Transition 2021

As the Biden administration takes shape, an emphasis on voluntary national service, namely young adults volunteering national service at home, abroad or in the military in exchange for tuition waivers for higher education, will be a powerful beginning. The healing bridge for youth who will shape the future is voluntary service for the public good.  AmeriCorps, VISTA and the Peace Corps are relatively limited programs of national and international service to which Americans of sincere purpose have contributed their talents for decades.   Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has advocated that Washington pay the college tuition for all students, no matter what their backgrounds, financial or otherwise, and with no commitment in return. His has been a plea for fairness that resonates with the grievances of those who consider themselves left behind by modern society. Sanders wants to eliminate crippling student indebtedness following graduation.   Much has already been studied and proposed. For example, the Brookings Institution and Service Year Alliance have published articles and reports on the prospects for national service and recommendations for action. The National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service recently presented a comprehensive plan for national service. The “Biden Plan for Education Beyond High School” will soon guide a revitalized Department of Education, aiming for tuition grants, loan forgiveness and workforce training programs with special focus on community colleges and minority institutions.    Recruits who enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces and serve at least 36 months can tap the G.I. Bill to cover four years of college. There is no partisanship in promoting such military service, which is a great leveler in American society. If Biden’s goal of healing the nation is to have real meaning, then a good place to start with liberals, conservatives and centrists is national and international service grounded in an incentivized program of work in exchange for tuition for college and vocational training.  National service requires working together and sharing experiences among a diverse group of American high school graduates drawn from a broad political spectrum. The lessons learned—cooperation, understanding varied points of view and achieving a common goal—will build a stronger American body politic and society. Its time has come in this deeply fractured nation.  Three priorities should be factored into expanding national and international service for young Americans. The initiative should be a fellowship program tying national and international service to educational benefits. First, American business needs a better trained workforce to draw upon in the years ahead to compete in the global economy. National service can provide training in temporary jobs that prepare students for institutions of higher learning or vocational schools that can launch new generations into productive jobs. Businesses, corporations and philanthropies could help finance such opportunities in order to build a highly proficient workforce for the future and thus lessen the financial burden on the federal government to fund educational pursuits. Second, the institutions of higher education, community colleges and vocational schools for which national service would earn tuition waivers should have more skin in the game. They should be invested in the national service objectives and invited to propose opportunities that can directly benefit their own institutions and communities during a volunteer’s service. The tuition waiver for the volunteer, who would have applied and been admitted to the school for the post-service year, could be shared between the school and the federal government. Such targeted national service for the student might entail college administrative tasks and facilities maintenance, community service to bridge town and gown and tutoring by talented high school graduates.  Third, many volunteers should be steered into international service. The benefit derived by teenagers—be they from poor or financially secure families —who have exposure to foreign cultures is priceless. There is no better act of mature growth than being immersed in a foreign culture with a responsibility to perform.  Humanitarian relief organizations providing life-saving aid overseas can be integrated into international service for young American volunteers who would devote a gap year between high school and college, or between university and post-graduate studies, to the charity’s work. American and foreign universities could partner to develop service opportunities for American students who seek to contribute to worthy academic-led projects overseas. Who might be the inspirational leader of a bold service initiative? Biden could turn to a Republican—former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) or former Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio)—to lead a new bipartisan John Lewis Fellowship Program in Public Service. David J. Scheffer is visiting senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former U.S. ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues (1997-2001). Steven H. Simon is executive chairman of the Simon Charitable Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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It’s almost over. Yesterday Electoral College electors convened virtually or in person in state capitals across the country to cast their votes. The result was what everyone expected, the election of Joe Biden as president of the United States. With the election now essentially settled—Republican lawmakers may make one last doomed attempt to reverse the results when Congress meets on January 6 to confirm the Electoral College vote—here’s one last review of how the vote went. The Electoral College In 2016, seven electors declined to vote for the candidate they were pledged to. That was the highest number of “faithless electors” ever, with the exception of the election of 1872. That year sixty-three electors broke their pledge. They had a good reason to do so, however. They were pledged to Democratic candidate Horace Greeley—he of “Go West” fame. Greeley died three weeks after losing to Ulysses S. Grant and before the Electoral College met. His pledged electors were understandably reluctant to vote for a dead man. Three electors, however, did cast their votes for Greeley. This year there were no faithless electors. So the final tally in the Electoral College was 306 to 232. That, of course, is the reverse of the margin Donald Trump won by in 2016. He called that a “massive landslide victory.” Biden flipped five states on his way to winning the Electoral College: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Every other state held to form. The Popular Vote Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. That’s more votes than any other presidential candidate has ever won, with the exception of Biden. (Third-party candidates picked up 1.8 percent of the votes cast.) More than 159 million Americans voted in 2020: 159,633,396 to be exact. That’s the largest total voter turnout in U.S. history and the first time more than 140 million people voted. Voter turnout in 2020 was the highest in 120 years when measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population: 66.7 percent. You have to go back all the way to 1900 to find a higher percentage turnout (73.7 percent). The election of 1876 holds the record for highest turnout: 82.6 percent. That, of course, was also one of America’s most controversial and consequential elections—and not in a good way.   