It’s been a week since Election Day and we have seen a lot happen. Many students and City residents erupted in protest that Trump won the Presidency. Some people asked what their demand was (my personal favorite suggestion: a civil action by Bernie Sanders to exact monumental damages from the crooked-at-the-core DNC dealings exposed by WikiLeaks), but truthfully, Trump’s rise to power has installed fear in many different minority groups (including political dissidents) and the marches reflect that.
While the Presidential election was close and had low turnout, one thing is clear- third party voters’ hands are clean, especially here in Virginia where Clinton did win. Although some Democrats are sore losers and still want to scapegoat third party voters, they cannot. Don’t believe me? The Washington Post lays it out: “You can blame the electoral college for Trump winning. But don’t blame Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.”
Locally, the Mayoral election was close. The local media does not want to talk about that too much though. For one thing, the City Board of Elections was pretty strained, and it was not totally clear if someone had won the election for a good day or so. And hey, have they finally come around to announcing an official winner in the 5th District school board race? Last I heard from media outlets, it is likely Dr. Sapini.
For another thing, much of the media prognostication about the Mayor’s race was wrong- many were suggesting that it had come down to a two candidate race between Joe Morrissey and their favorite, Jack Berry, when in fact many residents had already determined the need for and existence of a third.
Perhaps more importantly, notice how the local media is not talking very much about how their candidate (endorsed by both the Times Dispatch and Richmond Free Press) was knocked out. They don’t want to admit that they picked badly and more importantly, that the voters ignored their input. ‘RVA’ rejected their fear mongering against Morrissey, and the corporate pressure for Berry, and went for someone else altogether.
So, a few more thoughts and questions-
Levar Stoney won the 5th District and others to win the election. Jack Berry stumbled here. My personal opinion: He should never have disrespected Oregon Hill. He was too arrogant to even try to make amends and figured his fancy commercials and billboards would make the difference. Thanks to work by Jon Baliles and Stoney’s hard-working campaigners, residents saw and took the alternative. Will Berry try to return to his job at Venture Richmond? Hope not. What can Stoney do for Oregon Hill and other neighborhoods? Well, that is not clear, but I hope to try to make it clearer in the next week or two, when I revisit and renew the Top Ten Issues For The Neighborhood post. Please feel free to submit your own.
On the national level, there are other Election Day outcomes to consider- more marijuana ballot initiatives passed in other states, and significantly, ranked choice voting passed in the state of Maine. Many countries and cities already give their voters more voice and more choice with RCV/IRV. Jill Stein’s campaign is already taking the ‘spoiler’ issue head-on with its enthusiastic support for RCV/IRV.
Locally, consider how close the Richmond Mayoral race came to going to an expensive run-off. Given this, will the local media even mention IRV/RCV? While I give Paul Goldman a lot of credit for almost single-handily obtaining the 10,000 signatures needed to make the City charter change for voting Mayor at large in the first place, it’s time for more electoral reform. We know we need to update and strengthen the City’s Board of Elections anyway, so we might as well join other cities around the world in enacting RCV/IRV.
I know I don’t want to have the same old debates in 2020.
Lastly, regardless of how you feel about the effectiveness of the anti-Trump protests, now’s not the time to stop protesting- reminder: today was a national day of action in support of Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Local water protectors were in force today at the Chesterfield office of the Army Corp of Engineers.
(photo courtesy of David Martin)
https://vasolidarityproject.wordpress.com
Official count is in. Taylor is out.
http://www.richmond.com/news/local/education/city-of-richmond/article_ab326ad2-53d2-5631-8cd9-31c214971c11.html
Fulfilled Democracy: Instantly & Practicably
A How To
A Perfect Marriage of Freedom & Justice
Maine & Oregon Ranked Ballot Victories
The recent victorious Maine & Oregon referendums on Ranked Ballot will be truly transformative (& the opposite failure of the Democracist will would have been a tragedy). The first right-leaning locale to support RB, the major media will ignore Maine’s clarion call at their peril. Putting the thought of RB to everyone will go a long way toward installing it everywhere. If everyone knew that everyone knew, it’d be unignorable, though I have yet to see any post-election analysis mention any other multi-locale propositions than pot & guns. (While at the Republican convention, I met people from the Pennsylvania League of Women Voters & talked with them about RB but they apparently had no knowledge of the coming vote. Later, at the Democratic convention, someone told me about it, so I emailed all the LWV chapters (again! (+/-)) to make sure they knew, while doing a snail mail write-in campaign for Congress.) See RCVMaine & BetterBallot Benton.
