexico.

Eddie Sanchez (26:08):
So I have a little bit of familiarity with the Mexican governing system, but I'm wondering about the rest of Latin America if their system is patterned after Americas.

Paul Hart (26:19):
Yes. Most democracies in the Western Hemisphere are patterned on the United States more so than Europe, and most of them are presidential with a bicameral legislatures. In Venezuela, they moved to, they thought it was more populous and representative to get rid of the higher house like the Senate, and so they consolidated into one, and there's a lot of resistance to that.

Rodney Crouther (26:46):
And I know many Latin American countries went through revolutions just as we did. So the idea of people taking control of the leadership of government is still one that's —

Paul Hart (26:58):
Yeah, that's a good question. How deeply rooted is the democratic ideal in Latin America? There's not a really, it's a much more recent phenomenon because there've been so many coups. There's been foreign interference. There have been democratically elected governments that have been overthrown with outside involvement.

Rodney Crouther (27:19):
Yeah, I think that's a whole ’nother podcast.

Paul Hart (27:20):
That is a whole other podcast. And so there's a history of dictatorship and

Rodney Crouther (27:26):
Different ways that still looking at things that people think are essential for them to live their lives as they would like.

Paul Hart (27:33):
That brings me to the recent election

(27:35):
And the victory of Claudia Sheinbaum by such a large margin, and what Morena seemed, what they offer. I'm not sure what they deliver exactly, because they've only been in power six years now. They'll have another six. I think after that, you can probably judge it a little more, but they claim to want to separate political power and economic power because traditionally, the elite have had such a say in Mexican politics since the World War II, and Morena was able under AMLO to reduce poverty, double the minimum wage. So now the Mexican minimum wage is 85% higher than inflation. And so for example, if you work at Texas State and you're staff or faculty and you get your full 3% raise, that puts you just a pinch behind inflation. So they've been able to redistribute some wealth in a democratic way, which is not easy to do.

Rodney Crouther (28:41):
Yeah, since Mexico is one of our closest neighbors, our closest neighbor to Texas, of course. Would you say it's really important for us to be a little more aware and interested in what happens in Mexican politics?

Paul Hart (28:54):
Yeah. We talk a lot about China, I notice here in American politics, but our number one trading partner is Mexico. We share almost 2,000 mile border, and Mexican Americans represent the largest minority group. So yeah, whatever happens in Mexico is really important to the United States.

Rodney Crouther (29:16):
And you said you've traveled there a lot, and just kind of from a community level, do you see the same around elections? Do you see the same kind of get out the vote grassroots mobilization that we see here?

Paul Hart (29:26):
Oh, massive. Absolutely. Yes.

Rodney Crouther (29:28):
So that's not a uniquely American experience.

Paul Hart (29:30):
No, actually, it's much more in your face in Mexico, so maybe slightly less on the, no, just as prevalent on the media, but really on walls, street corners, giant things, painted and plastered everywhere of candidates, images, their names, slogans.

Rodney Crouther (29:54):
That's kind of like brand marketing right here now, where you'd see Nike when you're in a urban environment plastered on the side of a building.

Paul Hart (30:00):
Or a billboard. So it's extremely prevalent in Mexico. And then grassroots, get out the vote, door to door just on the ground is huge.

Rodney Crouther (30:12):
We'll be right back after this.

Eddie Sanchez (30:24):
So that was really interesting, Rodney, how Dr. Hart talked about how Mexico and other Latin American countries kind of paralleled the American system of democracy. I really wasn't aware of those things.

Rodney Crouther (30:34):
Yeah, I think we can be proud that the American experiment that started in the 1700s really did inspire a lot of other democracies.

Eddie Sanchez (30:43):
One thing I'm really interested in learning in this conversation is the real importance of voting, because a lot of times in my classroom, I have students who feel like they really don't have a say in politics, and their vote really doesn't count for very much.

Rodney Crouther (30:57):
Yeah. I actually had the same question, and I did talk to Dr. Faber about that, and he had some strong evidence that no, your vote, each and every vote really does matter.

(31:12):
Since we are coming up to a major election, could you tell us, give us some examples of why the phrase is really true, that every vote matters, your vote matters. Are there some cases where elections at any level came down to just a couple of votes?

Michael Faber (31:26):
Well, if we started at the presidential level, I mean, we have, for the last few election cycles, we've had historically relatively close presidential elections. Now, it doesn't always feel close. It doesn't come down to one or two votes.

(31:38):
It comes down to a few thousand here or there. But because of the way the system is set up with the electoral college, a few votes in one state can be decisive, even if that's not the decisive factor in the popular vote. For example, I mean, if we look back in 2020, if you just flip a few states, and these are states that were decided by 10, 15,000 votes out of hundreds of thousands cast, if we flip just a few states, the election goes the other way. You go back to 2016, same thing. Neither Biden nor Trump had a commanding electoral college victory. Those are both relatively close, but even historically speaking, we've had much closer than that as well. The classic examples, the 2000 election, everyone,

Rodney Crouther (32:20):
Oh, yes.

