Saturday, November 02, 2002

Election Blahs I have been very depressed and nervous about this upcoming election.  So I spent 2 hours today leafleting for our Boston anti-war rally tomorrow in front of Cong. Markey’s (D-MA) office.  There was a demonstration there to protest his support of Bush on Iraq.    Although I hope for the optimistic outcome ala mydd.com (a democratic pick up in house and senate), I also feel that the possibility of complete republican control is hanging over our heads like a sword of Damocles.   Maybe I will feel better Tuesday, but here are my reasons for being depressed.   Shannon O’Brien (dem candidate for governor of Mass.) cannot seem to put away Mitt Romney, who comes across appearing as a golden boy.  Further, the Green candidate in Mass. is polling 5%, which could mean that Romney goes on to win.  Romney supports the punitive English immersion law, will further slash any state support for the poor and elderly, and will expand opportunities for corporate control of state decisions.   Some friends went up to New Hampshire today to work for Jean Shaheen (dem governor of NH) who has a chance to beat the white house pawn John Sununu.  New Hampshire went though a court ordered revision in the way schools are paid for, and although the problem has not been solved, Shaheen was willing to consider an income tax—and is now getting slammed for sensible thinking.   Nationally, the democrats do not have leadership.  The “me too” approach will not create anything that can appeal to people—so third party candidates, apathy, and torrents of money on the other side depress the vote.    Things are clearly broken.  Apathy and the despair on the part of voters leads to more and more elections of candidates with miniscule popular support.  Corporate money is used to destroy the electoral process through manipulation and to deliberately depress turnout of certain groups.  The privatization of the airwaves and control of politicians by the broadcast lobby has meant a public give away of the vehicle through which genuine popular elections could be fought.   I have been thinking more and more about instant run off voting as a partial solution.  I dreamed of a constitutional amendment saying “no candidate shall be elected to public office in the U.S. without the affirmative votes of 50% +1 of all registered voters.  In the event no candidate receives 50% of votes initially, the lowest ranking candidate shall eliminated, and all their votes be redistributed to the remaining candidates on the basis of the next choice of the voters.  This process shall continue until the one candidate receives affirmative votes from more than 50% of all registered voters.”   I don’t think campaign finance reform or controls on speech are going to be able to fix the electoral system.  But if each candidate had to get a true majority, rather than a simple plurality, it would make all candidates pay a price for negative campaigns.  It would force candidates to the center, rather than to the extremes, and it would make third party or single issue candidates very viable—since their supporters could express their first and second choice.   There are some web sites that promote this idea, but I don’t know how such an abstract concept can turn into a political movement.  4:37:46 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2002 Toby Sackton. Last update: 12/26/2002; 9:30:57 PM.