Hickenlooper Uses Pardon Power Appropriately

Gov. John Hickenlooper on Friday commuted the life sentences of six men convicted of first-degree murder as young men or teens, marking the most significant action he has taken with his clemency authority in more than five years when he indefinitely halted the execution of convicted killed Nathan Dunlap. 

The term-limited Democrat granted parole eligibility to the six, who were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. That includes one — Curtis A. Brooks — who was a juvenile at the time he was sent to prison. Brooks will be released in July 2019 and ordered to serve five years of parole.

Brooks was 15 and with a group of other boys when one of them fatally shot 24-year-old Christopher Ramos during a robbery in Aurora in 1995. Brooks did not pull the trigger, but was convicted of felony murder — a Colorado law that gives legal responsibility for a killing to those present when a murder occurs if they participated in the events leading up to it.

From the Colorado Sun.

The felony murder statute under which Curtis Brooks received his life sentence has been bad policy since the very first felony murder statute of that kind was pass. Imposing vicarious liability for first degree murder on someone who was not proven to have killed or to have had an intent to kill, despite having conspired to commit a serious felony, is simply disproportionate and inappropriate in every case. It is one of the more frequent causes of serious injustice in the criminal justice system and it is good to see that Governor Hickenlooper intervened with the pardon power in this particularly egregious case of injustice.

Prediction: The Ruling Striking Down The Entire ACA As Unconstitutional Will Not Be Upheld On Appeal

I predict that the ruling of a Texas federal judge striking down the entire ACA (i.e. Obamacare) as unconstitutional for reasons related to the individual mandate n the law, will not be upheld. At most, higher courts are likely to find that the provision is severable from the legislation as a whole.

If the Supreme Court does after a layer of intermediate appeals, uphold that conclusion, I predict that the wave of opposition to the Republicans in 2020 will be even stronger and that a court packing plan will abruptly end the conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

Additions To The "Blogroll"

I've added the Colorado Sun and the New York Times, two predominantly paid access news sources to which I have subscribed to the links in the margin that once upon a time used to be called a "blogroll", even though neither of these links (and many of the others) are not blogs.

A subscribe to the Colorado Sun because it is a hopeful project staffed with skilled professional journalists including a lot of alumni of the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, that offers one of the best competitors to the Denver Post, which has seen a  steadily decreasing quality product for a steadily increasing price under a successor of short sited owners, most recently, a hedge fund with no journalistic integrity.

A subscribe to the New York Times because the quality of coverage of world and national news by other outlets has steadily declined, while the New York Times remains committed to publishing "All The News That's Fit To Print" and also has excellent commentary and cultural columns.

George Washington, the Early Republic, Luck and Democracy.

Today in 1799, George Washington died at his estate in Virginia at the age of 67.

He died less than two years after he retired from the Presidency in January of 1797, after having served for two four year terms as President of the United States under the current U.S. Constitution that took effect on March 4, 1789 (after having presided over the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that drafted it and then lobbying states to adopt it). Almost of the historically well remembered Founding Fathers of the United States were involved in this gathering, four years after the American Revolution had officially ended and thirteen years after the First Continental Congress convened to lay the groundwork for the American Revolution. 

Washington led the American forces for the entire six and a half year duration of the American Revolution, which began in April of 1775 to which he was appointed by the Second Continental Congress which served as the de facto government of the United States until the Articles of Confederation took effect, which also proposed and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. He service as Commander in Chief ended with a treaty in the wake of the Battle of Yorktown that ended on October 19, 1781, although he didn't resign from this post until the war with Great Britain was officially concluded by the Treaty of Paris that was not approved until 1783.

Thus, he served for eight years as the Commander in Chief of the United States military under the Articles of Confederation (created November 15, 1777 and officially ratified on March 1, 1781) and also before then, during the American Revolution before the Articles of Confederation were adopted, until the war was over in 1783, when he resigned from that post. He then reclaimed the title of Commander in Chief when he was elected President of the United States by the Electoral College, after a six year hiatus, two of which were spent drafting and securing the adoption of our current Constitution.

He never served as President of the United States in Congress Assembled under the Articles of Confederation, however, a post that had ten incumbents during the eight years that the Articles of Confederation were in force, and was roughly equivalent to the Speaker of the House in Congress today, although this person was nominally the head of state of the United States. One one of those people, John Hancock, is remembered today as an important historical figure and founding father of the Untied States. Likewise, neither of the Presidents of the Second Continental Congress are widely remembered as Founding Fathers of the United States.

The First Continental Congress which lasted from September 5 to October 26, 1774 and also had two presiding officers whose names are not familiar to us today, helped unify and organize the American Revolution before it became a military insurgency, and called for the convening of the Second Continental Congress in the event that its demands were not met.

Our tradition of having Presidents serve just two terms that endured until FDR was, in part, a product of Washington's poor health, rather than his magnanimous lack of a desire for power. If he had been healthier in 1796, he might have run for re-election.

The happenstance that George Washington lacked a natural born son is also an important reason that the Presidency never devolved into a monarchy the way that the government of the First Republic in France established in 1792 did after the French Revolution, when it devolved into the First Empire in 1804.

What kind of people wrote our current Constitution, a process over which George Washington, of Virginia, presided:

Fifty-five delegates attended sessions of the Constitutional Convention, and are considered the Framers of the Constitution, although only 39 delegates actually signed. The states had originally appointed 70 representatives to the Convention, but a number of the appointees did not accept or could not attend, leaving 55 who would ultimately craft the Constitution. 

Almost all of the 55 Framers had taken part in the Revolution, with at least 29 having served in the Continental forces, most in positions of command. All but two or three had served in colonial or state government during their careers. The vast majority (about 75%) of the delegates were or had been members of the Confederation Congress, and many had been members of the Continental Congress during the Revolution. Several had been state governors. Just two delegates, Roger Sherman and Robert Morris, would be signatories to all three of the nation's founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. 

More than half of the delegates had trained as lawyers (several had even been judges), although only about a quarter had practiced law as their principal means of business. There were also merchants, manufacturers, shippers, land speculators, bankers or financiers, two or three physicians, a minister, and several small farmers. Of the 25 who owned slaves, 16 depended on slave labor to run the plantations or other businesses that formed the mainstay of their income. Most of the delegates were landowners with substantial holdings, and most, with the possible exception of Roger Sherman and William Few, were very comfortably wealthy. George Washington and Robert Morris were among the wealthiest men in the entire country.

