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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