By Steve Brawner
© 2014 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

On Oct. 12, 1960, Winthrop Rockefeller hosted a “Party for Two Parties” at his Winrock Farms estate on Petit Jean Mountain. About 850 guests each paid $50 to dine on his Santa Gertrudis beef and be entertained by celebrities.

Rockefeller had made improving his impoverished state his life’s mission since moving here in 1953. Part of that mission involved creating a two-party system, which was a big task. That year, the Republican Party fielded only seven candidates for local offices throughout the entire state.

It took 50 years for Rockefeller’s dream to fully come true. After the 2010 elections, Republicans held four of the state’s six congressional seats, the governor was a Democrat, and the Legislature was about evenly split with 75 Democrats and 59 Republicans.

But that competitive two-party system may have lasted only four years. At least at the state level, Arkansas seems headed to one-party dominance again – this time, under the Republicans.

“I hope not,” said Doyle Webb, Republican Party of Arkansas chairman, when asked if that was the case the morning after his party’s historic Election Day victory. “The Republican Party has worked for years to have a two-party state. I think that the challenge of a Democrat Party and its ideas are important to the Republican Party, and I think that two parties in the marketplace of ideas, opposing ideas where the public can hear those ideas, is valuable for Arkansas.”

To be sure, Republicans will never control Arkansas like Democrats controlled Arkansas. Before Tuesday, 59 of the state’s 75 county judges were Democrats. After Tuesday, 54 still are. There will be areas of the state that will remain Democratic, just as Northwest Arkansas was the state’s lone Republican stronghold for decades.

Still, it’s hard to overstate how convincing the GOP’s win was on Tuesday. Republicans now control every congressional office and every statewide office. As late as 2009, the state Legislature was composed of 98 Democrats and 36 Republicans. Now when legislators meet in January, 88 will be Republicans and 47 will be Democrats. Ten incumbent Democratic state legislators lost, as did, of course, Sen. Mark Pryor. No Democrat running statewide won more than 43.2 percent of the vote.

In fact, the Republicans may have won more than they wanted to win. It’s one thing to control slim majorities in the Legislature with a Democratic governor, as was the case before Tuesday. With such overwhelming numbers, Republicans will be fully accountable for whatever happens in state government. It’s all on them.

Moreover, it’s much harder to maintain party discipline when the opposition no longer represents a threat. Instead of one party or two, the state in effect will have several – Democrats, and then various factions of Republicans who work with each other or with Democrats depending on the issue.

The election will have far-reaching effects beyond all this insider politics. For example, the private option is in trouble. Barely passed by the Legislature in 2013 and barely reauthorized this year, the program uses Obamacare dollars to buy private health insurance for lower-income Arkansans. Republicans have been split, but Democrats have been united in support. Now the numbers are not in its favor. It will continue only if Gov.-elect Asa Hutchinson leans on his party’s legislators, which he might do if he decides he needs the program. If it goes away, 200,000 people must find health insurance somewhere else. Good or bad, that’s a big deal.

Will Rockefeller, the grandson of Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller and the son of Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller, attended the GOP’s victory party Tuesday night. It was a very different kind of gathering than what his grandfather had hosted in 1960. The “Party for Two Parties” had been an introduction. This was a celebration.

One of the heirs to the family fortune is also inheriting a new political legacy. In 1960, his grandfather’s party could muster only seven candidates for local offices. Today’s it’s not only the majority, but it’s the state’s dominant political force, and likely will be for years to come.

By Steve Brawner
© 2014 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Should legislators be entrusted with more power at the expense of the governor and state agencies? You’ll decide by voting yes or no on Issue 1.

The proposal would amend the Arkansas Constitution so that all state agency administrative rules would require approval by a legislative committee before they could go into effect. The committee could make those approvals during legislative sessions or during the interim between sessions. According to the text of the amendment, the Legislature would define how that process occurs.

If I were arguing in support of Issue 1, I’d say this: The Legislature is state government’s most democratic institution. It’s the most transparent and the closest to the people. For average Arkansans, administrative rules hatched by state agencies often are no different than laws: It’s still the government telling us what we can and cannot do. Any new such potential restriction of our liberty should be approved by elected representatives reflecting the will of the people.

Why vote against Issue 1? There are practical and constitutional concerns.

The obvious practical concern is that it will lead to too much legislative meddling and too much politics in day-to-day administrative activities.

Might legislators hold hearings, for example, about when hunting season begins? Certainly – not just about the day, but about the hour. Maybe even the minute.

