Commentary: Partisan Change
Those dear, sweet Democrats. They really want to change the ways of Washington and to heal the partisan divide. I just want to hug them all and be warmed by the embrace. Oh, wait. They’re just talking to the neighbors, not to the people on the street.
With the new year, Iowans will be able to identify as either a Green or a Libertarian on their voter registration. They are no longer limited to aligning on paper only with the Democrats or the Republicans or to hiding behind the catchall Independent designation.
You don’t have to join the Libertarian Party to state your voting preference. If you do join, though, for the low cost of $20, you can vote at the annual state convention and maybe even become a delegate to their national convention which will 
be held in Denver, Colorado. Even if you aren’t sure you want to get that involved, I can highly recommend buying one of their sweatshirts. They are quite warm and cuddly.
The Green Party of the United States offers a bumper sticker and a button if you sign up to be a card-carrying member for $36. The 2008 convention will be in Chicago, Illinois. There is also a state party in Iowa with a chapter in Polk County.
What other changes could the Democrats and the Republicans make that would really represent a new opportunity? Perhaps they could hold national conventions for party activists to hash out details of issues then hold a national primary with Instant Runoff Voting to select the candidate who could best execute the platform.
Some news outlets are reporting on people working the evening of January 3rd who won’t be able to caucus. Where is the outrage that many workers cannot participate in routine political and civic meetings because they are not allowed flex time off without loss of job or loss of income? There are numerous local and state commissions and boards that meet by day, plus public hearings that may have only one day on which to testify.
Of course, the Democrats can’t even understand that the location of their events precludes many people from attending because they either have no family car or do not have enough cars for every driver. I’ve discovered that sharing a ride is a great way to have a meeting with somebody. A fabulous idea to strengthen the public presence of a professional group with which I’m involved came out of one such recent ride.
There is considerable partisan cooperation already happening. Take the current movement to promote STEM education. That is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math education for a global workforce that includes girls as well as boys. The Iowa Commission on the Status of Women will be holding a panel discussion on this topic in Sioux City on January 8th. STEM has been promoted through the National Governors Association and supported by Republican governors such as Linda Lingle (R-HI) and by Democratic governors such as Chet Culver (D-IA).
M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa. 
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3 responses so far ↓
1 Clay Shentrup // Jan 1, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Instant Runoff Voting is one of the worst systems, according to the world’s most extensive Bayesian regret figures, from Princeton math Ph.D. Warren D. Smith.
http://rangevoting.org/BayRegDum.html
Alternatively, you can see them in an easier-to-grasp format, as social utility efficiency:
http://rangevoting.org/vsi.html
The bottom line is that IRV does a very poor job at picking the candidate most representative of the voters’ preferences. A far better method is Range Voting, or even its simpified form Approval Voting.
Range Voting is just scoring each candidate, like 0-10 or 1-5, the same way people rate books on Amazon. Approval Voting is a like “Siskel & Ebert” thumbs up/down voting. We just change our current rules from “vote for one” to “vote for one or more”. Both of these methods are simpler and more effective than IRV.
Here’s a helpful Newsweek article on the subject:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/78467
2 M.R. Field // Jan 2, 2008 at 8:10 am
Thanks for the information, Clay. I have not yet formed a definitive position on IRV. I took a look at Range Voting. My first reaction is that it would be too time consuming and require too much thought for most voters. My observation of scoring techniques on various discussion lists doesn’t provide me with confidence in Range Voting. I favor a go-slow approach with a few simple requirements that could be implemented immediately. These include a “None of the Above” option and complete reporting of election results, including spoiled votes and no-votes. I don’t think it is necessary to list every write-in candidate’s vote total, but I do think the total number of write-in votes needs to be included in official and unofficial reports.
3 Clay Shentrup // Jan 2, 2008 at 4:32 pm
I have done exit polling using Range Voting in Beaumont, Texas — and people had no problem going through the 5 gubernatorial candidates and quickly scoring them on a 0-10 range.
In the William Poundstone book Gaming the Vote, the creators of the popular web site HotOrNot.com, explain how they chose Range Voting because of its speed and simplicity. Other methods caused voters to pause and think too long - and since their business model is based on getting as much information from users as quickly as possible, they couldn’t have that.
And in terms of representativeness, Range Voting is as big of an improvement over our current plurality system as plurality is over completely non-democratic random selection. So…doubling the effect of democracy vs. comparatively tiny improvements like reducing fraud. The priority is obvious. We’ve got to change to a better voting method.
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