[lbo-talk] Nader and His Detractors

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Mon Oct 11 14:06:23 PDT 2004


Doug wrote:


>ravi wrote:
>
>>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>>
>>>The Green Party is running 435 candidates for 74 types of offices
>>>in 40 states in 2004. Out of 435, 57 are running for seats in the
>>>US House of Representatives, and 7, the US Senate. Green
>>>candidates for Congressional races are found in 21 states: Alaska,
>>>California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland,
>>>Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon,
>>>Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont,
>>>Washington, and Wisconsin.
>>
>>that is cheerful information.
>
>More reason for cheer: there are over 500,000 elected officials in
>the U.S., and 85,000 governmental units. There are plenty of better
>places to start than the very top.

As I already mentioned, the Green Party did not start at the very top. The Green Party actually started locally, fielding three candidates -- Joel Schecter for Alderman and Richard Wolff for Mayor in Connecticut, Wes Hare for Mayor in North Carolina -- in 1985: <http://www206.pair.com/calgreen/elections/index.php?year=1985>. The Green Party waited more than ten years before running its first presidential candidate in 1996. You are recommending what the Green Party has already done as if it had not done it.

More importantly, the difference between the presidential campaign and down-the-ticket campaigns is not just the matter of "high" and "low." The presidential campaign is the only _national_ campaign, whereas organizations for and impacts of down-the-ticket campaigns -- even victorious ones -- remain in the candidates' districts or states. Doug complains of "decentralization," but a political party acting only on local campaigns that Doug recommends simply reinforces built-in forces for vicious decentralization (e.g., 50 different requirements for ballot access, voter registration, and voting; lack of decent national standards for such social programs as education and health care; parochial political discourse; pork barrel politics; etc.), rather than counteracting it.

As a matter of fact, the prodigious number of elected offices -- many of which are selected in non-partisan elections -- that Doug mentions is one of the many obstacles against not only party building but also meaningful working-class political participation, making it difficult for citizens to even make informed choices about established party candidates, let alone organizing a new political party or voting for its candidates:

<blockquote>[T]he information costs that Americans typically encounter as they decide whether or not to vote are often overwhelming. As I look at what I am being asked to vote on in California this year, I find that even as a Political Science professor my level of political information is inadequate to deal with the many questions at stake. For example, I have voted for state Controller in four elections but I have yet to learn what the holder of this office actually does. When I ask my university students, the answer I always get back is, "He (or she) controls." Usually, I can prod someone into saying that the Controller deals with money. But students are stumped when I ask how this position differs from state Treasurer, which is also an elected office. I then pose further rhetorical questions, such as what are the issues in the campaigns for state Insurance Commissioner, Superintendent of Schools, or Secretary of State, and whether they know anything about the judges we have to decide whether to retain. Finally, I read off a few obscure California propositions, such as a 1994 vote on whether to abolish justice courts. By the time I am done, I think I have made my point: All these demands on citizens probably discourages many people from voting in the first place. . . .

Of course, just simplifying the electoral process itself would be one way to increase turnout in America. In 1930, Harold Gosnell wrote in _Why Europe Votes_ that one of the reasons for America's low turnout is because they are 'given an impossible task to perform on election day' (quoted in Lijphart, 1997: 8). As Dalton (1996: 46-47) has recently written, residents of Cambridge, England were asked to make 4 choices at the polls between 1985 and 1990 whereas the citizens of Irvine, California were called upon to cast 44 votes in 1992 alone. (Martin P. Wattenberg, "Turnout Decline in the U.S. and other Advanced Industrial Democracies," <a href="http://hypatia.ss.uci.edu/democ//papers/marty.html">1998</a>)</blockquote>

The nations that have stronger political parties on the left than the USA generally use a party list voting system, simplifying choices for voters and facilitating working-class participation in electoral politics:

<blockquote>Party List Systems

How the System Works:

There are many variations of party list voting, but the most basic form is the closed party list system. The system is quite simple; rather than voting in a single-member constituency for a specific candidate, electors vote for a party in a multi-member constituency, or sometimes a whole country.

Each party's list of candidates, ranked according to the party's preference, is published on the ballot paper. All the votes are counted and each party receives seats in the constituency in the same proportion as the votes it won in that constituency.

A quota is calculated for the constituency -- the number of votes required to win one seat. Those who become the party's MPs, will be those placed highest in the party's list of candidates. Voters simply vote for the party, they have no say as to which candidates are elected.

An open party list system is one that allows the voter to vote either for the list as published or to vote for an individual candidate, wherever that candidate appears on the party's list. The possible effect of this is to alter the order in which candidates have been placed on the list, and therefore the list of successful candidates, while still registering support for the voter's preferred party. Seats are allocated according to the number of quotas won.

The system is used: in most countries in continental Europe, South Africa, Israel and Russia, and was used in Britain for the 1999 European Election (Northern Ireland will retain STV).

Arguments used in favour:

* The strength of such systems are that they guarantee a high degree of party proportionality. If a party receives 32% of the vote, then it will get 32% of the seats in parliament. Every vote has the same value. * The system is also very simple for voters, who have only to make one choice for a party out of a small selection.

<http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/votingsystems/systems3.htm#List></blockquote> -- Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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