Legislators generally serve the state pretty well, but sometimes they involve themselves in areas that really aren’t their business and where they aren’t experts. Even though it’s a part-time job, they already gather for regular sessions, fiscal sessions, special sessions, and committee meetings. How could these busy, part-time public servants possibly consider every state agency rule with any sort of competence? Sometimes the details should be left to the full-timers.

The constitutional concern is that Issue 1 fundamentally changes state government’s power structure.

First, it alters the separation of powers between the Legislature and the governor by involving legislators in day-to-day decisions that traditionally have been handled by the executive branch.

Moreover, it potentially gives a lot of power to a few people. In the Legislature, committees are very important, but not all-important. Bills must pass a committee in order to advance, but ultimately both the House and Senate must vote yes or no, followed by the governor’s signature. If Issue 1 passes, the buck stops with “a legislative committee.” What committee, and who will serve on it? The amendment says only vaguely that the Legislature “may provide by law” for one.

This amendment isn’t necessary. If its purpose is to ensure state agencies function democratically, those mechanisms already exist in most cases. Most agencies are under the authority of the state’s governor, elected statewide by voters from Crossett to Bentonville. Agencies hold public hearings where regular Arkansans can comment on proposed rules. Finally, the Legislature already exercises power over state agency rule-making. It funds the agencies. It can write laws that prohibit bad rules from being enacted in the first place. If it doesn’t like an agency’s rule, it can pass a law overturning it.

I started this column by asking if legislators should be entrusted with more power at the expense of the governor and state agencies. Actually, none of them are supposed to be fully trusted in a democracy.

The current system of checks and balances allows that distrust to be exercised in a healthier way than this proposal would. The way it is now, state agencies do their job under the leadership of the governor, while the Legislature has the first say and the last say through the laws it writes. Issue 1 moves that needle too far toward the Legislature and will cause more problems than it will solve.

I’m voting no. You?

By Steve Brawner
© 2014 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

When a law punishes more than 1,000 innocent people but doesn’t catch any guilty people, there’s something wrong with the law.

Such is the case with the voter ID requirement that was struck down unanimously by the Arkansas Supreme Court last week. Four justices said it illegally added to the state Constitution’s requirement that a voter be an American citizen, an Arkansas resident above age 18, and lawfully registered to cast a ballot. Three justices based their ruling on the fact that the law wasn’t passed with the necessary two-thirds majority. So now you don’t have to bring your driver’s license when you vote this year.

I supported this law when it was passed, though with reservations. Maintaining ballot integrity is a vital function of our democracy, and requiring voters to present a photo ID seems not overly burdensome.

On the other hand, not everybody has a photo ID – particularly people already marginalized because they are poor. Proponents never demonstrated that voter impersonation is a serious problem or, if it is, that this would solve it. Voter fraud already is illegal, and enforcement mechanisms already are in place: poll workers checking off names, and average citizens who surely would complain if informed they mysteriously had already voted. If someone wants to commit wholesale voter fraud, there are much more efficient ways of doing that than having people impersonate voters one by one.

Regardless of what you think about voter ID laws, they cannot be separated from electoral politics. Supposedly, they result in lower turnout among the poor and disadvantaged who are less likely to have a photo ID and more likely to vote for Democrats. Human nature being what it is, the laws unsurprisingly are often supported by Republicans and often opposed by Democrats.

Thankfully, it’s called “political science” for a reason: Because sometimes the effects of an action can be observed, like an experiment. Such was the case with the primary elections earlier this year. More than 1,000 ballots weren’t counted, many because absentee voters had failed to mail a copy of their photo ID. In fact, the law did not require those voters even to be notified their ballots were thrown out. Meanwhile, not a single person has been charged with any kind of actual voter fraud as a result of the law. Maybe the law deterred potential voter fraudsters, but that can’t be proven.

So somewhere around 1,000 law-abiding citizens did not have their votes counted because of a technicality, while no lawbreaking citizens were brought to justice. The law’s stated intentions – stopping voter fraud – might have been good, but its only demonstrable effects have been bad. The findings from this experiment are clear: This was not a good law.

The law’s flaws might have been overcome were it not for the constitutional problems. Maybe an exception could have been made for absentee voters. Maybe future absentee voters could have been given better information about the necessity of mailing a copy of their photo ID.

But the fact that the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the measure on constitutional grounds raises the bar high for any kind of fix. It probably would take a constitutional amendment now, which means it would have to get through the Legislature and then past the voters.

So for now, and probably for a while, no photo ID will be required. We voters simply must be American citizens, Arkansas residents above age 18, and lawfully registered.

The Constitution doesn’t require us to be informed about our choices, either, though we should choose to do that on our own. There’s probably not enough voter impersonation to matter, but voter apathy and indifference – you don’t have to have a license for those.