Uh-oh. Chuck said: [ IRV is] "a convoluted system that requires the average voter to make multiple choices on who they want for dog catcher would do more to send people away from the polls than any other scheme imagined. People aren't looking to take a multiple guess quiz when they go to vote and most people don't view elections as a parlor game. "
Now I feel obliged to reveal my age and my biases. My first election was 1968. Bobby Kennedy had been shot dead and the only liberal hope was Gene McCarthy. He was a fine man, a man of courage and conscience. All of my anti-war friends wrote in the name of Gene McCarthy. They couldn't forgive Humphrey for having accepted the nomination as veep for Johnson, so they were damned if they were going to vote for the self-serving little war-mongering weasel. "Humphrey?" I said, aghast. "A...war-mongering weasel?!!" How could anyone risk putting Nixon in the White House when there was a chance with a formerly very good man who'd been sucked into something he couldn't control? If we'd had IRV (about which I've learned a great deal in the past couple of days, thank you all very much), the anti-war movement could have registered its position with a vote for McCarthy and still gotten Humphrey instead of Nixon. So Nixon came in and not only didn't end the war as he claimed to have a plan to accomplish, he threw away 4 more years and thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives - and then? Well, then he managed to delay the peace till he got re-elected. January 1973, five years after all my friends wrote in Gene McCarthy. The situation we face now is eerily parallel. IRV would let dissidents register their beliefs and determination to make changes, but their 2nd choice would mean for sure Kerry wins. And do we all love Kerry? any more than we loved the man Johnson appeared to have become? No, but the choice is clear. Two weeks before the peace was signed, a boy I'd had a crush on in 6th grade was blown up in Vietnam. How many more young men and women will die if Bush leaves them stranded without support, and pursues more of his Holy War agenda in other countries around the world for 4 more years? Gail O'Hare St. Paul ************************************* _____________________________________________ To Join: St. Paul Issues Forum Rules Discussion Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/
