Public opinion polls are showing that only about 10% of people are saying that the U.S. is going in the “right direction,” most saying we are on the “wrong track.” This mood of pessimism about the country’s future is widely cited as a reason that Barack Obama has forged his way to a seemingly commanding lead in the presidential preference polls. The “thinking” is that people usually vote for an opposition party when they are dissatisfied with conditions under the incumbent one.
Such analysis no doubt contains a grain of truth that should be acknowledged. But when I cast my ballot for President on the November ballot in Florida, I am faced with a choice of not two but (count them) 13 choices for President. Each of the 11 alternates represents a more or less different “track” if I don’t care for the one furnished by either of the two “major” parties’ nominees. How will I and other Florida voters choose a “track” when faced with a full set of options? Will we accept the box placed around our choices by our media and our peers, making a choice between the two tracks represented by the Republican and Democratic candidates?
Perhaps we will, but suppose we find nothing in the track records of either the McCain or Obama tickets that would impel us to get on either of their trains? What if we feel that, no matter which track is taken, the destination will be the same: a cliff just outside town that the train will go over whenever we reach the point of an international conflagration or (in case we miss this cliff) an abyss of economic collapse on a train with engineers in the payroll of the Wall Street Combine that drives the engine of our national economy? Suppose we want something different—like progressive taxation, a fair tax, a reduction in government size, a socialist rather than a capitalist society, a world at peace rather than in incessant war, etc. etc. We will find congenial “tracks” in our list of 11 or whatever alternatives to our two Corporacratic parties and some of us will choose one of those tracks, feeling that while that track may not get us to our preferred destination, it at least will not run us over one of those aforementioned cliffs toward which the D Train and the R Train are headed.
This brings me back to those presidential polls which Obama is supposedly so commandingly leading. Nearly all of them are based on confronting respondents with a bi-polar choice between the GOP and Democratic tickets, and reports the percentage of choices between the two, usually without so much as a “none of above” choice reported, never mind any specific percentage of votes for any individual tickets. In those polls which do allow for choices outside that “box,” the Obama lead becomes considerably less commanding (maybe within the “margin of error” of a poll, which means a statistical tie). Just adding Nader and Barr to the mix of choices, the RealClearPolitics composite of polls shows Obama’s lead over McCain reduced from the 49.7% to 42.3% margin in a bi-polar race, to a 47.5% to 43.3% one with the other two candidates included, with Nader getting 2.5%, Barr 1.5% of the choices. McKinney would receive an unknown number of choices (mine for example) and Brian Moore, the Socialist Party nominee and a Floridian would no doubt get some choices as well. Moore polled 19,695 votes in 2006 in his under-funded independent race against Bill Nelson for the Senate, and obviously that number of votes subtracted from Obama’s total could be an outcome-changer in Florida, if the vote this year is as close as it was in 2000.
If our peers, parties, pundits and presidential debate organizers have their ways and get us all back on the Obama track, we’ll all be duly making our “lesser of evil” choices next month. The Obama lead in the polls might then hold up when the “only poll that counts” is conducted in November. If too many of us stray off the track, we might indeed “spoil” the election for a Democratic Party that has in fact spoiled itself through its failure to select candidates who are genuine alternatives to the Republican ones. If that were to happen, we track-strayers will of course face the full wrath of those who will blame us for the train wreck of the country in the coming McCain administration. But maybe, just maybe, the Democrats will come to the realization that, if they want the unquestioning support of the American people, they need to put the party back on a track that represents the values of their paying (voting) customers, not those of their corporate paymasters.
Jerry D. Rose – Editor, The Sun State Activist
If you don’t like being stuck with two choices, you would probably like IRV or one of its nearly-equivalent voting systems.
IRV is easy to understand. You pick your first choice, and then your second choice, and then your third choice, etc. If your first choice loses then you get to vote for your second choice, and if your second choice loses you get to vote for your third choice, etc.
So if you wanted to, you could vote for McKinney first, and Barr second, and Moore third, and Obama fourth. If your first three choices failed then your vote would count for Obama and not McCain. Maybe a lot of people would vote for McKinney first if they actually had the choice. You could find out if they would.
Some people say not to do that because in prominent examples of votes that were done that way, the same people won who would have won with our current voting system. But if we changed the system and third parties mostly failed, at least it wouldn’t be the system shutting them out.
I think the Democratic Party should use IRV in their primaries. It would have several advantages. One is that losing candidates wouldn’t seem so much like losers. If 90+% of voters vote for you in some place, that shows a lot of people think you’re OK. It isn’t that they don’t want you, they just wanted somebody else more — this time. As it is, primary candidates whose supporters are too similar tend to fight each other very hard. They’re competing for votes more than either competes with candidates who’re much different. But under IRV they rationally should tend to support each other. If the other guy’s supporters vote for you second then when he loses you get his votes — unless you pick a fight with him. Etc.
IRV could help Democrats pick better candidates.