On Mar 7, 2013, at 12:38 AM, Peter Tobias <<email obscured>> wrote:
> To make meaningful choices on the ballot, voters need to inform themselves
about candidates. To keep their needed time reasonable and the ballot itself
transparent, three is a good mid-range number for ranking candidates.
(Australia requires voters to rank all candidates, leading to annoyed reaction
of voters, choosing further-down candidates after printed order or the
alphabet, which is bad for the dignity of voting).
I agree with you, Peter. I'd much prefer people to learn all about the
candidates and assign a number between one and ten or between one and a hundred
to each of them on the ballot and if they don't want to, that's fine with me.
On a score voting ballot the only candidates who would get their ratings are
those who passed a threshold of 50% plus one voter rating them, and the
candidate over that threshold whom folks collectively rated the best would win.
We're stuck with IRV, though, and it is not as good, so we just have to rank
all of those candidates who make sense to us, putting the best in our eyes,
first; that was terribly hard for me to do in 2009. I like John Kolstad, but
I'm not certain I would have liked him as mayor, but I ranked him first and
tossed the dice on two more folks because I knew that RT Rybak did not work for
me; I never had any doubt that Rybak would win. We just didn't have anyone who
could beat Rybak after Bob Miller dropped out to take care of his own family
instead of his extended NRP family in Minneapolis; we all can understand that.
But I still have to ask, "Does any mayor really matter?" I answer "No, not for
our city." We're better off with a manager given our size and resources.
As far as a city manager, an hired (doesn't that read like I'm a pretentious
son of..) at-will employee of the City of Minneapolis whose job is to implement
annual goals and directions consensually agreed to by the new council, I think
that is better than having a mayor who works against the interests of the
citizens of Minneapolis. If you don't like the manager, write your ward council
person and all of the at-large council folks and tell them to fire them and
hire someone better because the will of the people has to matter.
A majority of the present council and the mayor do not believe that we matter,
today.
On Mar 6, 2013, at 9:35 AM, james graham <<email obscured>> wrote:
> And a whole bunch of self centered nuts without any chance at all will do the
same; pay their $20.00 and run for office.
Never mind the ad hominem attack on me (this was a direct response to the last
sentence of one of my posts in this thread), but I think that Jim is his own
worst enemy and seemingly one of mine ;-)
People have some sense and will make choices based on that sense and I'm fine
with that, not always happy, but otherwise fine. We get a Rybak once in a while
and if no one steps up and runs on a better slate that 'more of RT', then we
get what we deserve under IRV or any voting regime.
One thing is for sure: I'll never vote for my buddy Jim Graham, but I hope
he'll consider using one of his three IRV choices for the Last Mayor of
Minneapolis slate for any candidate who adopts it.
I haven't raised a cent for this and likely never will, but if I run, I'll be
talking to a whole lot of people about stuff they may never have considered
before. Still, I've family to take care of as well. Won't someone else run on
the Last Mayor of Minneapolis slate.
As far as the Council working on changes for our elections,well don't that beat
all. My own ward Council Member proposing these changes makes me wonder if this
is some sort of agreement between members of an alliance perhaps a few who
believe a Green is immune from consequences of this change. Personally, I'd be
okay with requiring signatures as this is already in the law as an alternative
for the $20 fee and more onerous than raising a few hundreds or thousands of
dollars; of course I'd also want to eliminate the fee.
Of course since the Charter requires these changes to be done before an
election year, not the same year, we won't see any approved changes instituted
until 2017, but I guess the Council and our mayor could find a way around that
just like they did for the Vikings stadium as the Legislature is in session and
somewhat controlled by the DFL.
The error rate is worrisome, but I would like to see the rates in elections
previous to our first IRV election along with US Census figures before I
conclude anything, as Devin Rice's piece simply rehashes all of the talking
points used against IRV when not only do we have adequate data for meaningful
analysis, we do not have any of the cost saving measures in place thanks to the
slow certification process and have had a shortage of funding for elections for
many years.
I think everybody would get score voting as many folks use it every day in
rating this product or that film or television program; it is almost intuitive,
e.g., one star, two, three or four.