All of them were white men who spoke English as their native language. A fair number were deists rather than Christians, although none were Jews or Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists. Many were Free Masons (nine of the fifty-six people who signed the Declaration of Independence were Free Masons, most famously Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock).

7803 Posts

There have been 7803 posts published at the Wash Park Prophet blog since its inception in 2005. There have been 1558 posts published at the Dispatches At Turtle Island blog since its inception in 2011. Combined there have been 9362 posts published at the two blogs since 2005.

I'm posting a little less often than I did at the peak, but both blogs are still quite healthy.

Using Statistics To Estimate Atrocity Size From Incomplete Lists Of Victims

If you have multiple incomplete lists of victims of an event, you can use the extent to which the lists overlap or not to accurately estimate the total number of victims, including those who were omitted from all of the lists.

Coast Guard Drones

The Coast Guard is planning to purchase and deploy unarmed reconnaissance ScanEagle drones on their cutters. These eight foot long, sixteen foot wingspan drones serve as eyes in the sky over a wide range for the cutter, typically seven hours a day, nine days out of ten. "The drone is sent aloft by a pneumatic launcher and recovered using a hook and arresting wire." They are used primarily for drug interdiction but can be used for a variety of purposes.

DNA Evidence And Recidivism

DNA evidence frequently exonerates wrongly convicted people. It also frequently reveals that someone who was convicted of one offense was also guilty of committing many other offenses for which the offender was never convicted.

For example, genetic tests on evidence from a 1969 rape and murder case that was solved last month revealed that the offender who died in 2001, seventeen years ago, also committed many other serious crimes.

Sumpter lived in Cambridge as a young child, dated a girl in Cambridge in the mid-1960s and, in 1967, was working on Arrow Street – just a mile from [the 1969 victim] Jane Britton’s apartment.

Sumpter was arrested and convicted of physically assaulting a woman he met at the Harvard Square MBTA station three years after Jane’s murder.

But in 1975, Sumpter was out of jail and raped a woman in her Boston apartment. It was then that he was sent to prison for 15-20 years.

Just 13 months after he was paroled, Sumpter died on Cancer in 2001.

After his death, Sumpter’s DNA profile was matched to the rape and murder of 23-year-old Ellen Rutchick in her Beacon Street Apartment in 1972. He was also connected to the 1973 rape and murder of 24-year-old Mary Lee McClain in her Mount Vernon Street Apartment.

He was also eventually connected to a 1985 rape, which police say he committed after escaping from work release.

So, after the 1969 rape and murder, he committed at least two more rape and murder offenses, a physical assault of a woman, an at least two more rapes that did not result in the death of the victim, a total of at least six violent felonies and one escape, five in a five year period, and two more in related incidents in a single year. 

Yet, he was is prison for the lion's share of the time he wasn't on the streets committing crimes. He was probably only free of correctional supervision (either escaped or in custody) for seven out of his short thirty-two years of adult life and probably never went more than two years as an adult while he was not incarcerated without committing a felony.

It is also likely that the felonies that DNA evidence has linked him to weren't the only ones that he committed. Evidence collection standards in the 1970s were as good as they are now, not all crimes leave traces of DNA evidence, and not all cold cases where DNA tests could be done are tested before the evidence is destroyed or too degraded to test. It is quite likely that he actually committed at least two or three more felonies.

Catching serious felon and incarcerating him (or her) for a sustained period of time probably does prevent a great many future crimes. But, this approach can also work grave injustices if the person convicted and sentenced for a long period of time wasn't actually guilty of the crime in question.

If DNA technology has been available and successful in convicting him of his first known felony in 1969 (although realistically no one starts their criminal career with the violent rape and murder of a stranger in her apartment as a first crime), many people in the future could have been spared.

Overdose Deaths In The U.S. By Drug

Most common drugs found in overdose deaths in 2016

Rank	Referent drug1	Number of deaths2	Percent of deaths3
1	Fentanyl	18,335	28.8%
2	Heroin	15,961	25.1%
3	Cocaine	11,316	17.8%
4	Methamphetamine	6,762	10.6%
5	Alprazolam	6,209	9.8%
6	Oxycodone	6,199	9.7%
7	Morphine	5,014	7.9%
8	Methadone	3,493	5.5%
9	Hydrocodone	3,199	5.0%
10	Diazepam	2,022	3.2%

From CNN.

Of these Fentanyl, Heroin, Oxycodone, Morphine, Methadone and Hydrocodone are all opioid related. Their combined percentages in the CNN chart add up to 82.0% but that can't be correct because the other causes combined add up to 41.4% and there would be some drug overdose deaths that are not from the top ten referent drugs. So is Tramadol (2.0%) which is number 14. A significant number of deaths with opioids (perhaps 10%) are suicides.

Cocaine and Methamphetamine, in contrast are general nervous system stimulants. Their combined percentage in the chart is 28.4%. Meth is the drug least often used with other drugs in an overdose death and is used both both opioids and cocaine with some frequency when another drug is used. Cocaine is often used with opioids and sometimes with Xanax. Cocaine and methamphetamine are very rarely used with an intent to commit suicide.

Alprazolam is better known by the brand name Xanax (a sleeping and anti-anxiety drug). Diazepam is best known as Valium and is used for similar purposes to Xanax. Their combined percentage in the chart is 13.0% As more information in the study reveals, however, these drugs almost never caused deaths on their own. The drugs used with them in overdose deaths are predominantly opioids.

Number 11 is Diphenhydramine 3.2% is an over the counter antihistamine often used as a sleep aid.

Number 12 is Clonazepam 2.6%, which is a sedative in the same class of drugs as Valium.

Number 13 is Gabapentin 2.4%, which is used to treat partial seizures, neuropathic pain, hot flashes, and restless legs syndrome.

Number 15 is Amphetamine 1.9%, which is a central nervous system stimulant in the same class of drugs as methamphetamine, which is often used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), narcolepsy (where a person has an uncontrollable urge to sleep), and Parkinson’s disease. It is less potent than Methamphetamine.

I suspect that many of the non-opioid drugs are often used in combination with opioid drugs in cases where overdoses cause death at rates similar to other drugs in the same class.

So basically, the vast majority of overdose deaths in the United States involve opioids, meth or cocaine (the first two of which have legal prescription variants). Most overdose deaths involve at least one legal prescription drug (whether or not it was legally obtained by the person using it).

