At 03:09 AM 9/15/2006, Scott Ritchie wrote: >An interesting quirk of fusion voting is that it becomes possible for a >candidate to obtain the nomination of every party. While this was rare >for major elections, it did happen in quite a few cases with local >elections. One wonders if more than a few of these candidates weren't >entirely honest with at least one of the parties nominating them.
Local elections seem to quite commonly be uncontested. Local politics tends, it seems, much more than large-scale politics, to be consensus-driven. In local politics, the voters actually, quite often, know the candidates personally, so the suggestion that deception might be involved seems quite off the mark to me. Indeed, that suggestion comes from projecting polarized political habits onto local politics. I have no idea of the party affiliation of the Selectmen in the small town I was living in. And I don't think it was on the ballot.... And being a Republican or a Democrat doesn't have much to do with whether or not we extend the Recycling contract.... There is, however, a situation where a Libertarian managed to get himself elected to a local board, and he attempted to block every project involving tax money, I think, on the grounds that taxes are coercive, so they should not be spent. I'm pretty sure this guy will not be re-elected. I don't think people, in general, want ideologues in local positions. Even if he is right that taxes are coercive. (Of course they are! But, essentially, the majority has the right to coerce the minority, we have merely decided to do it with law rather than with sticks and stones. Usually. And this does not mean that coercion is a good idea. Indeed, it is a very bad idea, except when utterly necessary. There is usually a better way, if we want a unified society.) ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