Minnesota holds pride of place with the highest state voter turnout. Eighty percent of Minnesotans went to the polls. Oklahoma holds the dubious distinction of being the state with the lowest voter turnout. Just 55 percent of Oklahomans voted. A Close Election or Not?   So did Biden win comfortably? Yes, if you go by the popular vote. In the past six presidential elections, only Barack Obama in 2008 won by a larger total vote margin than the 7,060,140-vote margin that Biden piled up. Likewise, Biden’s 4.5 percentage point lead is the largest win in the past six elections other than Obama’s seven-point win in 2008. But as Andrew Jackson, Samuel Tilden, Grover Cleveland, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton can all attest, winning the popular vote doesn’t necessarily mean winning the presidency. When you look at the smallest popular vote shift needed to give Trump a victory, the 2020 election was close. Indeed, it was even closer than 2016. If Trump picked up the right mix of 42,921 votes in Arizona (10,457), Georgia (11,779), and Wisconsin (20,682), the Electoral College would have been tied at 269 all. The House would have then decided the election. Republicans will hold the majority of state delegations in the new Congress, and they undoubtedly would have chosen Trump. If Trump had also picked up the one electoral vote in Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, which he lost to Biden by 22,091 votes, he would have won the Electoral College outright. Back in 2016, Clinton needed to pick up the right mix of 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to win the Electoral College. Women in Congress The 117th Congress will have a record total 141 women, or 26.4 percent of its membership, when it convenes on January 3. (Even so, women’s representation in Congress will lag behind that in the national legislatures of many other democratic countries.) Those numbers don’t include Senator Kamala Harris, who will be resigning her seat, or non-voting delegates in the House. These numbers could change slightly or remain the same, depending on whether Kelly Loeffler wins the January 5 run-off for her Georgia Senate seat and who is appointed to fill Vice-President-Elect Harris’s Senate seat. Ohio Representative Marcia Fudge is set to resign her seat so she can become secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Women won’t, however, be equally distributed between the two parties. Democrats will have 105 women members of Congress, which is one less than in the 116th Congress. Republicans will have thirty-six women lawmakers, or fourteen more than in the 116th Congress. That breaks the record the GOP set back in 2006. The House will have 117 women lawmakers, with eighty-nine Democrats and twenty-eight Republicans. Nine out of the thirteen House seats Republicans flipped from blue to red were won by women. Meanwhile, there will be twenty-four women senators, sixteen of whom are Democrats and eight of whom are Republicans. Again, how Loeffler fares on January 5 and who replaces Harris and Fudge could change these numbers. A record fifty-one women of color will serve in the 117th Congress. The previous record was forty-eight, set by the 116th Congress. Republicans broke their record for most women of color in Congress (five). The previous GOP record was three, set in 2014. Forty-six women of color will represent Democrats (not including Kamala Harris), down from the record forty-seven from the last Congress. Cori Bush (D-MO) became the first Black congresswoman elected in Missouri and Marilyn Strickland (D-WA) the first in the state of Washington. Strickland also joins Young Kim (R-CA) and Michelle Steel (R-CA) to become the first Korean American women in Congress. Wyoming elected its first female Senator: Republican Cynthia Lummis.   Other Notable Developments People of color will make up about 28 percent of the new House. Elected to the House this year, not including non-voting delegates, are forty-three Hispanic Americans (three more than the 116th Congress); sixteen Asian Americans (three more than the 116th); fifty-seven Black Americans (five more than the 116th); and five American Indians (two more than the 116th), and one native Hawaiian, Kaiali’i Kahele. Kahele is only the second native Hawaiian elected since Hawaii became a state in 1959. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) is the only Hispanic member of the Senate’s incoming freshman class. Once he is sworn in, the Senate will have five Latinx members, with the others being Democrats Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, and Republicans Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida. The Senate will have two Black members after Harris resigns, Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina. That number could go higher depending on whether Raphael Warnock wins his race in Georgia and on who is chosen to succeed Harris as California’s junior senator. The Senate will continue to have two senators of Asian descent, Democrats Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) and Ritchie Torres (D-NY) became the first openly gay Black men elected to Congress. The addition of Jones and Torres means that a record number of eleven LGBTQ+ lawmakers will be in the 117th Congress.   Morgan Cawthorn (R-NC) became the youngest person elected to the House in modern history. He is twenty-five years old. The pandemic helped popularize early voting and mail-in ballots. Americans cast 101,453,111 early votes. That is 64.1 percent of the total votes cast in 2020. The total number of mail-in ballots was 65,642,049. Looking Ahead The 2022 congressional midterm elections will be held on November 8, 2022. That is 693 days away. All 435 House seats and thirty-four Senate seats will be up for grabs. The 2024 election will be held on November 5, 2024. That’s 1,421 days away. Margaret Gach assisted in the preparation of this post.

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