The source report from the CDC is here. To CNN's credit, the numbers are  in the original source and not in their original incorrect calculation. The original source lists five more drugs with an 11.2% combined amount. Thus, the percentages for the top 15 drugs in the chart add up to 134.6% So, about a third of cases involve two drugs on the list (a bit less since not all drugs are listed and a bit more because some cases will involve more than two drugs).

Actually, the reason that the totals add to more than 100% explained in the notes to the CDC chart is that:

Deaths may involve other drugs in addition to the referent drug (i.e., the one listed). Deaths involving more than one drug (e.g., a death involving both heroin and cocaine) are counted in both totals. 

In more detail:

Drug overdose deaths in 2016 involving multiple drugs 

Table C shows the percentage of drug overdose deaths with concomitant involvement of other drugs for the top 10 drugs involved in drug overdose deaths in 2016. The percentage of deaths with concomitant involvement of other drugs varied by drug. For example, almost all drug overdose deaths involving alprazolam or diazepam (96%) mentioned involvement of other drugs. In contrast, 50% of the drug overdose deaths involving methamphetamine, and 69% of the drug overdose deaths involving fentanyl mentioned involvement of one or more other specific drugs. 

Table D shows the most frequent concomitant drug mentions for each of the top 10 drugs involved in drug overdose deaths in 2016.  

• Two in five overdose deaths involving cocaine also mentioned fentanyl.  

• Nearly one-third of drug overdose deaths involving fentanyl also mentioned heroin (32%).  

• Alprazolam was mentioned in 26% of the overdose deaths involving hydrocodone, 22% of the deaths involving methadone, and 25% of the deaths involving oxycodone.  

• More than one-third of the overdose deaths involving cocaine also mentioned heroin (34%).  

• More than 20% of the overdose deaths involving methamphetamine also mentioned heroin.

So totals grouping multiple drugs may be overstated because some of those percentages may come from the same incident.

Mystery solved.

The percentage of overdose deaths that do not involve at least one opioid drug is fairly modest. It is also worth noting that marijuana is not in the top fifteen causes of drug overdoses and neither are any other psychedelic or "club" drugs (e.g. MDMA and ketamine).

Can Packaging Be Misleading If The Truth Is Disclosed In The Fine Print?

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has held that a facially misleading statement on product packaging in large print can be misleading for purposes of consumer protection statutes even if government mandated fine print labels reveal the truth.

The fascinating issue presented elucidates just what consumer fraud means. The analysis made in a manner conscious of the rulings practical implications is a sound one.

Computer Purchasing For Dummies

If only it were this easy:

From the webcomic "Let's Play" by Mongie, Episode 56.

Quote of the Day

What we see is beautiful; 

what we know more beautiful; 

what we cannot grasp, most beautiful.

- Nicolaus Steno a.k.a. Niels Stensen (17th century naturalist and physician).

Uber Demonstrates A Problem With Arbitration Agreements

Arbitration clauses are put in place in many circumstances to discourage the less economically powerful party from litigating in the first place and to force decisions to be made case by cases rather than globally, because when the odds are in your favor you have a mathematical incentive to resolve issues as many times as possible for the lowest stakes possible. But, arbitration can backfire when there is a global problem as a record number of arbitration requests filed against Uber demonstrate.

When the company went to the court to argue that its employees weren't employees, it defended its binding arbitration, saying that the company would of course pay for the arbitration fees in the states that required it.

12,501 Uber drivers took the company at its word and filed arbitration claims in California. Under the terms of the contract that Uber crammed down these drivers' throats, it must now pay $1,500 per driver to JAMS, the arbitration service it uses -- a total of $18.7m. 

But Uber has only paid the filing fees for 296 of these drivers; and of those, only 47 have had arbitrators appointed to them. Uber has paid the retainers for only six of those arbitrators.

As Larson O’Brien, a lawyer for the drivers, wrote in a motion, "At this point, it is fair to ask whether Uber’s previous statements to the 9th Circuit about its desire to facilitate arbitration with its drivers were nothing more than empty promises to avoid litigating a class action. Uber’s actions make clear it does not actually support arbitration; rather, it supports avoiding any method of dispute resolution, no matter the venue."

Via Boing Boing.

Uber's conduct clearly violates its arbitration agreement. Now the question is, what remedies do the Uber drivers have for its breach of this agreement.

Inefficient By Design

I am inclined to think that the article's analysis is correct. But, I am also skeptical that any of the leading economic theories on offer could have predicted this phenomena before the fact. 

The angel capital market poses a puzzle for search theory. Angel investors (“angels”) are often described in the literature as if they were hiding from entrepreneurs that seek angel capital investment. Such behavior by angels forces entrepreneurs to engage in costly search for angels. In our model, a separating equilibrium exists in which hiding by angels discourages search by low-productivity entrepreneurs who would inundate any visible angels. Only high-productivity entrepreneurs incur the time and effort costs of search to signal their type and avoid the lemons problem in the visible capital market. As the search market generates higher quality, hence more profitable matches, social surplus may increase despite the costs of hiding and searching. Hide and seek search contrasts with standard search theory where agents choose strategies to mitigate inherent physical and informational search frictions.

Merwan H. Engineer, Paul Schure, Dan H. Vo, "Hide and seek search: Why angels hide and entrepreneurs seek" Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization (December 6, 2018).

What Does Colorado Get Right In Electoral And Legislativel Politics?

Good Colorado Electoral And Legislative Politics Practices.

1.  No one who has completed their felony criminal sentence, or who is serving a misdemeanor criminal sentence, is disenfranchised.

2. Voter ID need not be presented to vote, at least, if you receive a mail-in ballot.

3. Eligible voters may register to vote right up until election day.

4. Every voter gets a mail-in ballot. This is particularly helpful because Colorado usually has quite long ballots.

5. There are numerous conveniently located, postage free, drop boxes and vote centers in Colorado, but ballots must be received by election day, so vote counting is not unduly delayed.

6. Mail-in ballots have a tracking code that can be used to confirm that election administration officials have received your ballot.

7. Advocates for political parties, candidates and issues can get regularly updated lists of who has voted and who has not to assist them in getting out the vote once ballots have been distributed.

8. Campaign finance disclosures are required quite comprehensively in non-federal races and have data that can be accessed and searched over the Internet.

9. Colorado uses paper ballots that can be recounted or audited, by hand, if necessary.

10. You have a roughly two week window in which to vote, and a statutory right to time off to cast a ballot in person if you need to do so.

