Progressives within the Democratic Party are about to be called "spoilers"

I've seen variation of an argument recently on social media that came out today as this NBC article: "Democrats are having a banner recruiting year -- and it could cost them". The article essentially makes the case that, because there are in some districts a large number of people running as Democrats, that it could "cost" the party. They specifically cite California and it's "top two" laws, that basically requires the top two candidates to go into a run-off even if they are the same party. The article argues that the large number of Democrats will split the vote in the primaries and allow the top two candidates in the general to be Republican candidates.

In fact, the article says:

But crowded primaries can also waste money, sow internal divisions, push candidates to the ideological extremes, and tarnish whoever emerges from the melee.

It goes on to say:

Republicans are counting on overcrowded Democratic races to help bail them out of what is shaping up to be a very bad year. 

"We look forward to facing whoever limps out of the Democrats' battle royale: black and blue, and broke," said National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Steve Stivers. 

One GOP super PAC is even considering meddling in Democratic races to sow chaos and promote weaker opponents. "It'd be too much not to," said Cory Bliss, the executive director of the Congressional Leadership Fund. 

It cites the example from California again, that the state party has thrown its weight behind the candidate from last election, Doug Applegate, and is calling on challengers to drop out and support him, even though Applegate has been accused of scandal is not necessarily looking like a strong candidate. Regardless, the fact that the candidate and party are trying to pressure challengers out of the primaries -- the elections that are supposed to choose the candidate for the party, rather than allowing party elite to decide! -- shows that Democrats have not learned a thing since 2016.

This is exactly the arguments we saw as the Clinton wing of the Democratic party put pressure on Bernie Sanders and his supporters to drop out and fall in line behind Clinton. The "split the vote" argument is also exactly the reason they give for why voting for the Greens is a "waste".

Mark my words: the Democratic party is about to launch a campaign against progressive/socialist challengers, calling them "spoilers" and "weaker candidates propped up by GOP". This is all scare tactics to try to get people to fall back in line with the corporate "centrist" Democrats whom they will claim are "stronger" candidates that can "reach out to republican voters with bipartisanship".

The Democratic party could be working to fix this. Since the primaries are completely party-controlled, the DNC could do a simple vote and switch to ranked choice voting and make the "spoiler" argument completely obsolete. They could use ranked choice to find the candidate that is actually the most preferred by the most voters (open primaries would be even better at this!), rather than the establishment-backed flawed winning candidate of a plurality vote. And yet, they don't. I haven't heard a peep about ranked choice, and in fact, establishment politicians on both sides of the aisle are fighting ranked choice implementation in Maine after voters chose last year to switch to ranked choice. This might have something to do with how a number of Democratic state representatives in Maine have broken off and become Greens, and the Green Party is rapidly growing there. People are sick of establishment politics.

Democrats don't want ranked choice -- in the general election or even the primaries -- because they can use plurality voting and the "spoiler" argument and the "weaker candidate" argument as a stick to beat back opposition. They prey on the politics of fear, counting on you to ultimately side with their establishment pick out of fear that a worse candidate from the Republicans could ultimately win. They make this argument every election, and despite their corporate candidates typically winning primaries, they still go on to lose the general election. But instead of asking how their strategy can change to win over more voters, they still blame progressives and Greens for those losses. Despite the huge losses to the GOP and Trump in 2016, Democrats are continuing with their same policies, because why not, it has worked in the past. They are anticipating riding an anti-Trump wave to victory and have no need to appeal to progressives. They will use 2018 as an opportunity to try to crush the progressive "rebellion".

We need to move beyond the two-party narrative about how we vote. They use our voting methods to bash not only third party movements like the Greens, but even progressive challengers within the party.

Our energy is not well directed at "invading" the Democratic party, however. The primaries are not "official" elections, in the sense that they are party nomination procedures. Parties, as private organizations, can nominate however they want. Look at how much the Unity Reform Commission is struggling to get support to pass their small reforms that are much less than what progressives were originally asking for. There is huge momentum within the party to fight change. So to get the change you seek, you must take over nearly all local and state parties, with the end result being you get to maybe set some internal policy. None of that work is helping making fairer elections for our fellow Americans in the Republican, Green, Libertarian parties, or independent voters. (Remember that Trump won a lot of the early primaries with only something like 20% or 30% of the vote -- a landslide of Republicans did NOT want him and voted for someone else, yet he won -- ranked choice in the Republican primaries could have stopped Trump, and yet no one talks about that). Even if the Democratic party becomes more "progressive", we're still operating within a two party system that shuts out voices and opposition. We need to do better than this.