Michael Faber (32:21):
If they don't remember the 2000 election, they at least know about the 2000 election.

Eddie Sanchez (32:25):
The hanging chad election.

Michael Faber (32:26):
The hanging chads, and I'm not going to try to explain hanging chads here.

Eddie Sanchez (32:29):
Rodney, so I think I might've just been under the voting age when the hanging chad stuff happened. Can you guys explain exactly?

Rodney Crouther (32:36):
Yeah. That's not about hanging out with a dude named Chad in Florida. In 2000, there were paper ballots, especially in South Florida, that the voting machines punched out your selection, and some of the machines didn't always punch the little circle out of the paper ballot. So there was a huge controversy over how to count ballots where the little bit of paper didn't get knocked all the way out. It was dangling by just a little scrap. It was insane. I encourage anyone to go Google that.

Michael Faber (33:07):
I will say that I believe the official vote total in Florida, which was the decisive state, came down to 537 votes, 537 votes in the state the size of Florida. That's nothing. I mean, that's a rounding error. It was that close.

Rodney Crouther (33:21):
Yeah. That's people who might have voted or not voted based on whether it was raining.

Michael Faber (33:25):
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, there are undoubtedly, at least a handful of people who just accidentally punched the wrong thing and don't even notice. I mean, it could come down to that kind of thing. But yeah, turnout matters. If 600 more people had showed up to vote for Al Gore, then Al Gore would've been president of the United States. If about 270 people voted for Bush decided to go for Gore instead, Gore wins it. And the wild thing is by sheer number of votes, Florida wasn't even the closest state. The closest state was New Mexico, which was separated by about, I believe it was about 330 votes, but no one cared about New Mexico because it wouldn't have been decisive. Gore won it, had Bush won it, but lost Florida, Gore would've still won the election; had Bush won it and won Florida, Bush won the election anyway. So New Mexico was not decisive, but it was only about 300 votes.

Rodney Crouther (34:15):
And let's take a minute to step into the electoral college. I think a lot of people forget about it as soon as they pass their high school history test.

Michael Faber (34:22):
OK. Well, the short answer, and I have a much longer answer if you'd like,

Rodney Crouther (34:26):
But let's go with the short one.

Michael Faber (34:27):
The short answer is that within each state, the voters are voting for a slate of electors. We're actually voting for a literal slate of people who are going to cast the official votes. In the modern era, it's a fixed slate of electors chosen, essentially by the campaign or the party. And so if you cast a vote for a particular candidate, you're casting a vote for a slate of electors to represent the state, and whichever candidate wins the state, those electors are the ones who cast the official votes. Now, in practice, the electors don't really have any kind of discretion. I mean, there are cases where electors will try to cast a vote for someone other than who they're pledged to, but there's never been a case where that has been decisive or even all that impactful.

Rodney Crouther (35:15):
And some states, all the electors have to go for the same candidate and some states split. Is that correct?

Michael Faber (35:21):
There are only two states that currently will split their electoral votes. That's Maine and Nebraska.

(35:26):
Every other state is winner-take-all, the candidate that wins the state wins every electoral slot. In Maine and Nebraska, they use a system where the winner in each congressional district wins the one elector associated with that, and the winner statewide wins the two electors because each state's electors are determined by the number of House seats plus two for the number of senators. And so for instance, Maine has only two House seats, but if a candidate wins one of those districts and the other candidate wins the other district, you could have a three-one split. Whoever has more votes statewide gets the two for the state, plus the one district they win. Nebraska has three seats, and then of course, the two for senators, if we had a big state do something like this, if say Texas did that, it would be extraordinarily impactful because even though Republicans always win, Texas Democrats, if you go by the congressional district, would win 10 or 12 of those electoral votes at least maybe more in a good year.

(36:22):
And so that system would completely change the nature of the electoral college. But since it's confined to Maine, Nebraska, it doesn't really do very much. There have been some states that have toyed with giving electors out proportionally. I think the most recent effort on that was Colorado had a referendum on that a few years back, and the voters rejected it, and I presume the main reason the voters rejected it is it effectively reduces the power of the state. And Colorado at that point was still seen as something of a swing state. As soon as it's proportional, it just means, and I think they had nine electoral votes at the time. So the state was close enough, there was a question of which candidate would get five and which would get four. So by adopting that in the absence of other states adopting it, they're basically just making themselves not relevant to the electoral college process.

Eddie Sanchez (37:11):
So it really does matter. It's not just talk, right?

Rodney Crouther (37:13):
It's not just talk. It really does matter and can really affect who ends up making decisions that affect your life.

Michael Faber (37:20):
Oh, absolutely. And at the presidential level, I mean, the last few cycles we're sort of stuck in a situation where there's a handful of swing states, and the votes in those swing states really are going to be decisive in term of the president. But even outside of those swing states, every state will have close elections, at least now and then certainly congressional districts of close elections. In the 2022 congressional elections, there were 11 house races that came down to less than a 1% difference. In fact, the closest one was out in Colorado, and I believe it was about 530 votes by which Lauren Bobert was reelected. And it took a lot of recounts and everything to verify that. But every time, every congressional election, there's at least a handful of these districts that really go down to the wire that go down to just a handful of votes.

