From my linked article:
The state’s Green Party has a similar take, which is why it opposes two candidates running as Greens: Margarite Dale in District 10 and Jack Kretzer in Yuma’s District 24. Neither adheres to some of the party’s key principles, said Angel Torres, co-chairman of the Arizona Green Party.
The Green party itself opposes the candidates that are running as Green party candidates.
Another quote from the linked article:
She denied that she was put up to run by Republicans, although Republicans, including the two in the District 10 race, contributed seed money to her Green Party campaign. Maricopa County elections records show Dale had been a registered Republican for years but switched to the Green Party four days before she filed to run.
I was a registered Republican until February, I have been a Green though not registered, but an active activists almost as long as I have been a Republican. So if I registered and ran as a Green you could make the same empty complaint. The Green Party might disavow me too as I am a Hawk at heart and I believe (like Obama) that more Nuclear energy needs to be one part of the solution to Global Warming and energy independence. The Green party is still 100% anti-nuke the last time I checked.
I don’t honestly know anything about the candidates you listed, but your Op is insulting and somewhat typical of the rants that come up on this board about third party voters. It also (possibly/probably unintentionally) makes the assumption that a third party vote is a vote the Democrats have lost.
I can’t find one, does Margarite Dale have an actual website with any information?
John ‘Jack’ Kretzer Jr. (AZ) was apparently a member of the Arizona Reform Party, 2005-2006. So he seem to be third party oriented at least. I don’t see any links to any “Green” Groups which does partially support your specific complaint but the Bio is spotty t obe generous.
I still think you should really watch it with your broadbrush usage in the Op.
If, in a two-party system, I have a choice between two complete undesirables, why not refuse to pick the lesser of two evils & instead vote for a third party?
Say it’s not Obama & McCain. Say it’s a poor man’s Hitler on one side, & on the other a man who has pledged to abolish the Federal Reserve & have the Treasury print money at will.
Is it still “nuts” to vote third party? Is it still “throwing away your vote”?
No real Bio one way or the other but her positions seem Green enough:
It would really look better if they had listed an Environmental Group they have been part. I am leaning towards supporting your overall complaint about this pair.
I was going to vote for Obama. Then he voted for the Paulson bailout, & just let W’s cabinet spend all the discretionary funds for Obama’s first two years in office. My support for him was really pretty shallow to begin with. What should I think of him now? Is he a fool, or is it that he really does not want to be Prez? I don’t hate him as much as McCain, but still, why not toss them both out & support Nader?
For me, choosing between two people who are actively supporting the wrong things is like a Jew in the days of Jesus being asked to choose between Herod & Caiaphas as Messiah.
I want a None of the Above system whereby everyone who gets fewer votes than the “None of the Above” option is permanently barred from ever seeking that office again.
At the very least, it would be humorous for a few election cycles, as we culled everyone in power and barred them from further office. When we ran out of viable candidates, it would really get interesting.
Hadn’t realized that. Can you explain, or link to an explanation?
I haven’t been against IRV so much as less than fond of it, knowing that gimmicky voting reforms are a very hard sell to voters. I’ve never understood why its adherents don’t even consider a plain, old-fashioned runoff in an election where nobody gets 50%.
We have a 2 party system, because we have “Winner Take All” voting. If we had proportional representation, then legislative seats would be allocated on the basis of popular support. So a party receiving 30% of the vote would obtain fewer seats than the party with 51%. But within a district, the plurality winner would take all the seats.
The only thing third parties do in the US is throw the election to the major party which is least like them. In New York, the Liberal Party resulted in Republican wins. Libertarians, if they were effective, would ensure Democratic victories.
Evidence: The US has always had plurality voting and they’ve always had third parties: the Republicans were born after the Whig party collapsed. Similarly, PR countries like France, Italy and Israel never are left with 2 choices.
(I understand that in Canada and Great Britain, each precinct is basically a 2 party race. So this exception is more apparent than real. [1])
Look, I’m all for proportional representation. But until we do that, Green Party voters should not pretend that they are anything other than Republicans.
There are cases where I might plonk for a third party in the US, if I wanted to send a message to my ideologically favored party.
For example, if the Democrat was demonstrably corrupt (eg DeLay, Doolittle, William “Cold-Cash” Jefferson), I’d vote Green. Embedded in that is a promise to vote Democrat if they choose a minimum qualification candidate the next time.
But if the Democrat was merely not to my liking, that would not be sufficient justification to jump ship.
Those who want to send a message to both parties though, are just flapping off.
For those who aren’t familiar with instant runoff voting, let me give a brief explanation. Each ballot contains a list of candidates, and the voter ranks them from the best to the worst. The number of first place votes for each candidate is computed, and if there’s a majority, that guy wins. Otherwise, the candidate with the least first place votes is eliminated (and this may involve breaking a tie, but that gets to be a little complicated). That gives you a new set of first place votes, and the process continues until somebody has a majority.
The major problem is that, under IRV, it’s possible to raise the winning candidate’s rank on some ballots and cause them to lose. Can you imagine a newscaster trying to explain to the American public that their guy would’ve won if he’d gotten fewer votes? Proponents of IRV will tell you that this happens very infrequently, although those numbers are questionable, but the fact that it happens at all is unacceptable (at least to me).
The other issue I’m concerned with is that IRV fails the independence of irrelevant alternatives, which is slightly controversial. Briefly, if Smith and Brown were running in an election under IRV, and Brown was preferred to Smith, Johnson’s throwing his hat in the ring could still cause Brown to lose to Smith. That’s exactly the sort of situation that voting reform advocates would like to get away from, so it’s odd that they’ve chosen a voting system that fails to do so.
There’s also a slight difficulty involved in computing the winner of an IRV election–namely, you have to store the entire set of ballots–but that’s a little technical and doesn’t have the impact of the two above.
Approval voting, which is a special type of range voting, doesn’t have the issues above or some others that IRV has, although it’s not perfect by any means. It’s still a lot better than all the other alternatives, IMHO.
Also, those of you who aren’t familiar with it should read up on Duverger’s law. While it’s not the case that a two party system is the guaranteed outcome of plurality voting, there are reasons why it does happen.