What we can do is change our laws for the general election. We can fight for a more fair system for all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, and make it easier for everyone to vote. While this is also an uphill battle, this is a battle for what's right, for making our system more democratic and fair to all, not just taking over a single party in a flawed two-party system. When we win this, we're not simply propping up a private organization with control over our elections process, we win and spread democratic reform for all Americans. This is what Greens stand for. We want proportional representation and ranked choice, we want voting holidays, we want equal access to debates and the airwaves, we want automatic voter registration and open primaries, we want verifiable voting methods instead of electronic machines we can't trust. These are things that are good for every voter and every party, and yet the two major parties never talk about any of this. And it's very clear why: they want to retain the control over our elections process, rather than opening it up to everyone with methods like proportional representation. Private organizations should NOT control our elections.

If you're sick of Democrats using the "spoiler" stick every election, please consider joining the Greens and helping us grow a new major party and change our election system.

Nonviolent Resistance in the Neoliberal Era

In my previous post, I discussed Martin Luther King, Jr.,'s (MLK's) writings and how he identified racism, poverty, and militarism as deeply intertwined problems that needed to be resolved together. I also discussed how most of these ideas are reflected in today's Green Party platform, whereas the major parties conveniently ignore most of MLK's legacy on poverty and militarism.

Now that we know MLK's complaints and proposed solutions, the final piece of the puzzle is to ask how we fight for them. This is where's MLK's nonviolent resistance movement comes in, as a way of exerting power and influence on society to force it toward his proposed reforms. MLK in his youth was actually much closer to a violent revolutionary but was inspired by Gandhi's nonviolent resistance movement in India. A few chance encounters with activists such as A. Phillip Randolph set him on the path to learning about Gandhi and full adopting the nonviolent method as the best path forward, which sometimes put him at odds with other "black power" activists that took a much more aggressive stance.

The key to nonviolent resistance is in the combination of the two words.

Nonviolent refers to our need to unite and create a new system, rather than call for violent destruction. Violence sets back the movement by creating enemies of people affected by that destruction. We need to make allies, not enemies, and we make allies with peace and understanding, not violence and anger. Furthermore, as MLK points out, destroying the factory you want to get a job at or destroying the school you want your children to attend during a riot is counterproductive. We don't want to destroy, we want to create -- we want to create opportunity for all.

Resistance means that you resist the system fully in all ways you can, rather than simply accepting it or becoming apathetic. One does not wait around and hope for better circumstances, but actively works toward a better system by trying to jam the current unjust system. We want to become a nonviolent nuisance to the system, we want to aggravate the system until it has no choice but to respond to us. If we are not the gadfly, then we are at least partially accepting the current system and allowing it to continue.

For the most part, MLK says economic power and political power are the tools of nonviolent resistance. The current unjust system is in some sense perpetuated by us when we are complicit. Businesses have no one to sell to and make those extreme profits if we exercise our economic power, and corrupt politicians have no volunteers or voters to win election if we exercise our political power. If we recognize how much power actually exists within the people as a whole, we can accomplish a lot. The powerful are only powerful when we allow them to be so and prop them up on our backs.

So what do these two forms of nonviolent resistance look like?

MLK describes in the early chapters of the book "Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community" several nonviolent resistance actions that were taken to exercise both economic and political power. Marches were a common way of showing solidarity and educating people in the community, since corporate media shut their voices out from radio, newspapers, etc. As more people were educated on the issues and joined the movement, power grew, and once it was enough, further action could be taken.

Economic power was exercised in strikes and boycotts, often planned with the assistance of sympathetic unions. MLK worked with movement and union leaders to send representatives to companies and demand better pay and equality for workers; if the business refused, the movement would boycott the products and workers would go on strike, hurting the company's bottom line until they gave in to the demands. This was a successful tactic on a number of occasions. Boycotts were also aimed at government services that did not support equality; in fact, MLK and his allies used boycotts of bus services to draw attention to racial inequality on the buses. A lesser known fact was that Rosa Parks did not act alone randomly when she famously refused to give up her seat on the bus; rather, Parks was approached by leaders of MLK's movement to perform this action as a way of generating attention and press for the bus boycott. Black people refused to ride the buses, carpooling and even walking to work for weeks until government incomes were hurt enough that leaders had to react and integrate the buses.

Political power often came in the form of opposing unjust police action and the criminal justice system itself. Court cases were filed against unjust policing and inequality in government services, sometimes winning, but always being used to draw more public attention to their demands. Police were often used to break up marches and protests as a way of silencing the movement. To combat the silence, MLK and leaders would purposely become jailed and try to remain in jail even when friendlies would attempt bail in order to keep pressure on the police and government; in fact, they would call on others to join them in jail. A constantly growing stream of peaceful protesters would overwhelm the jails (which didn't enough room or manpower to process and house the large groups) and start grabbing headlines and attention, to the point that the police would actually beg them to leave jail (even attempting to coerce them to leave!) in order to stop the headlines.