11. Numerous salient ballot issues encourage high turnout even if a particular voter's candidate races are not close. The government's to which the ballot initiatives pertain circulate "blue books" with detailed information including fiscal impact estimates and pros and cons submitted by advocates of, and opponents of, the measures. Proposed constitutional amendments, charter amendments, statutes, and ordinances can be placed on the ballot with citizen initiatives that aren't so onerous that there aren't many on the ballot every year. Governments must also refer any of their own proposed constitutional amendments, chart amendments, tax increases, spending limit increases, and issuances of government debt backed by taxpayer funds to voters.

12. Reasonable term limits (12 years in any given legislative position, 8 years for most executive branch posts) are an important fact that prevents incumbency advantages from being too great and contribute strongly to Colorado have one of the highest percentages of female legislators in the nation.

13. If there is a vacancy in the state legislature, the vacancy is filled by a committee of that member's political party. So, parties have an incentive to police misconduct and scandals in their own party to have strong incumbents for the next election, while scandal is not a tool that is useful to change the partisan power balance put in place by the voters.

14. Going forward, Congressional redistricting and state legislative redistricting will be conducted by a bipartisan commission with meaningful guidelines intended to reduce gerrymandering.

15. Strict ethics rules prohibit public officials including elected officials at every level from receiving gifts, and impose civil fines that make sanctioning people for violations easier without the full range of pro-defendant protections that apply to criminal prosecutions, and ethics violations can be reported by private citizens without being screened by a partisan elected official. The Board that administers the ethics law is independent of the partisan elected Secretary of State's office.

16. Colorado requires a 55% majority, rather than a bare majority of the votes cast, to adopt proposed constitutional amendments.

17. While Colorado's Taxpayer's Bill of Rights is nothing to write home about and ill designed, the requirement the new taxes and increased spending receive voter approval effectively defuses "tax and spend" attacks on Democratic political candidates and liberal candidates generally in non-partisan races, at every level of government, since any proposed tax increases must be voter approved.

18. Colorado uses Congressional district boundaries for the state board of education and the CU-Regents, reducing the number of districts that have to be drawn when redistricting comes around.

19. While it is very difficult to recall candidates in statewide offices, it isn't impossible, and it can be fairly easy to do in local governments following low turnout local elections, for example, to municipal, county and school board posts.

20. Voters in the Denver metro area elect a non-partisan Regional Transportation District board. Likewise, District attorneys are elected from regional judicial districts rather than from every county.

21. A non-partisan legislative branch agency determines the estimated fiscal impact of all proposed legislation and helps legislators (most of whom are non-lawyers) with the drafting of bills to be introduced.

22. Many special districts (e.g. the Denver Water Board and the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District) have appointed board of directors rather than elected boards of directors, shortening the ballot in the case of races where candidates could be hard to evaluate. Their taxing and borrowing decisions, however, must still receive voter approval.

23. The Governor's power to pardon is not significantly limited.

24. A judges in the state except municipal judges and judges on the Denver County Court are appointed by the Governor from three top applicants selected on a merit basis by a blue ribbon commission.

25. There is a mandatory retirement age for state judges.

26. Municipal courts have very limited jurisdiction and there are only two specialized courts that are not divisions of another court (the Denver Probate Court and the Denver Juvenile Court).

Additional Things That Denver Does Right

1. Denver candidate elections are conducted in May of odd numbered years, so that these races aren't drowned out by general election race media coverage and voter attention.

2. School board elections in Denver and every other school district in the state are conducted in odd numbered years in November on a staggered non-partisan basis where the races are not competing with other races for media coverage and voter attention.

3. All Denver candidate races are non-partisan, which is particularly appropriate in a city with one dominant party, because it gives everyone in the city a say on who is elected.

4. In Denver, in a single member electoral districts, it takes a majority of the vote to be elected in the first round. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote there is a runoff election about a month later. This prevents minor candidates from acting as spoilers for candidates they are most similar to. This is not yet the law in state elections, however.

5. Denver has a consolidated city and county government that reduces jurisdictional issues and makes for simpler elections and clearer accountability. The City and County government has a city council with a mix of single member and at large city council seats, a Mayor, an Auditor, an a Clerk and Recorder who are elected. It also, within the state election system has a partisan elected District Attorney who prosecutes crimes.  All of these posts have term limits.

6. Denver does not elect its coroner, engineer, assessor, treasurer, surveyor or sheriff, as other counties in Colorado do.

7. Denver's county court and municipal court are consolidated and have a single set of judges appointed by the Mayor from a list of three top candidates selected based on merit by a blue ribbon committee.

(Moderate) Colorado Process Changes Still Called For.

Majority Voting and Runoff Election Requirements

1. Candidates in all federal, state and local single candidate districts should have to face a runoff election in between the top two candidates if a majority of voters do not support a candidate in the first round.

Bipartisan Election Administration

2. The election administration functions of the Secretary of State should be run by a bipartisan appointed state board of elections rather than a partisan elected official, i.e. Secretary of State, and the non-electoral functions of the Secretary of State should be that responsibility of an appointed official.

3. The election administration functions of the county clerk and recorder (a partisan elected official) should be run by a bipartisan appointed county board of elections, and the other responsibilities of the county clerk and recorder should be carried out by an appointed official.

Shortening The Ballot

4. The state treasurer should be appointed rather than elected.

5. The coroner's office should be a state office, rather than a county office, and should be an appointed position.

6. County treasurers, county assessors, county engineers, and county surveyors should be appointed offices rather than partisan elected officials, and the size of a county commission should be increased from three to five, at least, in all reasonably high population counties.

7. The CU-Regents should either be appointed, or elected by constituencies of the University such as alumni.

8. The state board of education should be appointed.

9. Judicial retention elections for trial judges should be placed on the ballot only when a judicial performance review committee has not unanimously recommended the judge's retention, no retention election petition (which a fairly modest number of required signatures) is filed, and no board of county commissioners (or legislative body of a city and county government, in a county over which the judge had jurisdiction requests it. Judicial retention elections for appellate judges should be placed on the ballot only when a judicial performance committee has not unanimously recommended the judge's retention, no retention election petition (with a fairly modest number of required signatures) is filed, and neither house of the state general assembly requests it. In other words, only actually controversial judicial retention elections should be presented to voters.

