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Do people in London and Toronto care enough to pressure their leaders about this? In my experience it's hard to find people in the U.S. who even bother to pay a

Do people in London and Toronto care enough to pressure their leaders about this? In my experience it's hard to find people in the U.S. who even bother to pay attention to who has oversight when it comes to transportation (and not just transportation, this is true for a lot of local issues).

L_Rahman 9y ago
I promise you that New Yorkers care about this deeply. https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/the-human-cost-of-subway-delays-a-survey-of-new-york-city-riders/ https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/the-human-cost-of-subway... Any survey of New Yorkers and government services will tell you how much this matters. The biggest problem is that the New York government at city and state levels is one of the most corrupt, oligarchic and undemocratic organizations in modern society. I cannot begin to describe how broken it is. Here's a good example: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/nyregion/new-york-politics-party-bosses.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/nyregion/new-york-politic... This leaves us with no levers of power over government decisions. When you take into account that the people who most heavily depend on the subway are also the poorest, we have even less power over the elected and appointed government class.
- Chathamization 9y ago
  > This leaves us with no levers of power over government decisions. I'm not sure I understand this. Yes, the hand-picked successor will be able to fulfill the rest of the term, but then he's up for re-election. If people were actually outraged about this, they could vote him out the next time there's an election (just like they could have voted out the predecessor that set this process in motion). If people were really upset about corruption, they could have voted Cuomo out for killing the anti-corruption panel when it started to look in to corruption connected to him (IIRC, this happened just a few months before the 2014 primary). It's hard for me to believe that these things really bother people when they keep voting back in the people who are doing them.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    That's not a very practical way to think about democracy. Yes, that's the middle school government-class platonic ideal of democracy and government, but that's not exactly the whole dynamic. I mean do you also find it hard to believe that people are bothered by Trump? After all, "they" just elected him.
    - Chathamization 9y ago
      So, I brought up Cuomo's election in 2014 - let's look at that example. Teachout was running a reformist campaign against Cuomo in the 2014 Democratic primary (and Credico was running as well). Only 594,287 people bothered showing up to vote. Of those showing up to vote, 361,380 voted for Cuomo[1]. In November 2015, there were 5,778,460 registered Democrats in New York[2]. So in 2014, after a fairly serious issue involving Cuomo getting rid of an anti-corruption panel because it was investigating corruption connected to him, only 4% of registered Democrats - four percent! - bothered to show up and vote for someone other than him in the primaries. And this was for governor! Almost 90% of registered Democrats didn't vote at all - they didn't care one way or the other who would be governor. Down ballot races usually get even less attention. Naturally, I'm not saying that there isn't anyone who cares and acts accordingly. But what I am saying is that the amount of people who care and act accordingly are a minority, and in many cases, a very small minority. [1] http://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/elections/2014/Primary/2014StateLocalPrimaryElectionResults.pdf http://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/elections/2014/Primary/20... [2] https://nypost.com/2016/04/06/ny-voter-registration-barely-increases-for-both-parties/ https://nypost.com/2016/04/06/ny-voter-registration-barely-i...
      - chimeracoder 9y ago
        > only 4% of registered Democrats - four percent! - bothered to show up and vote for someone other than him in the primaries. New York has low turnout because it has a set of laws that serve to disenfranchise voters in ways that other states could only ever dream of. (Yes, people technically have the right to vote, but because of a set of laws which I've described elsewhere, there's no way for them to use these votes to hold their elected officials accountable, like there is in other states). Once every decade or so, yes, there's a race that's moderately contested (like the one you describe). But at that point, people aren't in the habit of voting anyway. By the way, in your example the only reason Teachout ran as a Democrat instead of on the Working Families Party as she'd planned is because of these laws. The Working Families Party was pressured into endorsing Cuomo as their candidate, to ensure that they'd retain their ballot access. Teachout was angry enough that she decided to run as a Democrat, knowing full well that she'd lose, because nobody in New York ever wins a primary without the backing of the major party[0]. Teachout is far and away an exception, not the rule. Even then, her run was purely symbolic, and she herself knew it. [0] Again, due to a whole bunch of laws that give the party incredible influence in shaping the outcome of primaries.