Even when the KKK or Nazis would form counter-marches against MLK and his movement, civil rights leaders would sit outside and laugh and joke and wave to the marchers, treating it as a fun parade (despite being afraid on the inside, they would not show it) as a way of disarming the hostility. Often, the racist marches would be so embarrassed by the lack of fear that the march would break up without major incident.

MLK also exercised political power by backing political candidates that promised to back government programs to tackle inequality and poverty. MLK and leaders often talked with high level officials, including the President, to push their agenda. Threats of marches on Washington or backing of political rivals was often enough to force their hand. Many of MLK's mentors were active in the 1940s, and used similar tactics to get President FDR to sign executive orders that required integration in the military and other places, for example. While some progress was made, many movement leaders often felt betrayed by political candidates that would turn on the movement once becoming elected, with MLK specifically describing in his books how Democratic politicians would often let him down. This experience lead him to start calling for support for independent and third party candidates to challenge those disappointing politicians where possible.

In summary, MLK and his movement would exercise peaceful power by countering whatever issue was at hand. If business wouldn't pay fair wages in order to keep more profits, they would ruin their profits by refusing to buy the products. They would refuse to pay for government services like buses that did not treat them equally. If KKK wanted fear, they'd give them laughter. If police wanted to jail them to silence them, they'd rush the jails to bring more attention. If today's politicians won't support us or go back on their word, we support candidates that will. The idea was always that one couldn't simply ask nicely, one must force their hand with nonviolent action.

So what does nonviolent resistance look like today? The situations are not the same as the 1960s, so simply relying on all of the old methods I think won't be successful on its own, but it is certainly instructive to look at what they did for inspiration and so we know what will not work to prevent wasted effort.

Unfortunately, the nonviolent resistance movement today appears much more fragmented than it was, as it appears that even the word "resistance" has been co-opted by the establishment. The "hashtag resistance" (#resistance) for example is a great illustration of the establishment's use of the term. Despite all of the talk about resistance, Democrats have been largely complicit with many of Trump's actions. Last year at about this time were a number of marches and actions to "resist" Trump: the Women's March, the March for Science, and more. All of those events left me very unimpressed for the lack of true action and resistance. The marches all followed about the same format in Pittsburgh: the march was perhaps an hour long at most, in the rich part of town (Oakland, which is the university town and a very expensive gentrified area), a few speakers talked about how terrible Trump is an abstract way (very little discussion of actual policy), we marched a few blocks around the Cathedral of Learning with police escort, and then everyone left. Where was the call to bigger action? To hold sit-ins in elected officials offices? To boycott the corporations funding America's ongoing wars? Where was the call for average Americans to run for office? There was none of this type of resistance.

It is no wonder elected officials ignore the "protests" and carry on with their neoliberal policies when there is no "teeth" in such actions. I think many of these actions are more "for show" than for real policy change. The events are meant to keep everyone occupied and busy with ineffective action to prevent us from uniting and mobilizing into real action. In other words, I believe many of these events are meant to be more public relations for the Democratic party than to actually achieve any policy objectives. MLK expressed much disappointment in the 1960s for the Democratic party doing exactly this (claiming to support reform and resistance, and yet rarely doing anything substantial), and so it is clear the party has not changed much in the last 50 years. My understanding is the marches are coming back for 2018, and so we will know how serious any of these marches are this year. If they talk about larger action and running for office, terrific, but my guess is it will be more of the same non-action.

So where do we go if our political parties are failing us and we cannot find real action to participate in?

Perhaps the most important lesson of MLK is that we all hold the power ourselves. MLK's nonviolent resistance was all about showing the power of the people in economics and politics, and we can do that again if we form new organizations to replace those that have failed us. As I previously said, MLK specifically called for support of independent and third party candidates if the major parties do not take us seriously, and for a long time we have needed that new voice. It is clear we need to grow the Green Party into a force to be reckoned with, both in the economic activism space as well as the electoral politics space. The Green Party was actually originally formed as a combination activist and electoral politics organization, so we already have this in our heritage; our major difficulty until today has always been a lack of volunteers and candidates. Activists and political candidates today have often been drawn into attempting to work from within, by joining corporate-backed "activism" organizations and being talked into supporting the Democratic Party, rather than forming organizations outside of the system. They mean well, but corporate talking points and propaganda have convinced them working from within is the only way to get what they want, when usually it is actually the place "where ideas go to die". Greens need to reassess how to reach out to these activists and organizations, talk about their concerns, and work to building the party and a new movement. We need outreach and education to build a movement that will adopt these nonviolent resistance techniques from outside of the current electoral system.

