Tim Pawlenty might not appreciate being likened to Bill Clinton. But the Republican governor has at least this much in common with the former Democratic president: He was just elected for a second time by a plurality, not a majority. In Minnesota in 2002 and 2006, as in the presidential elections in 1992 and 1996, a third-party candidacy kept the winning vote total below 50 percent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That’s not an ideal outcome — for the winner or the state. Clinton’s experience attests to as much. Throughout his presidency, he was denigrated by his partisan opponents as a less-than-legitimate occupant of the White House. Those election results emboldened those who sought to unseat him via impeachment in 1998.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
But – the Strib’s editorial board should <\/em>know this – the impeachment had nothing to do with Clinton’s lack of mandate, but rather his dishonesty; the weakness his lack of mandate granted his administration benefitted the country as a whole, in those prewar days when gridlock was a good thing that forced Clinton to abandon the social dabbling of his first two years.<\/p>\nIn other words, the system worked<\/em>.\u00a0 A divided nation was led by a weak administration, and a Congress that was mandated (in ’94) to oppose his would-be excesses.\u00a0 It benefitted everyone…<\/p>\n…except those who believe that government should operate as an efficient, well-oiled law-production machine.\u00a0 To them, the notion that the “efficiency” of government might be hobbled by the electoral system is an aberration.<\/p>\n
And an opportunity to accrete more power to government – for government’s (and your) own good, dammit!:<\/p>\n
But one thing may have been gained: a growing recognition that Minnesota would benefit from a different voting system. Ideally, it would be one that allows as many candidates to run for high office as this state’s tradition of easy ballot access permits, but that still gives the winner claim to majority support. The vote-by-number balloting method known as instant runoff voting fits the bill<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Where “the bill” means “a recipe to make government more powerful and less responsive to the voters, at any rate.<\/p>\n
But the Strib – mooning and panting at the thought of a chance for “Better Government” (read: more power lodged in Saint Paul) will waterboard all logic:<\/p>\n
But the results of last week’s election were only minutes old when DFL voices began tagging Pawlenty as the “46.7 percent governor.” Any claim to a voter mandate Pawlenty might have made was immediately undercut. Any chance for the 53-plus percent of voters who preferred another candidate to coalesce and redirect state policies was lost too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Let’s strive for accuracy, here:\u00a0 The 53-plus percent who didn’t vote for Pawlenty didn’t vote for “another candidate”.\u00a0 They voted for one of half a dozen other candidates; mostly Mike Hatch, but a pathetic few for Peter Hutchinson, a scraggly flotsam for Ken Pentel, and others for Libertarians, Constitution Partiers, and a small gaggle of other mini-parties.<\/p>\n
Some of the ills big-party loyalists attribute to the rise and persistence of the Independence and Green parties are misplaced. More accurately, they are consequences of multiparty contests being decided by a plurality-take-all voting system.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And, more accurately still, they are not “ills” at all.\u00a0 They are how the system works, <\/em>and it is good that it does so.\u00a0 The wishes of the voters are counted in a 1:1 ratio with the votes they cast.\u00a0 And if your party can’t gain a majority – if it can’t convince people that one of the most successful governors in America today, a governor who erased an “un-fixable” $4 billion deficit, isn’t a better choice than the pettifogging, temper-addled little Napoleon-complex poster child that the other party put forth – then not only will that governor’s party deserve to govern without a mandate, but the people of Minnesota will get a gridlocked, mandate-free government.\u00a0 People get the government they deserve.<\/p>\nUnless the Strib has its way.\u00a0 Then it’ll get the best government that an incomprehensibly-complex, computer-validated formula can give them.<\/p>\n
Instant runoff voting would present those same candidates with an incentive to reach outside their parties’ ideological cores. Victory in close multicandidate elections would require a blend of first and second-choice votes. A narrowly partisan campaign would not get the second-choice votes needed for victory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In other words, it’d drive the state’s government toward the mushy, dim middle.\u00a0 Which is no choice at all.\u00a0 The Strib doesn’t seem to credit the Minnesota voter with a lot of intelligence – easy to do in a state where Mark Ritchie and Rebecca Otto beat vastly-superior incumbents, but not really a spirit in which Democracy can thrive.<\/p>\n
Last week, Minneapolis voters approved a switch to instant runoff voting for the next city election, in 2009. That exercise should be seen as a pilot project for the whole state.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Between now and then, the Legislature should give instant runoff a thorough hearing, and direct the next secretary of state, Mark Ritchie (an instant runoff voting supporter), to make preliminary plans for a switch. If the system serves Minneapolis well in 2009, it should be ready for the whole state in 2010.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“Give it a hearing, and direct Ritchie to make the switch”?\u00a0\u00a0 Wow – sounds like a fair process!<\/p>\n
This is madness for a couple of non-partisan reasons.\u00a0 For starters, a “Test” in Minneapolis would be completely meaningless; Minneapolis is to all intents and purposes a one-party town (Greens have a power base, but Greens, for all their kvetching, are just ultraorthadox DFLers).\u00a0 Minnesota is another story.<\/p>\n
And does anyone else catch the absurd double-standard?\u00a0 A newspaper that bitched and moaned endlessly about the perils of electronic vote tabulation (as long as they were perceived to benefit Republicans – somehow, Diebold isn’t a threat to democracy these days) is suddenly ready to place full faith into a system that depends entirely <\/em>on utterly-untested froo-froo technology?<\/p>\nThis is a power grab for the left and their apologists, frustrated that the game is too close, these days, for the system to keep them in power.\u00a0 They want to fix that.<\/p>\n
It needs to be stopped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The November 7 elections\u00a0 are going to have some unintended consequences in this state. Among the worst – and one that some of us who follow these things predicted – is the fallout from the election of vacuous political-party-boy Mark Ritchie to the Secretary of State’s office. Ritchie – whose sole notable political experiences are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}