RB plus Organized Communications, (OC, randomly assigned discussion groups electing reps to higher & higher random levels, ‘til one small group, most in the middle, remains to guide in the rest) will install RB, instantly, globally & extra-legally (no matter what ladders they pull up after themselves) even in states without initiatives. A search on “Initiatives and referendums in the United States” reveals that the hope for the initiative as a wide-spread solution is less than one might guess. Too predictably variegated. If Maine & Oregon are doing it, why not the rest of us? If we’re going to be held responsible by our enemies for the actions of our governments, we should want the most responsive & light-footed democracy possible. RB is not just a random shuffle on the Titanic, but a pointed, pertinent, practical & profound (yet simple) reform, existing outside of partisan politics, that even the most cautious would have no reason to fear espousing. There is no other area of our lives in which we do not strive to be first adaptors, nor in which we do not automatically see the point of greater competition
Because it gives an equal chance of winning to all combinations of programs, not just parties, RB, voters ranking candidates in order of preference, is simultaneously most just & most free. Because of this shining light in the eyes of the world & because it always picks the one most in the middle (while giving an equal chance of winning to all alternative proposals, on a case by case basis, but not just one at a time) RB is more top-dead-center counter-extremist than all the many recent retrenchments combined (once word got out). The “additive” form of RB is counting the first choices, & then, if no one has 50%, adding in the next choices, & so on, till someone finally does.
Imminently (for instance) had we Ranked Ballot right now, we’d stop at the Syrian border, see what kind of deal we can get from Assad & the Russians & transfer some of that Sunni anger toward them instead (if we’d have gotten back in at all without some significant Iraqi reforms) saving ourselves all those resources. How is it we have a horse in this contest between two authoritarianisms?
RB will give us All Powers to Their Lowest Most Appropriate Level, Sharing the Work, A PERFECT MARRIAGE OF Rich & Poor, Left & Right, FREEDOM & JUSTICE, Tradition & Modernity, Young& Old, Red, Black & White, Woman & Man & Palestinian & Jew, Justice with an Eye for Freedom & Freedom with an Eye for Justice, A Head for the Headless (tech) Beast, An Ecological Politics, Skillful Means & a Middle Way, but it will not change the basic spirit of anyplace that adopts it, only give that place more light-footedness. Let all those supporting RB try to get on the ballot, asking those who sign their petition to collect signatures for them as well, running on the single issue themselves, from the most local on up, promising a citizens’ advisory board, based on OC, cast a blank (NOTA, None Of The Above) ballot, challenge current office holders on their position on RB, support this effort or the one in Maine. RB wouldn’t really change the political climate of any area, but rather just give its inhabitants more subtlety, adaptability, light-footedness, objectivity, nuance & a perfect reflection of their real desires. Meanwhile alternative viewpoints would have a REAL chance to sway the mass of the normal curve in their direction, on an issue by issue basis. For those with fear of secret code & remote control of voting machines, the larger the discussion groups, the fewer the levels needed. Perhaps someday the House could be chosen by OC & whoever got chosen as speaker would have a good shot at President. RB is the answer to all things.