As Frederick Douglass said, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." Power will not concede anything until it has to, and voting Green tells the establishment exactly what our demand is. We want the Green New Deal, with renewable energy, an end to wars, and an economic bill of rights, and we *WILL* elect Greens to take your jobs if you do not give it to us. There *WILL* be fair elections because if there is any hint of electoral shenanigans against Greens, we will take further actions including boycotts and strikes that will hurt your bottom line. Establishment politicians and their corporate donors will feel the financial sting one way or another unless they come to the table to discuss our demands as equals. THAT is nonviolent resistance and why I believe it is so important to build the Green Party into a strong political force at all levels of government.

We cannot play their games, or participate in their rules for the economy and the two-party political system, for every time that we do we are reinforcing our subservient attitude toward them. Every time an activist says "Well, Greens can't win", they are betraying their fears that the establishment has already won. Every time we say "You have to run as a Democrat to have a chance", we are only admitting that the establishment holds the power instead of us. Of course they make it easy to run as a Democrat, because either you will support them in the long run with persuasion or they can use the party structure to control you and stop your message, or quickly rollback changes if necessary (look how quickly the GOP rolled back many policies this year). That is not what MLK stood for. MLK stood for the people rising together and demanding change, and taking action until we received it, no matter how difficult or hard it became in the process.

We are not slaves to the economic and political system; it is the system that must answer to the will of the people. We must build a new political party -- and more generally, a new political system -- that calls for a radically different approach to politics and how we think about power in a democracy. We must build a movement that utilizes our economic power to confront inequality and injustice in our capitalist economic system and call for a completely new democratic approach to an economy, one that works for all of us. The more we get caught up in trying to work within the current systems, the more we get bogged down, and that's on purpose: bureaucracy is antithetical to true democracy, because it puts more power in the process and structure than into the people.

Winning takes struggle. Power won't concede easily. Power is not afraid of people marching in an orderly fashion once a year for an hour. It MUST be backed by real action. We can take economic action with boycotts or strikes, or we can take political action by forming political organizations and parties like the Green Party that support candidates against the status quo, but those are our only real options in the struggle. Any other action can be co-opted by power, or easily reversed. We must build a completely new alternative to be a true threat to the current power structure. I don't think there is any easier way to do so if we want long-term reform, and we delude ourselves if we think we can walk into today's power structures and win without a fight (again, today's propaganda makes it sound like the fight is "winning elections" as a Democrat, but that only covers up the real fight with the internal party structure once you win; we must develop a whole new structure if we want to both win and retain those victories long into the future).

We therefore need a strong Green Party as an umbrella for this combined nonviolent resistance from outside of the system. We need new organizational motion on economic action outside of today's "non-profit industry" that simply makes money on protests by selling t-shirts and hyping people up (but not enough to do real action), and we need a new political party that stands for a bold platform centered on establishing grassroots democracy, ecology, peace, and social justice over corporate profits. Activists or political candidates that want to see real change need to support growing the Green Party, and it is our jobs as Greens to reach out to those people and organizations and build coalitions around nonviolent resistance. It is our only way to break today's power structures and achieve significant reform.

If you are one of those activists or a member of an activist organization, please reach out to me and how we can collaborate and build a coalition. We need to work outside of the system and set our own rules. Please come join us in the Green Party and help build a new future.

The STV proportional representation voting method

In the last post, I described the need for proportional representation to establish a more democratic and fair system for electing our representatives. I originally began thinking of the topic when I recently was browsing in the library and came across a short book entitled "Proportional Representation: The Key to Democracy" by George H. Hallett, Jr. The book was originally published in 1937, and is a short read at just a touch over 100 pages (on small size paper, so could be easily read in an afternoon).

What caught my interest was that there were several books in the library around that time period advocating for PR, and while casually flipping through the book, I saw references to the fact that cities like Cincinnati were using PR at the time. Is that still true today?, I thought. (Incidentally, Cincinnati used PR from 1925 until 1957; there have been attempts to bring it back since then that have lost by very close margins). FairVote actually provides an excellent brief history of proportional representation, which helps answer those questions. I'll provide some of those responses below, which actually echo most of Hallet's arguments for PR.

So I spent the last post talking about the high-levels of why we needed PR. Today, I thought I'd go through Hallet's small book and discuss exactly what STV PR is, and list the advantages and arguments for PR that it lists. I think all of them are good arguments just as applicable today as back then, and considering the book's age, I feel like it is worthwhile documenting older texts before they are lost to history.

