On 10/4/04 1:05 PM, "David Brauer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I didn't go to Harvard or Yale, so perhaps I'm the problem but... > > I've never understood the anti-Green-ness of early elections. It's only > anti-Green if that party is weakening. Otherwise, early elections > could, possibly, elect MORE Greens (or other partisans, or > independents) if people are fed up with current DFL-dominated council. > After all, the DFL would be defending 10 of 13 seats. I think the "anti-Green" is mostly coming from people who are aware of how entrenched the DFL is in Minneapolis and how much greater the access to campaign resources are for DFLers when compared to Greens, which puts them at a significant advantage if early elections were held. And while there's a possibility of an anti-DFL backlash during early elections if folks are fed up with council, I think the results from the school board primary election a couple weeks ago kind of diminishes that theory. The school board is also basically DFL-controlled, but the DFL endorsees finished 1-2, with the incumbents finishing 3-4. And the school board is far more messed up right now than council is, at least in my opinion. It's a lot easier to foresee the DFL winning back the two seats now held by the Greens than to foresee the Greens or any other party coming up with enough candidates to really mount a challenge for more than a couple of the 10 seats held by DFLers. > I realize we've discussed this before, but it seems like a process > reform, not a partisan one, to me. Part of the claims of partisanship are due, I think, to the fact that both the Green council members, if I recall correctly, get the choice of either moving from their current homes or facing another incumbent council member who now shares a ward with them under the new boundaries. If I also recall correctly, there are no instances where any two other incumbents on council face that situation. Is that simply a coincidence? Another part of the claims of partisanship are due, I think, to who's behind the push for early elections. From what I've seen, it's pretty much all hardcore DFL party activists or elected officials that are crying "disenfranchisement" as opposed to regular citizens, who, going by this forum, are wondering what the fuss is all about. I personally think Dennis Plante and Dave Stack have it just about right. With apologies to Wizard and Rep. Kahn, nobody is really being "disenfranchised" in any meaningful way right now, but all of us who voted in 2001 for city council members did so with the expectation that those terms would be four years. I also think that at the pace this early elections court case is progressing, by the time an actual decision is reached, we'll be so close to the regular 2005 election schedule for council members that the whole thing is pretty much pointless by now. What happens if a decision comes down next month? How long would it take to set up the special elections ordered for the new ward boundaries, only to have elections again in November 2005? It would make a lot more sense for the folks involved in that court case to just focus on a charter change that would resolve the technical error from switching to four-year terms fixed and be done with it. Personally, I wouldn't want to rely on the Legislature to resolve this since there's too great a tendency for them to monkey around with bills as it is and having the Legislature attempt to fix what sounds like a Minneapolis-specific problem might prove too tempting for some legislators to handle without getting in their cheap shots, too. Hopefully, it would not take 20 years to accomplish what should be a rather simple charter change when you've already got the chair of the charter commission on board with your cause... Mark Snyder Windom Park U of M class of 1997 REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
