The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Camejo, Nader's running mate, was speaking at a community college near where we saw our movie last night, and we went in to use the bathroom. Everything was winding down, but I noticed how small the room was. This is the running mate of the third-place presidential candidate and the room seated maybe 150 people. I was shocked at the small-potatoes-ness of it.

Anyway, they gave me a flyer about Instant Runoff voting, which sounds pretty interesting. In it, everyone votes for their three favorite candidates, in order of preference. If a candidate gets a majority (> 50%) of first place votes, he wins, election over. If not, then they keep the top two vote getters and eliminate everyone else. If neither of those guys is your first place vote, then your vote counts for whomever you voted higher for who's still in the race.

The idea is that you can vote for Nader without worrying that your vote really helps Bush. You pick Nader first, Kerry second. If Neither Kerry or Bush gets > 50%, then there would be a runoff, presumably between Bush and Kerry. Since your second choice vote was for Kerry, your vote gets counted for him in the "instant runoff".

Sort of confusing, but sounds like a great idea. Apparently some cities and states already use this system to elect local officials. San Francisco's mayor, I'm told, uses that system.

The Washington State chapter trying to get an initiative on the ballot has a web site at http://www.irvwa.org.

I seem to remember that a version of this method is used to select Olympic host cities. IIRC, this method (or methods like it) seem to reduce the likelihood that someone can be elected that the majority dislikes, but there were still weird paradoxes to it that I can't remember off the top of my head.

Here's a site that addresses some of its shortcomings.

Here's a site that with some good information on different voting systems:

http://www.fairvote.org/

Jim: that's all well and interesting and stuff, but... well, what's the point? Are you or he suggesting that we should change the national voting system to Instant Runoff voting?

I think there is legislation in congress HR5293 to require states to implement instant runoff voting for federal office. The idea is this type of voting system would be more democratic, in that more often than not, the candidate elected is the person the majority of voters wanted.

If a marjority vote means a win, that would work. The fact is, we are a Republic, NOT a Democracy. Your vote influences the Electorial College, but what your vote does not do, is elect a president. So a run-off would be meaningless unless you change our form of goverenment, and that aint gonna happen. Cause the Commies from China and Socialist like France may find a way to sway the popular vote but they could not win the election. Also, a third party cannidate is never a wasted vote. If you truly want to change the status quo, keep voting for that third party canidate. It is the only way to build a large enough following to win eventually.

I get tired of people complaining about the electoral college.

Back when we first became the United States, the word "state" was as often as not synonymous with "country". It still is sometimes. So the "United States" was just that, a united bunch of supposedly semi-independent countries. so the electoral college made perfect sense in that context. Over the years American national identity has shifted so that we see ourselves much more as a single country with 50 little provinces thought of frequently as nothing more than convenient bookmarks for cultural references. So much of the conflict in the country's history (the Civil War, most notably, but more recently things like gay marriage and abortion) stem from this fundamental disagreement as to just how sovereign every state really is. So are we a bunch of 50 separate countries, or are we one country with 50 divisions in it? The answer is somewhere in between. But the electoral college is a product of the former interpretation, which was the predominant view in the day it was invented.

All that said, I don't like the system either. But at least I appreciate where it came from. It was, originally, the right idea.

as i was driving to work today, i was kind of grumbling to myself about the election result. i mean more people in my state wanted kerry to be our president than bush, but we're stuck with who other states wanted.

but then i realised, a lot of counties within my state voted more for bush than kerry, and probably they are unhappy about the state result just like i am with the national result.

overall, i think it's idiotic for two polar opposites (more or less) to be running for president, and people to have to pick one or the other (i.e. left or right). the world would be a much better place if we had co-presidents, one from each party, to represent the interests of ALL the people, not just half of them. i mean when only 51% of the country votes for a guy, he's hardly the best person to work for everybody, is he?

of course this would lead to nothing ever getting done, and i guess this is kind of the point of having all the senators and representatives from their various political parties and stuff. *shrug* it just seems stupid to me to have one person be the main figurehead who's essentially in charge of the whole country, but who only reflects the views of half of it.

i thought i had a point when i started writing this but i guess i was wrong.

Jim of Seattle wrote:Camejo, Nader's running mate, was speaking at a community college near where we saw our movie last night, and we went in to use the bathroom. Everything was winding down, but I noticed how small the room was. This is the running mate of the third-place presidential candidate and the room seated maybe 150 people. I was shocked at the small-potatoes-ness of it.

Anyway, they gave me a flyer about Instant Runoff voting, which sounds pretty interesting. In it, everyone votes for their three favorite candidates, in order of preference. If a candidate gets a majority (> 50%) of first place votes, he wins, election over. If not, then they keep the top two vote getters and eliminate everyone else. If neither of those guys is your first place vote, then your vote counts for whomever you voted higher for who's still in the race.