10. The shortening the ballot reforms would leave at the following partisan elected official in the state for each voter (excluding non-partisan special districts and municipal offices): a Governor-Lieutenant Governor ticket, an Attorney-General, a State Senator, a State Representative, a District Attorney, county commissioners, and a county sheriff. It would also significantly reduce the number of judicial retention elections on the ballot.

Court Structure

11. Transfer all municipal court jurisdiction to county courts and eliminate mayoral appointment of county court judges in Denver, so that there would be no separate municipal courts.

12. Discontinue the Denver Juvenile Court and Denver Probate Court and replace them with divisions within District Court.

13. Require all judges to be lawyers.

14. Transfer a significant share of cases currently handled by C.A.R. 21 to the Court of Appeals.

15. Publish and allow attorneys' to cite to all court opinions, rather than having many unpublished court decisions.

Chesterton’s Gate a.k.a. Chesterton's Fence

The notion of Chesterton's Gate is one that I've thought is a good guide for policy making for a long time, but I never knew that this concept had this name. 

Chesterton's fence is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood. The quotation is from G. K. Chesterton's 1929 book The Thing, in the chapter entitled "The Drift from Domesticity":

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

Chesterton's admonition should first be understood within his own historical context, as a response to certain socialists and reformers of his time (e.g. George Bernard Shaw).

From Wikipedia.

The Balance of Power In The Federal Government As Of 2019 With A Quick Civics Lesson

How will the balance of power be in the U.S. federal government as a result of this year's recent midterm elections?

The U.S. Senate

The Midterm Election Results

As a result of today's election, in January of 2019, there will be 53 Republicans and 47 senators who caucus with the Democrats in the U.S. Senate. In the event of a tie vote, Republican Vice President Mike Pence, would vote with the Republicans, so Democrats need to win over 4 out of the 53 Republicans to secure a majority vote on anything. This represents a net loss of two Democratic party held U.S. Senate seats. To a great extent, this setback was a naturally expected consequence of the fact that more red states had Senate elections scheduled for the midterm elections in 2018 than blue states. 

The closest U.S. Senate race this year was the U.S. Senate race in Florida, which incumbent Senator Bill Nelson (one of the most conservative Democrats in the U.S. Senate, first elected in the year 2000) lost by a fraction of a percentage point in the face of significant voter suppression by the Republican Secretary of State, significant election administration irregularities, and the largest proportion of voters in the nation disqualified from voting due to prior felony convictions (about 1.4 million voters, who are disproportionately black).

The Lame Duck Session

This result removes pressure on Republicans to ratify Presidential nominations before the next session of Congress, since they will have a stronger majority then than they have now.

Unless the Senate exercise the "nuclear option" to eliminate the filibuster for ordinary legislation during the lame duck session, to take advantage of the brief period when Republicans control the House, the Senate and the Presidency before the representatives elected in November take office, it will not be able to pass any new legislation in the lame duck session without bipartisan support. Legislative filibuster reform will provide Republicans with little practical advantage, however, once Democrats control the House in January of 2019.

The 2020 Elections

A third of U.S. Senators face voters in 2020.

Senate races can't be gerrymandered, but the U.S. Senate has a built in red state advantage, so Democrats need significantly more than a majority of the national popular vote in U.S. Senate elections to win a majority of seats in the U.S. Senate.

The End Of The Filibuster

Also, it has become much more important to have a majority in the U.S. Senate over the last four years, as the filibuster, which used to require the de facto approval of 60 Senators to approve almost any legislation was eliminated for votes on Presidential nominations. And, the precedent, invoked once by each party now, of the mechanism by which it was eliminated in those cases, means that the filibuster could be eliminated in any other circumstances by any future majority determined enough to do so. Prior to this reform in the Senate rules, it was almost impossible to pass any legislation or nominations in the Senate without bipartisan support except in the rare years where one party had a 60 seat plus majority in the Senate, providing a significant check on the ability of either party to take any actions without bipartisan support. So, the Senate provides much less of a check on the majority party which also holds the Presidency than it has for almost all of living memory. 

Changes in 2013 and 2017 now require only a simple majority to invoke cloture on nominations, although legislation still requires 60 votes. On November 21, 2013, the Senate used the so-called "nuclear option," voting 52–48 — with all Republicans and three Democrats opposed — to eliminate the use of the filibuster on executive branch nominees and judicial nominees, except to the Supreme Court. On April 6, 2017, the Senate eliminated the sole remaining exception to the 2013 change by invoking the "nuclear option" for Supreme Court nominees. This was done in order to allow a simple majority to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court (after the Republican controlled U.S. Senate refused to hold hearings on or vote upon President Obama's U.S. Supreme Court nominee, despite teh fact that the nomination was made well before the end of the Congressional session and this had never been done before in the history of the Congress). The vote to change the rules was 52 to 48 along party lines. The same rule was later used to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

The Demise Of Moderate Senators

The mere party labels also obscure the fact that the partisan divide between the Republican and the Democratic caucus in the U.S. Senate will be deeper in 2019 than it was in 2017, because many of the most moderate Senators in both parties have been replaced by solidly partisan Democrats or Republicans. Also, there are fewer Democrats in the Senate serving from red states and fewer Republicans serving from blue states.

This trend is likely to continue in 2019, because the most vulnerable incumbent Senators in those races will be incumbent moderates in their respective parties, especially moderate Republicans like Susan Collins of Maine, the sole remaining Republican in either house of Congress from New England, who has taken a more conservative stance in her Senate voting record in the last year.

Other Senate Powers

The Senate has unilateral power to approve Presidential nominees for judgeships and senior executive branch positions in the federal government, mostly without having to worry about filibusters.

The Senate also has the power to approve treaties without U.S. House participation, although this requires a two-thirds majority vote. This means that if the Republicans are united in wanting to ratify a treaty proposed by the President, they need at least 14 out of 47 Senators who caucus with the Democrats to support the treaty for it to be approved. In practice, this means that any new U.S. treaty will require support from the Democratic party.

To try impeachments, although an official impeached by the U.S. House by a majority vote there can only be removed with a two-thirds majority vote of the U.S. Senate. So even if the Democrats are united in wanting to impeach the President or a lower executive branch or judicial branch official, they need 20 out of 53 Republicans to vote to remove that person from office following a Senate trial of the impeachment. In practice, this means that it will take support for the Republican party to remove any federal official from office following a trial on an impeachment made by the House. While this is a quasi-judicial function, in practice, Republicans would block any impeachment of a strong conservative partisan in the absence of overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing inconsistent with that person continuing to hold office. In particular, it makes removing Donald Trump or a conservative U.S. Supreme Court justice from office via impeachment virtually impossible.

