Also relevant is the history of Republican party officials helping gather signatures to get Ralph Nader on the ballot in states in previous Presidential elections. Neither side has very clean hands here.
Trevor Potter
Sent by Good Messaging (www.good.com)
-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Richie [mailto:
rr@fairvote.org]
Sent: Sunday, October 24, 2010 11:58 AM Eastern Standard Time
To: Election Law
Subject: [EL] Rick's entry - "Seeking Edge on G.O.P.,Democrats Back Third Parties"
Rick's highlighting of this Page 1 story in the *New
York Times..*
*"Seeking Edge on G.O.P., Democrats Back Third Parties*" : More great
> election reporting<
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/23/us/politics/23dems.html?ref=politics>
> .
>
... follows another Page 1 *Times* story a few weeks ago on the Republicans
doing this same tactic in Arizona. And of course we also see the major
parties sometimes devoting great energy to keeping legitimate third party
and independent party candidates off the ballot and out of debates.
Both of these problematic actions are tied directly to the fact that we
generally rely on first-past-the-post, plurality voting that easily can go
haywire when voters have more than two choices. The rest of the world has
largely figured out to handle this problem by using a majority system,
either through traditional
runoff elections or through instant runoff voting
/ ranked choice voting. Most presidential elections must win in runoffs, as
in Brazil's current elections, and some use instant runoffs -- and the UK
will vote on it next year to replace plurality for the House of Commons.
The US has a good experience with runoffs, including in a number of early
congressional elections and today in Washington State, in several states for
primaries and many cities for mayor. We're also seeing more interesting uses
of instant runoff voting, with a lot of interesting coverage of the first
use of IRV for mayor in Oakland this fall and for a statewide judicial
office in North Carolina Below are links to a Newsweek story about instant
runoff voting, and two important "transpartisan" op-eds in favor if it this
weekend in Minneapolis and St. Paul -- Minneapolis used it in city elections
last fall, St. Paul adopted in a ballot measure and
the state has an
entrenched multi-party reality that regularly denies majority wins to
statewide elections winners.
Also, we regularly cover this issue at www.twitter.com/fairvote. You can see
a series of blogs about how lack of majority voting is playing out this fall
at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-richie/upholding-majority-rule-w_b_771892.html- Rob Richie, FairVote
##############
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/24/north-carolina-tries-instant-runoff-voting.html*An Electoral Experiment in North Carolina
Newsweek, October 24, 2010*
The logic of general elections is simple: winner takes all. This, of course,
can encourage nasty campaigning-and at the end of a race
with more than two
candidates, the victor often wins with only a plurality (not a majority) of
support. ...[ see rest at link]
#####################
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/105442218.html?elr=KArksc8P:Pc:U0ckkD:aEyKUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr*As easy as 1,2,3 (and better than 'one or the other')
By George Pillsbury, Nate Garvis and Tim Penny*
Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 23, 2010
The usual "spoiler" accusations being leveled at gubernatorial candidate Tom
Horner and his supporters -- by both Republican and DFL camps -- illustrate
why, more than ever, Minnesota needs ranked-choice voting...[see rest at
link]
######################
http://www.twincities.com/ci_16400194?IADID=*Latimer, Stringer, Penny: Minnesota needs a 'ranked choice' voting system
By George Latimer, Tim Penny and Ed Stringer*
October 22, 2010
When we began talking about Ranked Choice Voting (or Instant Runoff Voting)
a few years ago, there were a lot of questions about whether and how it
could work. Those have been answered by Minneapolis' highly successful
rollout last year - with just one spoiled ballot and 95 percent of voters
reporting it was easy to use - and we're confident RCV's debut in St. Paul
next year will be just as smooth and well-recieived... [see rest at lnk]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Respect for Every Vote and Every Voice"
Rob Richie
Executive Director
FairVote
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 610
Takoma Park, MD 20912
www.fairvote.org
rr@fairvote.org(301) 270-4616
Please support FairVote through action and donations -- see
http://fairvote.org/donate. For federal employees, please consider a gift
to us through the Combined Federal Campaign (FairVote's CFC number is
10132.) Thank you!
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