Lee Eklund wrote: Although I find the IRV concept has a certain amount of validity, I fell it is unduly complicated for the vast majority of voters. A voter arrives at the poll to vote for the candidate of his or her choice, not the lesser of evils.
Mark Anderson replies: I beg to differ. I suspect that the majority of voters in darn near every race are voting against the person they dislike the most. That was definitely the case in the latest Presidential race. That's of course why negative advertising works so well -- each candidate tries to make the other candidate more unlikable than him or herself. This sounds awfully cynical, but I think it's true. I personally can't remember ever voting for someone because I actually wanted that person to be in office -- it has always been in fear of his/her competition. I think the disincentive of negative and dirty campaigning is probably the biggest benefit of multiple candidates for each election. Some of the dirt always sticks to the person throwing it; so it's usually not worth the risk to bring down just one of your competitors. I think IRV is the best thing we could do to encourage clean campaigns. And it doesn't seem that complicated; people just aren't used to it. But what I would much rather see in Minneapolis is cumulative voting (CV) for at-large positions (and make the council seats all at-large). (Is CV the same as PR?) With CV, minorities in the city could get a voice in government. I think it's very dangerous to have a single party with all the power -- it tends toward corruption. I wonder if that has been a contributing factor to our two recent jailbirds from the city council. When you don't have any outsiders, you sometimes end up winking at bad behavior. Mark V Anderson Bancroft 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