The two-party duopoly fails to have any imagination & the same with those who participate in it, whether mainstream or alternative. It only serves in a crisis. Among the things that might have been accomplished had we had RB, ignoring all the evil that might have been avoided, from all the wars on down, is truly anything from Sharing The Work, STW, where the legislature would set a small % by which the pay for each hour beyond the first hour’s agreed upon rate would be increased, so as to share the work, by making employers hire more workers, motivating maximum productivity & ending too big to fail, all the way to replacing public education with having to prove you can read to vote (now that the value of learning is universally recognized & there’s broadband). FDR gave us the 40 hour week, so this is not unprecedented. The % difference between a 40 & 35 hour week is greater than the unemployment rate at the depths of the recent Great Recession. Workers, always having the prospect of more work, would, with a minimum of PR, take to being as productive as possible, likely eliminating the need for lots of management. Had we had such a scheme, at the start of the Great Recession, no-one would have seen any need for spending trillions to save companies. STW will make government so small it’d be hard to find volunteers to do the job, causing other countries to adopt a similar plan to stay competitive (& drop plans to dominate the world) & the Dems & Reps to let go of their structural authoritarianism. With STW, employers would still have the right to fire for laziness or incompetence & hire for less or more than the standard work week, but sharing the work in this way might cause workers to see that their greatest good was to be found in putting in a good day’s work, once they knew there’d always be more work, as well as that there’d soon be more free time, greater productivity & wealth if everyone got the point. With the notion of literacy having become commonly accepted, it might be seen that government has given learning all the incentive it really needs & so it would be better served by the free market. Just visit any local toy store to see what’s going on. (Should the people so decide.)
I tried to get on the ballot for Congress, on the single issue of RB (promising a Citizen Advisory Board, chosen by means of OC to guide us in the rest) by collecting the 3500 valid signatures required but didn’t get half the rate needed in the measly 6 weeks independents are allowed. With a small crew, it would be most possible. Also too many people are afraid to give away their name, signature & address. Youth are too paranoid & elders too mindfully ignorant. Any help would have allowed mass gatherings to be covered at all their busy spots. You can’t do it by yourself. Maybe next time. Would that I were famous & could just announce a twitter feed. In any event I’ll still be trying to run again, leafleting & offering my name as a write-in via bulk mailings to the registered voter list, every election to make them pay attention. It should not take a vote large enough to defeat the incumbent to make him take notice, just enough to threaten his margin of error calculations.
I have been promulgating RB since 1996, something hopefully, people will emulate, by means of emails & letters all over the world, full page ads in alternative newsweeklies & weekly advertisers, leafletting at demonstrations & concerts & running for office beginning with a classified ad in The Nation, then: the (DC ) City Paper, full page, 12/ 5-11, ’08, pg 41, Boston Pheonix, Jun 25 – Jul 1, ’10, ¼ page Welcome to the AFSCME Convention, pg 29, Pittsburgh City Paper, 2/8 – 15, ’12, full pg, pg 4, Long Island Press, Nov ’13, full pg, pg 53, The (Seattle) Stranger, Oct 14 – 20, ’15, ¼ pg, pg 16, the (San Rafael CA) Pacific Sun, Oct 21 – 27, ’15, half pg, pg 4, some Long Island advertiser which did not send me proofs & so I have no record, full pg?, ~’15, to about ½ of the communities of Nassau & Suffolk Counties & the (Albany NY) Spotlight News/The Spot518, Oct 26 – Nov 1, ’16, full pg, pg 26 (distributed free & mailed to 20,000 households!).
Good enough for the hundreds of places & organizations around the world, but not good enough for the rest of us? Tell us where we’re wrong. RSVP. Men do not light a light & set it under a bushel.
See ranked voting systems on Wikipedia. It is not enough to say you are for the good, but rather to risk pain to do something about it. Plz request “A Long List of Things That Could Have Been”.
zoe morgan roman sydney christian zee
preferentiality on yahoo groups
preferentiality@juno.com preferentiality@yahoo.com
rankedballot@mail.com
real true free association sleepy dog journal
preferential ballot party
the democracist
movement for ranked ballot
USA, Planet Earth
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/10/running-president-elections-broken-we-can-fix-them
2018
http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?181+sum+HB553
HB 553 Elections for certain offices; ranked choice voting.
Introduced by: Nicholas J. Freitas | all patrons … notes | add to my profiles
SUMMARY AS INTRODUCED:
Elections for certain offices; ranked choice voting. Provides that members of the United States Senate, United States House of Representatives, and General Assembly and the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General shall be elected by ranked choice voting, which the bill describes as the method of casting and tabulating votes in which (i) voters rank candidates in order of preference, (ii) tabulation proceeds in sequential rounds in which last-place candidates are defeated, and (iii) the candidate with the most votes in the final round is elected.