Because an override of a Presidential veto takes a two-thirds vote of both the House and the Senate, it takes only 34 of the 53 Republicans in the U.S. Senate to uphold a Presidential veto. So, even if two-thirds of Representatives in the House vote to override a Presidential veto, all 47 Senators who caucus with the Democrats in the Senate are united, and 19 Republicans in the Senate break ranks with the President to attempt to override his veto, the veto will be sustained. In practice, this means that no veto can be overridden without support from both the Republican party and the Democratic party.

It also takes a two-thirds majority of each house of Congress to propose a new constitutional amendment, so this requires support of both Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats. The equal rights amendment, however, which would prohibit discrimination based upon sex as a matter of the express provisions of the U.S. Constitution, is still open for the states to ratify without further Congressional action, and will take effect if three-quarters of states ratify it.

The U.S. House

The Midterm Election Results

In the U.S. House elections this year, Democrats won 234 seats and are leading by a small margin in CA-21, while Republicans won 200 seats. Assuming that Democrats win a total of 235 seats, they will have had a net gain of 40 seats in the House. This is on the high end of expected range of Democratic seat pickups in this year's midterm elections, and would have been even higher were it not for significant gerrymandering in states such as North Carolina and Texas, and voter suppression efforts in many red states, especially in the South.

Notable Geographic Features Of The Midterm House Races

In California, assuming that the Democrats win CA-21, Democrats will control 46 out of 53 U.S. House seats in California (as well as both of its Senate seats). Five of the seats still controlled by Republicans are inland, in a contiguous block of territory mostly east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Two of the seats held by Republicans, including the seat of Duncan Hunter who is currently under indictment for various felonies, are adjacent districts in the suburbs of San Diego. None of these seven seats, interestingly, have any of the Pacific coastline. The two swaths of Republican controlled House districts are separated by just a few miles from each other at their nearest point. Republicans won six of these seats by wide margins and probably would have won Duncan Hunters southern suburban San Diego seat by a more secure margin than the 51.8% of the vote that he received had their candidate in the district not been under indictment and personally compromised as a result. The Democratically controlled House District in California form a single contiguous block that continues up the entire Pacific coast of Oregon. The only seats that Republicans control on the entire Pacific coast are its one seat in Alaska and one seat in Southwest Washington State.

On the Atlantic Coast from Maine to Delaware in the Northeast, Republicans also hold only two U.S. House districts, one on the eastern part of Long Island (NY-1), and one in New Jersey (NJ-4). On the other hand, however, Democrats control only three U.S. House District on the Gulf Coast. One in Key West (FL-26), one in Tampa, Florida (FL-14), and one at the southern tip of Texas (TX-34). Likewise, Democrats control only four seats on the Atlantic Coast south of Delaware, unless you count the sheltered coasts in Maryland: VA-2, VA-3, SC-1 and FL-20.

There is more geographic analysis of the midterm election results here.

Practical Implications

In 2019, the House will be the sole source of Democratic power in the federal government (something it entirely lacks now), although it is a significant one. Among other things, all ordinary legislation must pass the U.S. House and all appropriations must be initiated with a U.S. House bill. The power to control appropriations, moreover, because it must be exercised on an annual basis to prevent a federal government shutdown, can be used as leverage to obtain agreements from the President and Republicans in Congress on pretty much anything, to the extent that they want the federal government which they control to remain open for business, and Democrats are wiling to credibly threaten to do so.

The Lame Duck Session

Up until January 3, 2019, Republicans in the lame duck Congress can still pass legislation that they will not be able to pass when they lose the majority in the U.S. House at that time. But, since Democrats could filibuster legislation in the U.S. Senate unless Republicans exercise the "nuclear option" to eliminate that element of the filibuster as well (even though eliminating it will provide Republicans with little short term benefit after Democrats regain control of the House).

The 2020 Elections

All of these Representatives will face voters again in 2020, the last Congressional election before House seats are re-allocated between states and Congressional Districts are redrawn in 2022 based upon the results of the 2020 census, which will be conducted by Donald Trump's administration.

The Demise Of Moderates In The House

The mere party labels also obscure the fact that the partisan divide between the Republican and the Democratic caucus in the U.S. House will be deeper in 2019 than it was in 2017, because many of the most moderate Representatives in both parties have been replaced by solidly partisan Democrats or Republicans. Also, there are fewer Democrats in the House serving from red states and fewer Republicans serving from blue states.

Other House Powers

Because an override of a Presidential veto takes a two-thirds vote of both the House and the Senate, it takes only 146 of the 200 Republicans in the U.S. House to uphold a Presidential veto. So, even if two-thirds of Senators vote to override a Presidential veto, all 235 Democrats in the House are united, and 54 Republicans in the House break ranks with the President to attempt to override his veto, the veto will be sustained. In practice, this means that no veto can be overridden without support from both the Republican party and the Democratic party.

It also takes a two-thirds majority of each house of Congress to propose a new constitutional amendment, so  this requires the support of both House Republicans and House Democrats. The equal rights amendment, however, which would prohibit discrimination based upon sex as a matter of the express provisions of the U.S. Constitution, is still open for the states to ratify without further Congressional action, and will take effect if three-quarters of states ratify it.

The Presidency

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are Republicans, of course. 

The Powers Of The President

The President has the power to veto any legislation (which is impossible to override without strong Republican support in both the House and the Senate), the power to nominate candidates to fill all judicial vacancies and all significant executive branch officials, many (but not all) of whom serve at the pleasure of the President  and are obligated to follow his orders. 

The President is also the power to act as commander in chief of the U.S. military, has broad (but not unlimited) power to conduct U.S. diplomacy, and has broad (but not unlimited) power to issue regulations interpreting federal law, and broad (but not unlimited) to determine how the federal bureaucracy will enforce federal laws. The main checks on these powers are judicial review (which may ultimately be weaker when conservatives control the U.S. Supreme Court) and Congressional action primarily in the form of appropriations bills limiting his ability to spend money in a way that furthers particular items of the President's agenda with respect to carrying out and enforcing federal laws.

The President also proposes an annual budget for the federal government, which is routinely significantly reworked by Congress, that nonetheless serves as a starting point for annual budget negotiations and benefits from the President's greater access to information about what funding various federal agencies need, want and can use.

The 2020 Election

President Trump and Vice President Pence must win both a Republican party primary and the general election in order to be re-elected for a second four year term in 2020. 

