Politics

A party that will not criticize the incumbent president cannot defeat him, now or two years from now. A party that has nothing to say about unfair tax breaks, a vanishing surplus and a looted economy cannot expect anyone to listen when it asks for votes. A party without passion or vision is hardly a political party at all. Even in their righteous defense of Social Security, Democrats too often sounded as if their chief concern was to preserve their own institutional position. Today the future looks grim for them because they blurred the purposes of their partisanship.

— Joe Conason in Salon

Here is a good election day post from Open Letter.

It reminded me of something I had in the back of my mind. I knew there had been at least one reason why I had some negative feelings about Paul Wellstone:

Whatever can be said in favor of Wellstone’s record has been said by the editors of The Nation, the leaders of NARAL, and indeed by the editor of Open Letter. But the crude contempt the Democratic Party leadership shows for the historical record will also now be inscribed on the same historical record. Paul Wellstone’s votes for the Defense of Marriage Act, the Afghanistan war, and the Patriot Act reflected the rightward drift of his own party. That party is dominated by the Democratic Leadership Council, which even Wellstone never troubled to deny.

Not to encourage Dan, but Alternet has a good article titled Are Young People Too Smart to Vote?

Other necessary changes include instant runoff voting, Election Day as a national holiday, Election Day voter registration (Prop. 52 on the California ballot) and public financing of elections. Not surprisingly, nations that employ these practices enjoy much higher rates of voting among all people, including young people, poor people, and others who are left out of our political system.

More than adults, young people seem intuitively to recognize that our political system is broken. And they register their awareness on Election Day by not bothering to participate in what to them is a pretty meaningless exercise. So when you see the low numbers for voter turnout this time, don’t think of it as apathy. Think of it as the wisdom of youth.

I think Instant Runoff Voting is a great concept. It’s already used in a number of places.

How does it work? Voters rank candidates in order of choice: 1, 2, 3 and so on. It takes a majority to win. If anyone receives a majority of the first choice votes, that candidate is elected. If not, the last place candidate is defeated, just as in a runoff election, and all ballots are counted again, but this time each ballot cast for the defeated candidate counts for the next choice candidate listed on the ballot. The process of eliminating the last place candidate and recounting the ballots continues until one candidate receives a majority of the vote. With modern voting equipment, all of the counting and recounting takes place rapidly and automatically.

If we used it everywhere, I could vote for the Green or Working Families Party candidate, and put the Democrats’ candidate second. It would allow me to register my desire for alternative parties without being a “spoiler”.

The Democrats didn’t even field a candidate against Senator John Warner or Representative Tom Davis in Virginia.

Alternet’s Top 10 Election Sites

A hilarious parody of an actual Peggy “Thousand Points of Light” Noonan’s WSJ column, in which she imagines what Paul Wellstone would say (from heaven) about his memorial service, appears here.

Remember how outraged all of the right-wingers were when the firemen booed Hilary Clinton at one of the 9/11 memorial services one month after the event? Right, I don’t remember them doing that either.

Goodness that woman is scary. It’s amazing that real reporters (such as the late Daniel Pearl) work for the same newspaper that puts out that editorial page.

Link via RubberNun.

If you’re not crazy about my Vote Green idea, there is still something you can do to try to make politics better in NY State. Vote for the Democrats, but vote for them on the Working Families Party line.

I just added Eschaton to my list of favorite blogs. I’ve been reading him for a while after finding a link on David E’s Fablog.

He mentions a purely election-oriented weblog here. That’s where I found this lovely story:

Unless turnout is ridiculously low, there is no way that voters in Broward county will have enough time to vote using the new touch screen machines. It is estimated that it should take on average 15 minutes per voter. There are 987,000 registered voters in the county. There are 5765 machines. With, say, 500,000 voters turning out that means 86 voters per machine. With polls scheduled to be open for 12 hours, that means that just over half of voters would have time to vote – assuming an even distribution of voters across machines. Election officials in Florida have declined to allow paper ballots to supplement the machines in case of long lines, and two congressmen are taking it to Ashcroft and possibly to federal court.

I can see why some weblogs I read refer to that state as Hell Florida. Couldn’t we just give the state to Cuba?

It’s already too late to donate.