- bradleyjg 9y ago
  The biggest problem is that the New York government at city and state levels is one of the most corrupt, oligarchic and undemocratic organizations in modern society. I cannot begin to describe how broken it is. We could have voted to reform the constitution and then stayed engaged enough to pick independent delegates instead of the same old insiders catering to special interests. But we collectively let the insiders and special interests talk us out of our once in twenty years opportunity to fix this nightmare.
  - kenferry 9y ago
    What opportunity are you referring to?
    - nerdponx 9y ago
      There was a referendum to hold a constitutional convention which would be able to propose amendments to the state constitution. For some reason I still don't quite understand, labor unions were viciously opposed to it, supposedly because they were afraid of losing their pensions.
      - chimeracoder 9y ago
        > For some reason I still don't quite understand, labor unions were viciously opposed to it, supposedly because they were afraid of losing their pensions That's the excuse they gave, but the real reason is simple. Labor unions already wield disproportionately massive power over the legislature in NY. Any attempt to reform NY government and hold elected officials more accountable to voters would inherently weaken some of their power, by comparison. Labor unions don't want voters to have power for the same reason elected officials don't.
        murph-almighty 9y ago
        Their argument was that corporate interests and lobbyists would have proposed amendments that didn't serve to benefit the citizens of NY. Given that Citizens United is a thing, I can't blame them.
- solatic 9y ago
  That's because people keep voting for Democratic candidates, no matter their performance as incumbents. Why can't people vote for the candidate of a different party? It doesn't have to be Republican. Why isn't there a "Fix the Subway" single-issue party running candidates that people can vote for? The internal machinations of political party membership are only relevant if voters no longer have a de-facto choice on election day.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    Because nobody outside of parts of NYC give a shit about the subway. The MTA is a public authority controlled by the governor. Control was kept away from the city due to the city’s fiscal and corruption problems and the machinations of Robert Moses. The subway and busses were ultimately bailed out by the bridges and tunnels, which print money.
    - solatic 9y ago
      Which is why the first step is returning control to the municipal government, no?
      - Spooky23 9y ago
        That ship sailed many years ago. Public authorities are quasi-government entities controlled by the the bond covenants. You have to line-up the interests of the bond holders with whomever controls the authority and is desiring change. With something as broad in scope and rich as MTA is such a deep well of political capital, it's incredibly unlikely that anyone would give up any control. It's such a large enterprise there probably isn't one roomful of people who actually understand how the organization works. The current situation was created when the whole NYC transit system was completely insolvent back in the bad old days! Read "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro. It will open your eyes to why things are the way they are.
  - danieltillett 9y ago
    If you have primaries it rally doesn’t matter the label of the candidate that gets elected - the problem really is that too few people bother to get involved at the primary stage and elect new uncorrupt people.
- arkades 9y ago
  Wait, /is/ that article a good example? It argues the source of corruption is that various local politicians can hand off their seats to a preferred successor, giving that successor and their party an incumbency advantage. I can see that being a provlem, instead of an open election, but... “Vacancies are filled differently across the country. In 25 states, replacement legislators are simply chosen by appointment, either by the governor (11 states) or some combination of party and local officials (14 states), according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Varying rules govern the 25 states that hold special elections, but few bestow more influence on local power brokers than New York does.” So, in 25 states the power to hand off succession is as or more concentrated. This would seem to put NYs succession regulations right square in the middle of the pack.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    You can't look at an individual law alone. New York has a whole array of laws designed to protect the power of both major parties, and they work in conjunction with each other. Want to switch your party registration? Go ahead and do it today - it won't take effect until 2019. Yes, you read that right. This deadline for change of party registration is an order of magnitude larger than the next largest state. New York also uses fusion voting to weaken third parties - they only have any influence whatsoever if they endorse the major party candidates, which prevents any real competition with the major party candidates. (See how Cuomo created the fake "Women's Equality Party" during the last election cycle specifically in an attempt to strip the Working Families Party of its ballot status). There are a whole range of these laws, and if I were to go into all of them, I'd exceed the maximum length for a HN comment ten times over,. The end result is that New York is, objective, the most corrupt state in the country[0], and the system is also perfectly stable (in the literal sense) - there is no way, short of a federal court case, that any of these laws will ever meaningfully change. [0] http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/sep/19/elaine-phillips/new-york-has-been-most-corrupt-state-decades/ http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/sep/19/el...