Despite the fact that President Trump is very unpopular with the general population of likely voters in the United States he still has very strong support among the members of the Republican party who decide who the Republican party nominee for President will e in 2020, so his re-nomination, either with Vice President Pence, or a different Vice Presidential running mate of his choice, is virtually guaranteed in the Presidential primary season in 2020, assuming that he chooses to run for re-election (he will be 74 year old at that point and is not a picture of good mental or physical health).

If the Presidential election were held today, Trump would lose to a generic Democratic Presidential candidate in a landslide. In 2016, Trump eked out a victory with wins in three critical states (Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania) by the slimmest of margins, and support for him has fallen significantly since then. But, the next Presidential election is not for two more years, and the  Democratic candidate will be someone in particular, who may exceed expectations, or underperform, relative to a generic Presidential candidate.

Presidential races can't be gerrymandered and electoral vote counts for each state will not change in 2020 from 2016, but the electoral college has a built in red state advantage (due to the unequal division of U.S. Senate seats relative to population which, in practice, favors red states), so Democrats need significantly more than a majority of the national popular vote to win a Presidential election.

The U.S. Supreme Court

Five of the nine justice on the U.S. Supreme Court are solidly conservative leaning. Four of them Thomas (age 70), Alito (age 68), Gorsuch (age 51) and Kavanaugh (age 53) are very far right Republicans. Chief Justice Roberts (age 63) is still solidly conservative but not quite as extremely conservative leaning as the other four.  And, none of them are likely to need to be replaced on account of old age or death, for many years.

Moreover, one of the liberal leaning justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, is 85 years old, and needs to stay on the bench at least another 25 months to have any chance of being replaced by another liberal justice, and liberal leaning U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Beyer is 80 years old.  The other two liberal leaning U.S. Supreme Court Justices, Sotomayor (64) and Kagan (58) are significantly younger.

The odds the President Trump will have an opportunity to appoint an unprecedented third justice to the U.S. Supreme Court replacing at least one of the four remaining liberal justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, most likely one or its two oldest justices, giving conservatives a six to three majority on the high court, is significant, even if he is not re-elected in 2020.

The lower federal courts currently mostly lean left due to eight years of President Obama's judicial appointments and appointed by earlier Democratic Presidents. But, there are plenty of conservative justices in the lower federal courts and that number rises as Donald Trump makes more appointments.

Also, of course, all courts in the United States, both state and federal, must follow precedents established by the U.S. Supreme Court, regardless of an individual judge's liberal or conservative leanings, so the partisan composition of the U.S. Supreme Court is a huge prize.

Overall

In The Short Term

Basically, at this point, after January of 2019, no new legislation changing the status quo can be passed without bipartisan support, and the only real leverage Democrats have to influence the status quo or to force Republicans to compromise and accept some of their legislation, is their ability to shut down the federal government by refusing to approve new appropriations bills if their demands are not met.

So, any conservative legislation that Trump or the Republicans want to pass has to clear Congress by the end of the year during the lame duck session. And, because the Republicans currently hold only 51 seats in the Senate, and the filibuster is still in place with respect to ordinary legislation, they will be hard pressed to pass much legislation in this way.

In the 2020 Election

The 2020 election could (and have a decent chance of) allowing Democrats to retake the Presidency and the U.S. Senate. And, the 2020 Census will almost probably result in a modest shift of House seats from red states to blue states, and from red areas within states to blue areas within states as they redistrict (in some cases subject to strictly anti-gerrymandering regulations adopted at the state level or via federal court cases).

Ironically, one of the greatest failures for Democrats in the last two years, the establishment of a very conservative U.S. Supreme Court majority, may also defuse a major issue that has been used to rally social conservatives behind Republicans for years, which is the need to secure a conservative U.S. Supreme Court majority in order to accomplish goals like narrowing or ending the abortion rights created by Roe v. Wade.  Populist social conservatives have far less of an incentive to go along with Republican economic policies that they are not strongly committed to, now that they have accomplished this goal.

In the same way, in Colorado, the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, a.ka. TABOR, while it has been horrible for good governance, has also made it much easier for affluent moderates on social issues to vote for Democrats without worrying that their taxes will go up as a result, defusing the "tax and spend liberal" arguments used against Democrats in elections before TABOR was adopted and elsewhere in places where TABOR does not exist.

The Long Term Implications For The U.S. Supreme Court

But, these victories will not change the long term secure hold that conservatives will have on the U.S. Supreme Court short of a Kavanaugh indictment or impeachment, or a court packing plan that increases the size of the U.S. Supreme Court creating enough vacancies for a Democratic President and a U.S. Senate controlled by Democrats to give the court a liberal majority (i.e. at least two more seats, and possibly more). The legislation necessary to pack the court would also require Democrats to control the U.S. House and might require them to exercise the "nuclear option" to overcome a filibuster of this legislation.

Until Democrats reach that level of complete control of the elected offices of the federal government, however, the conservative domination of the U.S. Supreme Court will remain in place fro a very long time, possibly decades. And, it has been a very long time since there was a liberal majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. For most of recent memory, the swing vote on the U.S. Supreme Court has been, effectively, a very moderate Republican vote (something that is virtually an endangered species everywhere).

Those poses a host of potential problems for Democrats seeking to regain power and exercise it, both at the federal level and the state level, and will probably have the practical effect of substantially curtailing many constitutional rights and of invalidating some kinds of liberal legislation (for example, on the subject of gun control, election law, and religious exemptions to discrimination laws).

Since liberals have few avenues for recourse to restrain executive branch excesses other than the courts at this point, they have no choice but to enter this forum even though the justices at the top are inclined to disfavor their efforts.

One approach liberal public law and social and economic justice oriented litigators can use is to try to stay within settled precedents as much as possible, rather than pushing the envelope, to reduce the likelihood of negative U.S. Supreme Court intervention. Also, as a legislative matter, Democrats can work to narrow the jurisdictional scope of the federal courts, which will increasingly be an unfriendly forum to be used only when absolutely necessary relative to state courts, an agenda for which they may be able to receive bipartisan support, because this also shifts litigation in red states to conservative leaning state courts.

Another approach is to litigate in friendly state courts in blue states, pushing for recognition of state constitutional rights that are stronger than those under the federal constitution even when the texts have identical wording, and utilizing state legislation that is more liberal than any federal legislation in place on the same subject.

