On Sun, 1 Dec 2002, Anderson & Turpin wrote: > My response: > I think Robin is advocating multi-party government here. To that I say > "Huzzah!" There's been a lot of discussion on the Minnesota List about IRV, > where you rank your votes for each candidate, instead of just voting for one > candidate.
Yes, and I support it. There has also been a little talk about other multi-party voting > systems (of which I can't remember any other names). IRV is rank voting for single-member districts. Proportional Representation (PR) is rank-voting for multi-member districts. There are many varieties of PR. My favorite is STV (Single Transferrable Vote). In a 13-member district (eg Mpls with 13 council members), 1/13 (7.5%) of the vote elects 1 of the 13 members. I would love to see this enacted in Mpls. We can and should speculate which parties would get what percent/number of members. Unless some time in the future Mpls would go say 95% DFL, there would never again be 12 or 13 DFL members. So the DFL would lose. So it, especially DFL incumbents wouldn't like it. It may well be why we don't have it now, and why it will take a lot of work to get fair democratic representation. Many other parties could gain at DFL expense. For every 7.5% of GOP, one GOP seat. My guess - 2 or 3. Probably the same numbers for the Green Party - 2 or 3. Maybe 1 for the Independents - since so far they have not done much at the local level; but who knows? Maybe 1 for Libertarians - are there 7.5% of them in Mpls? Summing up, about 5 to about 7 might be non-DFL seats. DFL left with 6 to 8 seats. But who knows for sure? How will people vote when each vote counts, and they can vote their hearts because there is no lesser-evil fear? I'd love to see that first PR vote. My version of PR (STV) sweeps away all "safe seats" - seats the incumbent can take for granted because his party has a super-majority in a limited district area (as today). Incumbents don't like this. Many think they have a right to return again and again until they feel like moving on. The only "safe seat" with PR is one where the people like you so much they choose you as one of the 13 every time. I like all of this. Non-DFL parties should like it. Non-incumbent DFL candidates should like it. Almost everybody stands to gain. However, the DFL incumbents are strong, and well-placed, and battling for their home turf. They can succeed in putting it off. For this reason I prefer to concentrate on IRV, because it doesn't threaten DFL incumbents nearly as much. And, since there are a good number of Greens in Mpls, and almost all would vote DFL #2, DFL incumbents stand to GAIN with IRV. Once they are convinced of that, we'll probably see it ASAP. more below... But there's been > nothing on the Minneapolis List. I bet there would be more interest in > Minneapolis, where we've shown more interest in third party voting, and > where we are currently stuck with one-party government. Maybe we could get > a movement going in Minneapolis for more third party favorable systems. I > think the best system for Minneapolis would be voting for the council as > at-large positions. Then we would all have 13 votes to pick who we wanted, > instead of being stuck with just one person in our geographic area. With > cumulative voting, we could vote all 13 votes for one candidate. That way > we could be sure to have representation for minorities of several groups in > the council, if the groups were cohesive enough to compose a voting block. > We could then have several Greens, racial minorities, even Republicans on > every council, as long as these groups were committed enough to group all 13 > votes to one or two candidates. I sure would rather be represented by > someone of my own interest group, rather than someone who happens to live > close to me. I feel disenfranchised by every council vote - I usually vote > for the DFLer who isn't quite as bad as the other one. > > In our last election, the Senate race was a lot dirtier than the Governor > race. I attribute that to Penny being a significant factor in the Gov race. > Candidates can't afford to be dirty in a three party race, because dumping > on another candidate makes both sides look bad, which mostly benefits the > non-participating one. So I think the presence of three or more significant > parties will make races more issue oriented with less emphasis on > personality. > > What do we do to get such a movement started? Is "FairVote Minnesota" > working on the Minneapolis angle? FAirVote is working on the STATE level this upcoming session. --David Shove Roseville _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