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    New York in the last decade has had more legislative turnover due to felony conviction than a competitive election. Even republicans don’t get kicked out until they retire or get arrested. I live in a particularly stagnant political subdivision, but I’d say in the last 20 general elections, there have been maybe 3 that had something more than nominal opponents. Usually it’s for things like county coroner. They are more affirmation than election.

L_Rahman 9y ago

I promise you that New Yorkers care about this deeply. https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/the-human-cost-of-subway-delays-a-survey-of-new-york-city-riders/ https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/the-human-cost-of-subway... Any survey of New Yorkers and government services will tell you how much this matters. The biggest problem is that the New York government at city and state levels is one of the most corrupt, oligarchic and undemocratic organizations in modern society. I cannot begin to describe how broken it is. Here's a good example: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/nyregion/new-york-politics-party-bosses.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/nyregion/new-york-politic... This leaves us with no levers of power over government decisions. When you take into account that the people who most heavily depend on the subway are also the poorest, we have even less power over the elected and appointed government class.

Chathamization 9y ago
> This leaves us with no levers of power over government decisions. I'm not sure I understand this. Yes, the hand-picked successor will be able to fulfill the rest of the term, but then he's up for re-election. If people were actually outraged about this, they could vote him out the next time there's an election (just like they could have voted out the predecessor that set this process in motion). If people were really upset about corruption, they could have voted Cuomo out for killing the anti-corruption panel when it started to look in to corruption connected to him (IIRC, this happened just a few months before the 2014 primary). It's hard for me to believe that these things really bother people when they keep voting back in the people who are doing them.
- mseebach 9y ago
  That's not a very practical way to think about democracy. Yes, that's the middle school government-class platonic ideal of democracy and government, but that's not exactly the whole dynamic. I mean do you also find it hard to believe that people are bothered by Trump? After all, "they" just elected him.
  - Chathamization 9y ago
    So, I brought up Cuomo's election in 2014 - let's look at that example. Teachout was running a reformist campaign against Cuomo in the 2014 Democratic primary (and Credico was running as well). Only 594,287 people bothered showing up to vote. Of those showing up to vote, 361,380 voted for Cuomo[1]. In November 2015, there were 5,778,460 registered Democrats in New York[2]. So in 2014, after a fairly serious issue involving Cuomo getting rid of an anti-corruption panel because it was investigating corruption connected to him, only 4% of registered Democrats - four percent! - bothered to show up and vote for someone other than him in the primaries. And this was for governor! Almost 90% of registered Democrats didn't vote at all - they didn't care one way or the other who would be governor. Down ballot races usually get even less attention. Naturally, I'm not saying that there isn't anyone who cares and acts accordingly. But what I am saying is that the amount of people who care and act accordingly are a minority, and in many cases, a very small minority. [1] http://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/elections/2014/Primary/2014StateLocalPrimaryElectionResults.pdf http://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/elections/2014/Primary/20... [2] https://nypost.com/2016/04/06/ny-voter-registration-barely-increases-for-both-parties/ https://nypost.com/2016/04/06/ny-voter-registration-barely-i...
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > only 4% of registered Democrats - four percent! - bothered to show up and vote for someone other than him in the primaries. New York has low turnout because it has a set of laws that serve to disenfranchise voters in ways that other states could only ever dream of. (Yes, people technically have the right to vote, but because of a set of laws which I've described elsewhere, there's no way for them to use these votes to hold their elected officials accountable, like there is in other states). Once every decade or so, yes, there's a race that's moderately contested (like the one you describe). But at that point, people aren't in the habit of voting anyway. By the way, in your example the only reason Teachout ran as a Democrat instead of on the Working Families Party as she'd planned is because of these laws. The Working Families Party was pressured into endorsing Cuomo as their candidate, to ensure that they'd retain their ballot access. Teachout was angry enough that she decided to run as a Democrat, knowing full well that she'd lose, because nobody in New York ever wins a primary without the backing of the major party[0]. Teachout is far and away an exception, not the rule. Even then, her run was purely symbolic, and she herself knew it. [0] Again, due to a whole bunch of laws that give the party incredible influence in shaping the outcome of primaries.
bradleyjg 9y ago
The biggest problem is that the New York government at city and state levels is one of the most corrupt, oligarchic and undemocratic organizations in modern society. I cannot begin to describe how broken it is. We could have voted to reform the constitution and then stayed engaged enough to pick independent delegates instead of the same old insiders catering to special interests. But we collectively let the insiders and special interests talk us out of our once in twenty years opportunity to fix this nightmare.