Race And The Mississippi Senate Race Runoff Results

The Results

Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Republican won the runoff election for the U.S. Senate held today in Mississippi.

The results in the runoff election for U.S. Senate in Mississippi:

Candidate	Party	Votes	Pct.
Cindy Hyde-Smith*	Republican	453,468	54.0%
Mike Espy	Democrat	386,424	46.0

839,892 votes, 97% reporting (1,737 of 1,797 precincts)

* Incumbent

In the first round, the results were:

Candidate	Party	Votes	Pct.
Cindy Hyde-Smith*	Republican	368,536	41.5%
Mike Espy	Democrat	360,112	40.6
Chris McDaniel	Republican	146,013	16.5
Tobey Bartee	Democrat	12,707	1.4

Thus, Hyde-Smith gained 12.5 percentage points, compared to 16.5% of the vote won by Republican Chris McDaniel in the first round. Naively, this suggests that about 24% of Chris McDaniels voters (almost one in four) favored Mike Espy instead of Cindy Hyde-Smith, assuming that all Tobey Bartee voters in the first round supported Espy in the second round.

On the other hand, while the vote totals aren't quite all in from this race yet, Republican voter turnout is about 63,000 votes less than it was in the first round, while Democratic voter turnout was up by about 13,600 (presumably mostly McDaniels voters). So, many McDaniels voters either voted for Espy or abstained from voting entirely, rather than vote for Hyde-Smith.

So, rather than voting for the Democrat, it appears that many Chris McDaniels supporters simply abstained from voting in the runoff election all together.

One of the reasons to prefer actual runoff elections like this one to "instant runoff voting' is that it gives voters a chance to contemplate their second choices more seriously, with more information now that the choice is real, something that doesn't necessarily happen to the same extent when the second choice decisions are merely hypothetical.

But, while some McDaniels voters clearly were unwilling to vote for openly racist, neo-Confederate Cindy Hyde-Smith, in this election, it wasn't enough to make a difference.

Race and Political Affiliation In Mississippi

Mississippi is about 37% black and about 4% Hispanic. In Mississippi, both of these groups overwhelmingly favor Democrats, while whites overwhelmingly favor Republicans, a phenomena sometimes called "racial block voting" in political science and election law circles.

Compared to the national averages, blacks in Mississippi are a bit more likely to be Democrats (the national average is about 90%), and whites in Mississippi are much more likely to be Republicans (the national average is about 55%), than in the nation as a whole.

Almost all of the people who voted for Espy in the first round were black or Hispanic. Roughly 88% of the voters who voted for Democrat Mike Espy in the second round were black or Hispanic, and almost all black and Hispanic voters who voted, voted for Espy each time. Actually, it was probably a bit less than that in both cases, because not every single black or Hispanic voter voters for the Democrat. It is also a bit less than that in the second case, because voter turnout in Mississippi is probably a little bit lower for blacks and Hispanics as a percentage of the voting age population than for whites, both due to felony disqualification from voting in Mississippi, lack of U.S. citizenship among Hispanics, and from lower voter turnout among those blacks and Hispanics who are eligible to vote.

Many of the whites who voted for Espy (who is black) in the second round (indeed, probably most of them) voted for McDaniels or Bartee in the first round, but couldn't stomach voting for openly racist and neo-Confederate Hyde-Smith (who, notably, started her political career as a Democrat, where her views made her unwelcome) in the second round.

It is also almost certain that whites who voted for Espy in the runoff election were disproportionately mainline Christians, and were even more disproportionately non-religious.

Almost all of the voters voting for Cindy Hyde-Smith were white, and roughly 92% of white voters voted for Cindy Hyde-Smith in the second round (probably a modest overestimate on both counts for the same reasons, but not far from the truth).

It is also almost certain that whites who voted for Hyde-Smith in the runoff election were disproportionately Evangelical Christians (which means significant more than 69% of Hyde-Smith voters were white Evangelical Christian Republicans).

In most of the U.S. there is a strong gender gap, with women more likely to vote Democratic, and men more likely to vote Republican. But, racial block voting in Mississippi tends to mute this gender gap, and the fact that Hyde-Smith is a woman running against a male opponent also tends to mute this gender gap. So, it isn't obvious, in the absence of exit polling, how much of a gender gap, if any, there was in this U.S. Senate election.

The Other Senate Race In Mississippi This Year

Mississippi actually had two U.S. Senate races this year, one an ordinary race and one to fill a vacancy. The Republican in the other race won 58.8% of the first round vote, almost the same percentage that voted for any Republican in the race that has now entered a runoff. This again illustrates that about 8% of white Mississippians who would normally vote Republican did not support Hyde-Smith.

Candidate	Party	Votes	Pct.
Roger Wicker*	Republican	517,475	58.8%
David Baria	Democrat	344,225	39.1
Danny Bedwell	Libertarian	12,148	1.4
Shawn O'Hara	Reform	5,541	0.6

Religion in Mississippi

The overwhelmingly Republican whites in Mississippi are atypical of the nation in their religious affiliations as well.

Mississippi has the lowest percentage of Roman Catholics of any U.S. state (4%), about two-third or more of whom are Hispanic (the white Catholic population of Mississippi is on the order of 1%). Mississippi also has very few Mormons (0.73%). It has a negligible percentage of Jewish adherents (about 0.1%).

Mississippi also has a low proportion of mainline Christians, excluding historically black denominations (12% of  the population, of whom two-thirds are mainline Christian Baptists or Methodists, and some of whom are not white) to white Evangelical Christians (41% of the population, mostly Baptists or non-denominational Evangelical Christians).

About 15% of the population of Mississippi is not religious (the largest non-Protestant population in the state), and about two-thirds of them are neither atheists nor agnostics, while about 5% are atheists or agnostics (roughly equal to the percentage of the population of Mississippi that is religious but not Protestant Christian).

About 69% of whites in Mississippi are Evangelical Christians. About 3% of whites are Roman Catholic or Mormon. The rest are almost all either non-religious or mainline Christians, probably about 12% mainline Christian and 16% non-religious. The atheist and agnostic proportion of non-religious whites is probably a bit more than a third. The last two percentages, however, involve some guesswork.

Blacks in Mississippi are mostly (about 70%+), adherents of historical black Protestant denominations (mostly Baptist), with the remainder being mainline Christians (about 12%) or non-religious (about 14%). The atheist and agnostic proportion of blacks is probably a bit less than a third. These percentages, however, involve some guesswork.