Rodney Crouther (38:15):
So beyond the White House who controls the House of Representatives really comes down to getting every last of those downballot votes tallied.

Michael Faber (38:23):
Yeah, and in any given year, I mean, there's 435 House seats that are up every two years. Most of them are not going to be all that competitive, but in any given year, there's usually, and it varies in terms of where, but there's usually a hundred or so races that really could go either way. Most of 'em end up 5, 6, 7 point differences, but there's always a handful that are really close, and there's always some upsets too in the Senate that can happen as well. I think we had out of 35 Senate races in 2022, two of those came down to less than 1% as well, and there were a handful of others that were 2 or 3%. So even when the congressional race is not competitive, those can matter, and that's to say nothing of local elections. That's another discussion altogether.

Rodney Crouther (39:07):
Yeah. I'm sure you could get into a lot of stories about county and city elections that came down to literally less than 10 votes.

Michael Faber (39:12):
Yeah, it's actually not that unusual because there are so many municipal elections, and oftentimes, especially in off years, not in presidential years, it's not at all unusual to find these elections in smaller cities where there's a few hundred people casting ballots, and you could have five people deciding it. There are also, every so often you'll see a case where usually a very local election comes down to a tie and they recount, they double check everything, and if it remains a tie, most jurisdictions are set up so that it's determined randomly who wins, a coin flip, drawing names out of a bag. Or in some places, they play Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Rodney Crouther (39:52):
Seriously.

Michael Faber (39:53):
They absolutely do.

Rodney Crouther (39:55):
Wait, OK, who actually plays Rock, Paper? Is it the candidates? Is it their county officials?

Michael Faber (40:01):
I mean, you'd have to look at the exact rules in any given place. I would imagine the candidate could choose to have a surrogate plan on their behalf, but yeah, typically it would be the candidates get together, they play Rock, Paper, Scissors. The winner wins the election because you have a tie and you've got to find some way to break it

Eddie Sanchez (40:15):
Rodney, is that an actual thing?

Rodney Crouther (40:17):
Yeah, that's an actual thing. Depending on where you live and depending on how the vote comes out, Rock, Paper, Scissors could determine who's your mayor or your state representative.

Eddie Sanchez (40:27):
That's interesting.

Rodney Crouther (40:28):
Yeah, everybody should go look that up. Seriously.

Michael Faber (40:31):
Now, some places will have runoffs to break it, and if the runoffs are tied, well, then you go to determining randomly. But yeah, there are local elections that come down to fewer than five votes and sometimes zero votes in a game of chance.

Rodney Crouther (40:44):
That's amazing that if nothing else should inspire some people out there to make sure they're registered and get out on Election Day.

Michael Faber (40:52):
Yeah. If you're really concerned that your vote doesn't count, stop thinking about the presidential race. Think about the race for mayor and city council and those, your vote very well might count. In fact, you might be the decisive vote in one of those elections.

Eddie Sanchez (41:20):
Rodney, that was a really great conversation that you had with our faculty members, it's something I'm definitely going to encourage our students to listen to in my class to listen to. Also, I can't believe that Rock, Paper, Scissors to win a government role is a real thing, man.

Rodney Crouther (41:34):
I think that is the wildest thing I've learned since we started doing this podcast.

Eddie Sanchez (41:39):
Election is coming up pretty soon. What are some important dates that our listeners should know about?

Rodney Crouther (41:44):
The first major deadline's coming up October 7, whether you're registering to vote in person or by mail, you have to register to vote in Texas by October 7. That's just about a week or two out. The last date you can request an absentee ballot, which is important for a lot of students who will be voting in their home districts, is October 25, and Election Day is November 5, and if you're voting by absentee, your mail-in ballot has to be postmarked by November 5.

Eddie Sanchez (42:11):
And I believe we actually have early voting options here on campus at Texas State University as well, right?

Rodney Crouther (42:17):
Early voting starts October 21 and runs through November 1. Early voting on campus is usually at the LBJ Student Center, but you can confirm that by looking up early voting locations with Hays County's elections office, and you can always find voting information on votetexas.gov.

Eddie Sanchez (42:34):
Thank you for this very informative episode, Rodney. This is really important for our students, our community, and even as an adult, right? For us to hear and to remind ourselves how important these things are and how we need to be involved. And I recognize that it's a responsibility.

Rodney Crouther (42:50):
Yeah. I think even if you've been under a rock, there's some big issues going on in the country. We are not encouraging anybody to vote for a particular way. We just want everybody to get out and vote.

Eddie Sanchez (43:00):
Awesome. Well, thank you for having this conversation, Rodney. It was really important for everybody.

Rodney Crouther (43:05):
Thank you for listening to Enlighten Me. We'll see you next month. Bye everybody. This podcast is a production of the Division of Marketing and Communications at Texas State University. Podcasts appearing on the Texas State Podcast Network represent the views of the host and guests not of Texas State University.