The idea is that you can vote for Nader without worrying that your vote really helps Bush. You pick Nader first, Kerry second. If Neither Kerry or Bush gets > 50%, then there would be a runoff, presumably between Bush and Kerry. Since your second choice vote was for Kerry, your vote gets counted for him in the "instant runoff".

Sort of confusing, but sounds like a great idea. Apparently some cities and states already use this system to elect local officials. San Francisco's mayor, I'm told, uses that system.

The Washington State chapter trying to get an initiative on the ballot has a web site at http://www.irvwa.org.

That sounds pretty much like the preferential voting system used in Australia. If there are 5 candidates in an electorate - you mark each one on the ballot with a number from 1 to 5 in order of your preference.

They then count all the "1" (primary) votes. The person with the least is knocked out and his votes go to whoever was second preference on those ballot papers. And so on until there are only 2 candidates left with all of the votes distributed between them according to preferences.

It means you can always vote for your preferred candidate - but your vote wont be "wasted" so long as you give your least disliked major party a higher preference than your most disliked major party.

London's Mayoral Assembly elections were done this way (well, you had a first and second choice) but there was a flaw in the system although it didn't affect the outcome materially.

Well, it's obvious really, I guess. If you have to make use of your second choice (or third and fourth) people who you don't really feel strongly for / against are going to get votes, and therefore, representation they don't really deserve. This could lead in theory to a 'hung parliament' scenario where there are so many different parties with their own agendas that they cancel each other out.

Like I said, if you have to make use of all of your allotted votes. in the mayoral election they didn't say one way or another, in all the paraphanalia, on the slip or in the booth. Not that I could see anyway. So, afraid that if I didn't 'complete' the form I would invalidate it, my second choice went for a communist candidate who stood no chance in Hell of winning. So there's the flaw. Part of my vote went to someone who I have no desire to see in power.

apparently, they had some problems with this recently during the elections for board of supervisors (the city council) in san francisco. not problems with the process but problems with the machines. they are still sorting out the results. but i think this was the first time it's been used and most people liked it.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 9LLVK1.DTL

tviyh wrote:overall, i think it's idiotic for two polar opposites (more or less) to be running for president, and people to have to pick one or the other (i.e. left or right).

these guys are hardly polar opposites. they are cut from the same cloth. they want you to believe they are very different in order to encourage you to choose between them. otherwise, there is no choice and people would be even more apathetic to voting than they already are. kerry is a lifer in congress and is well connected to the lobbies that are the scourge of federal decision making. his idealogies may differ about some things but they are not that different.

i gotta agree with jim about campaign finance reform. it seems like john mccain is the only guy brave enough to really try to take it on and push reform.

jack shite wrote:these guys are hardly polar opposites. they are cut from the same cloth.

well, yeah, that was a bad choice of words. obviously someone who is ultra-left or ultra-right is not going to make it to the november election. basically what i mean is, though, ostensibly each of them represents a different set of views on issues, and in an ideal world it would be possible to have somebody who could compromise on stuff to try to make as many people happy as possible, instead of us having to choose one or the other.

but... welcome to the real world, i guess.

I'm not sure that compromises are even possible on a lot of these issues, and when they are possible, they often make no logical sense at all. Unless you compromise cross-issue. But e.g. I don't think there's a way to solve the abortion conflict and make everybody happy, or even most people.
-bill

The big joke here is that none of these issues matter at all to the job a president is elected to do. These cultural and moral questions are purely window dressing to get votes. Sure, Bush can claim he has a mandate, but he really has no such thing; so many people voted for him because he could spout the right buzzwords, even though a) he doesn't really believe or care about half of what he's saying, and b) even if he did, it's not a job requirement. Those 51% have been most seriously duped.

Jim of Seattle wrote:The big joke here is that none of these issues matter at all to the job a president is elected to do. These cultural and moral questions are purely window dressing to get votes. Sure, Bush can claim he has a mandate, but he really has no such thing; so many people voted for him because he could spout the right buzzwords, even though a) he doesn't really believe or care about half of what he's saying, and b) even if he did, it's not a job requirement. Those 51% have been most seriously duped.

EVEN BIGGER JOKE IF KERRY WON:


The big joke here is that none of these issues matter at all to the job a president is elected to do. These cultural and moral questions are purely window dressing to get votes. Sure, Kerry can claim he has a mandate, but he really has no such thing; so many people voted for him because he could spout the right buzzwords, even though a) he doesn't really believe or care about half of what he's saying, and b) even if he did, it's not a job requirement. Those 51% have been most seriously duped

P.S.

Kerry is my favourite political loser of all time. I actually liked that guy, and would have voted for him. He really seemed to think about what he was saying, I liked his waffleing on topics (flip flopping) cause I thought it showed a guy who was willing to consider all the angles, and try to please as many people as possible. In life that may not be a good idea, but in politics, it's the whole point.