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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