Hi, folks:
While the outcome of Tuesday's election remains in
doubt, the idea of restructuring or eliminating the
electoral college surely captures our imagination.
But would such a change by itself give us a full
understanding of the will of the people? Imagine
splitting electoral votes according to shares of the
vote: we could hypothetically have an electoral
college with 265 votes for Bush, 265 for Gore, and 10
votes for Nader. We will continue to talk about
spoilers at every level (including Minneapolis--that's
my tie to the list today) until we address a
fundamental flaw in our winner-take-all election
system: the inability to give proper weight in the
ballot box to the electorate's many shades of opinion.
In single-seat races, instant runoff voting (IRV)
would be a worthy successor to America's
winner-take-all system. For all the worry of Ralph
Nader playing spoiler in Wisconsin and Minnesota, he
left his deepest impression on Florida: if 5,000 Nader
supporters had voted for Gore, Florida's electoral
votes would most likely belong to Gore by now. This is
not only a concern for partisan Democrats: some voters
still believe that Ross Perot cost George H. W. Bush
the presidency in 1992. Whether it is Nader in 2000 or
Perot in 1992, our current voting system reduces most
third-party candidates to spoiler status--and no
electoral college reform alone will change that fact.
I do not believe we should not continue to stand by
our winner-take-all system when IRV could help us gain
a clearer mandate from all states--I'm sure we agree,
Russell. For more information about IRV, please
contact the Center for Voting and Democracy online at
www.cvd.org.
Have a good one,
Dana Bacon
Page neighborhood
--- Russell Wayne Peterson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
And while we are at it, we might as well make a move
to eliminate the
electoral college. The time for elitist control is
over. The progressive
city of Minneapolis should make the first move.
Perhaps our city council
could pass a resolution encouraging the adoption of
a constitutional
amendment eliminating the electoral college. We get
into other countries
operations, we might as well get into our own.
If we want more people to vote in Minneapolis, a
clear and easy way to vote,
and new methods that won't allow our votes to be
wasted, it is time to find
new leadership on this issue. And no I'm not
running for Secretary of
State, yet ;-).
Russell W. Peterson
Ward 9
Standish
R U S S E L L P E T E R S O N D E S I G N
"You can only fly if you stretch your wings."
Russell W. Peterson, RA, CID
Founder
3857 23rd Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55407
612-724-2331
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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