VOTE NO ON 2 – Demand real voter reform, demand Instant Run-Off Voting (IRV)

But when there are three or more candidates for a single office, like governor or president, voters may be afraid to support their first choice candidate because they are afraid this will “spoil” the chances of their second choice.

The Green-Rainbow Party advocates a reform that would resolve the spoiler issue without restricting choice. This is called Instant Runoff Voting (IRV).

Under IRV, you can vote for more than one candidate, ranking your choices by number. If your first choice does not get enough votes to win, your vote is then transferred to your second choice. The transfer process continues until one candidate has a majority.

Variations of the IRV system have been used successfully all over the world.

IRV is used in Cambridge municipal elections, where it is known as PR (Proportional Representation). A similar system was introduced in San Francisco.

This year, IRV was passed in Burlington, Vermont and cities in Maryland and Michigan, and for military voters in the State of South Carolina.

Massachusetts could easily shift to IRV voting without a constitutional amendment.

But neither major party has shown any interest in IRV, here or anywhere else in the United States. Apparently they don’t care that much about the “spoiler effect.”  We conclude that the Democrat Party is more interested in demonizing Nader than in replacing Bush.

There is a very different proposal to deal with the “spoiler effect” on the State ballot this November. This is Question 2, which calls for “fusion voting.”

Fusion voting simply means that a candidate’s name may appear on the same ballot two or more times, as the nominee of two or more different political parties.

The voter then has a choice of which party to support, but no choice of candidates.  How a candidate be accountable to voters for competing platforms? The Green-Rainbow Party believes this is a meaningless choice.

In fact, the fusion proposal confers real choice only on the State Committees of the political parties. They alone have the power to decide on cross-endorsement. 

The fusion proposal comes from New York, where it is already law. There, several minor parties exist which only endorse Democrats and Republicans.

The Massachusetts fusion proposal had both Democrat and Republican sponsors in the State Legislature. They hope, as the ballot sponsors put it, that this can “put an end to the spoiler problem once and for all.”

But for voters, that would mean an end to the possibility of real choice.

Massachusetts voters already have few choices. One party, the Democrats, have 86 percent of all seats in the Legislature. Almost all of those seats will be uncontested in November.

Under fusion, it is possible to imagine a candidate running on four party lines. “Vote for the party of your choice,” an ad might say, “Vote for Jeb Bush.”

Some people may accept the argument that fusion voting is like a new offering which can only add to consumer choice. We don’t have to buy or use a product if we don’t want to.

Unfortunately, the products that other people choose do have an impact on our lives. Examples include SUVs, chemical fertilizers, and politicians.

Most voters know that corporate political campaigns and huge political contributions undermine democracy, and polls show they want something done about it.

Public campaign financing has been adopted in Arizona and Maine. It is the only effective reform to moderate the influence of corporate money on elections which has been accepted by the courts .

In 1998, Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly supported a ballot initiative for limited public financing of candidates. But the Democrat legislature sabotaged Clean Elections by stubbornly refusing to fund it. House Speaker Tom Finneran claimed that the voters didn’t understand what they were voting on in 1998.

“Liberal” Democrat leaders were happy to point fingers at the “conservative” Finneran, but they were against Clean Elections too. Party chair Philip Johnston called it “an outrage. This will significantly damage our chances in November… marginal parties should not be part of this.”

Finally, Robert Travaglini’s “liberal” State Senate repealed the law on a voice vote—unanimously.

Electoral democracy surely entails maximizing the choices available to the voter. Polls show that American voters want more choices. IRV and public financing answer that demand—fusion voting doesn’t.