These days I'm something of a Green Party partisan. However, the one thing
that has NOT been said on the fusion thread is that (in theory at least) these
city elections are supposed to be NON-PARTISAN!!!
I'm not really sure how I feel about city elections at this point. I remember
that in 1997, Dean Zimmermann (park board) and Jim Niland (city council) were
both elected as fusion candidates. I believe the designation said "DFL/Green
Party/New Party." I have no idea how well that wroked, but in 2001, partisan
affiliation to the parties and led to many potential fusion candidates not
being endorsed by anyone, even when they could have been endorsed by everyone
(in theory anyway.)
I find it sick and disturbing that that these elections are in fact the MOST
partisan of elections. It is dishonest and makes the city charter look like a
meaningless piece of paper. The DFL is usually the worst offender in this
regard, but all major parties, including the Green and Independence Parties
have been forced to view these as more partisan and therefore act accordingly.
This leads to PR. Forgetting that city elections are supposed to be
non-partisan in the first place, proportional representation does address
having the views of the political minority being represented. However, not
every political party uses a democratic process to elect it's candidates in all
situations.
So the first problem with PR, that potentially you could have an office holder
who sits in office solely because the party who won a certain percent of the
vote chose that person. This person did not face ANY sort of democratic
popular election. I believe every office holder should be accountable to
public scrutiny and therefore face a popular election. (for more on this
potential disaster, see the Israeli and Italian governments, you might want to
talk to a few people in Italy who are politically conservative but never
intended on being represented by Silvio Burlosconi. Neither country has
geographic representation, it's purely a bunch of party hacks)
The second problem, which I believe is more disturbing is that this essentially
closes the door to non-affiliated independents, who might make great public
officials but don't entirely buy in to ANY party ideology. I think we could
use a few independents (and I'm not talking aout the Republicans who run as
independents) in our city offices, especially on the School Board.
PR addresses many issues that need to be addressed, but serving in public
office should be open to EVERYONE, not just people who have a few important
connections and can raise the most money. This doesn't mean I'm closed to the
idea of PR in Minneapolis, but these concerns would have to be sufficently
addressed before I could support it.
Tamir Nolley
Holland
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