free ride

Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org
Tue Nov 12 14:48:30 PST 2002


----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan Jacobson" <ajacobson at igc.org>
>So Nathan, were these voters a) insane b) confused c) or expressing a
>political preference that was not satisfied by one of the two parties of
>government on the ballot?

Interestingly, while progressive anti-Nader folks did a lot of campaigning to push potential pro-Nader folks to come back to the Dems, they didn't do much of this in Florida, partly because no one thought the Nader vote was going to be that large. Florida was seen as a likely win for the Dems, but tightened quickly at the end, so it's closeness was a bit of a surprise.

So Nader voters in Florida could have easily thought it was a pretty free protest vote, a little dangerous theoretically but unlike some states, no one was raising the alarm there.


>If the Green Party is going to take a (small) bite out of the DP's ass in
>every election, I would think the DP's (and the GP's too) number one
priority
>would be getting IRV passed in every state.

Hey I've been a big supporter of IRV and proportional representation since the early 90s; I was a early charter member of Californians for Proportional Representation and continue to write often about the issue.

See my piece here- http://www.nathannewman.org/archives/000044.shtml

If Greens were promoting IRV campaigns, I'd join up immediately, but only a handful of state parties have put much effort into it, and if they were looking for allies, they would have spent the 2002 election mounting initiative campaigns on the issue, instead of running candidates in Jersey, Minnesota and other states with close races.

-- Nathan Newman



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