- kenferry 9y ago
  What opportunity are you referring to?
  - nerdponx 9y ago
    There was a referendum to hold a constitutional convention which would be able to propose amendments to the state constitution. For some reason I still don't quite understand, labor unions were viciously opposed to it, supposedly because they were afraid of losing their pensions.
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > For some reason I still don't quite understand, labor unions were viciously opposed to it, supposedly because they were afraid of losing their pensions That's the excuse they gave, but the real reason is simple. Labor unions already wield disproportionately massive power over the legislature in NY. Any attempt to reform NY government and hold elected officials more accountable to voters would inherently weaken some of their power, by comparison. Labor unions don't want voters to have power for the same reason elected officials don't.
      - murph-almighty 9y ago
        Their argument was that corporate interests and lobbyists would have proposed amendments that didn't serve to benefit the citizens of NY. Given that Citizens United is a thing, I can't blame them.
solatic 9y ago
That's because people keep voting for Democratic candidates, no matter their performance as incumbents. Why can't people vote for the candidate of a different party? It doesn't have to be Republican. Why isn't there a "Fix the Subway" single-issue party running candidates that people can vote for? The internal machinations of political party membership are only relevant if voters no longer have a de-facto choice on election day.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Because nobody outside of parts of NYC give a shit about the subway. The MTA is a public authority controlled by the governor. Control was kept away from the city due to the city’s fiscal and corruption problems and the machinations of Robert Moses. The subway and busses were ultimately bailed out by the bridges and tunnels, which print money.
  - solatic 9y ago
    Which is why the first step is returning control to the municipal government, no?
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      That ship sailed many years ago. Public authorities are quasi-government entities controlled by the the bond covenants. You have to line-up the interests of the bond holders with whomever controls the authority and is desiring change. With something as broad in scope and rich as MTA is such a deep well of political capital, it's incredibly unlikely that anyone would give up any control. It's such a large enterprise there probably isn't one roomful of people who actually understand how the organization works. The current situation was created when the whole NYC transit system was completely insolvent back in the bad old days! Read "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro. It will open your eyes to why things are the way they are.
- danieltillett 9y ago
  If you have primaries it rally doesn’t matter the label of the candidate that gets elected - the problem really is that too few people bother to get involved at the primary stage and elect new uncorrupt people.
arkades 9y ago
Wait, /is/ that article a good example? It argues the source of corruption is that various local politicians can hand off their seats to a preferred successor, giving that successor and their party an incumbency advantage. I can see that being a provlem, instead of an open election, but... “Vacancies are filled differently across the country. In 25 states, replacement legislators are simply chosen by appointment, either by the governor (11 states) or some combination of party and local officials (14 states), according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Varying rules govern the 25 states that hold special elections, but few bestow more influence on local power brokers than New York does.” So, in 25 states the power to hand off succession is as or more concentrated. This would seem to put NYs succession regulations right square in the middle of the pack.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  You can't look at an individual law alone. New York has a whole array of laws designed to protect the power of both major parties, and they work in conjunction with each other. Want to switch your party registration? Go ahead and do it today - it won't take effect until 2019. Yes, you read that right. This deadline for change of party registration is an order of magnitude larger than the next largest state. New York also uses fusion voting to weaken third parties - they only have any influence whatsoever if they endorse the major party candidates, which prevents any real competition with the major party candidates. (See how Cuomo created the fake "Women's Equality Party" during the last election cycle specifically in an attempt to strip the Working Families Party of its ballot status). There are a whole range of these laws, and if I were to go into all of them, I'd exceed the maximum length for a HN comment ten times over,. The end result is that New York is, objective, the most corrupt state in the country[0], and the system is also perfectly stable (in the literal sense) - there is no way, short of a federal court case, that any of these laws will ever meaningfully change. [0] http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/sep/19/elaine-phillips/new-york-has-been-most-corrupt-state-decades/ http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/sep/19/el...
- Spooky23 9y ago
  New York in the last decade has had more legislative turnover due to felony conviction than a competitive election. Even republicans don’t get kicked out until they retire or get arrested. I live in a particularly stagnant political subdivision, but I’d say in the last 20 general elections, there have been maybe 3 that had something more than nominal opponents. Usually it’s for things like county coroner. They are more affirmation than election.