First, the single transferrable vote (STV) method of proportional representation is a very straightforward name for the process. Voters are presented with the entire list of all candidates, and voters choose the candidate that they feel best represents them. As we will see, STV does away with the need for primaries, so voters can select from all available candidates and not just the single nominees of each party. However, unlikely plurality voting, voters can choose to rank the candidates in order from who is the first choice for their vote down to last choice. Voters are not required to rank all candidates; voters can pick only their top two favorites, or four, or any possibility. Voters therefore only vote for candidates they find acceptable, and are not required to pick any candidate they do not want.

When the votes are counted to determine the winners, we follow slightly different practices. A few alternatives exist, all roughly the same, so I'll explain the one that seems most common. The city sets a threshold for the number of votes needed to win a seat on the legislative body (city or county council, etc.). It might be say 1500 votes, or more, depending on the population of the city; the board of elections would set this number in advance. This means that ANY candidate that receives at least 1500 votes is on the council; the number of seats is therefore dynamic and depends on how many people turn out to vote. As the population for the city grows and more voters turn out, the council will automatically be expanded to ensure proper representation of all groups in the city. If population goes down and there are less candidates, the size of the council adjusts downward as well. (An alternative is to set a constant number of members on the council, and adjust the winning threshold based on the voter turnout, but I personally like the variable council size method better).

The tallying of votes is where the process is most significantly different. The votes are counted and sorted based on their rankings. First, everyone's first choice is counted and tallied. If there are any candidates that receive over the threshold (say, over 1500) votes, those candidates are declared immediate winners. Other candidates may not have received the full 1500, but are reasonably close. Other can be mathematically shown they will never win 1500 votes (because perhaps less than 1500 people chose that candidate in their rankings!). The candidates that cannot win are eliminated, and their votes are transferred to the second choice candidates. Simultaneously, candidates that received more than 1500 votes don't need more votes (they've already won! doesn't do any good to have more), so in order to try to balance out the minority votes from losing candidates, we also transfer the votes of the excess votes (over 1500) to the second choice candidates. In this way, both the majority and minority are represented and have their votes counted toward a candidate; no vote is wasted! We continue this process of transferring votes until there are no more candidates to transfer votes from. Then, ALL candidates over the threshold are winners. While slightly complicated in vote counting, the process is fairly intuitive and transparent (since the method of transferring votes can be calculated much like one balances a checkbook, anyone can confirm the arithmetic is correct) and ensures a council that represents the views of its citizens proportionally, ensuring everyone has a fair representation and a voice on the council.

This is only a brief overview of the method. We'll discuss how and why this works more as we review Hallet's arguments for PR below.

Specifically, Hallet points out the following advantages of STV PR:

• Effective voting, meaning that nearly everyone that votes will have at least someone from their list chosen to represent them. Even if it is not their top choice, nearly everyone will have their number two or three elected, and so most voters will feel comfortable with the results.
• Unanimous constituencies, meaning each representative is elected from a block of voters that agree on some issue and not simply voters that live in the same ward (as we do with our current single-member districts). Representatives can focus on issues that get them elected and not "straddling the line" in a district (in other words, the typical "I'm a centrist" that stands for nothing so as not to offend and get elected, as we hear today).
• Minority representation, meaning voters group themselves into minority "parties" based on important issues and can elect a representative even with a small group. They get some small representation rather than never having a voice in government under single-member districts and a two-party system. These minority groups can be "single issue" parties that feel shut out by the major parties, for example, by focusing things like fracking or single payer healthcare.
• Majority rule, meaning that while minority groups are represented, no minority group can force through their agenda without building a majority coalition with the other elected representatives that were elected on perhaps other issues. Most decisions made by the group will represent the will of the majority, whereas under single-member districting and two-party rule it is easy for a larger minority to take complete control despite up to half of voters completely disagreeing with the proposal. See Pennsylvania, where a majority of voters voted for Democratic candidates and yet Republicans control the state assembly with a 60% supermajority.
• New freedom in voting, meaning voters can worry less about "tactical voting" and vote for the candidate(s) and platform(s) they truly believe in. There is no concern about splitting the vote; one can rest safely knowing that if the first choice cannot win, the vote will be transferred to a second preferred choice rather than the last hated choice.
• A check to machine rule, meaning that the freedom to vote for any candidate typically means voters choose better candidates rather than settling on the establishment "political machine" candidates. It becomes harder for establishment candidates to win unless they truly represent the interests of the people, which leads to the next point.
• The transformation of machines, meaning that establishment political parties must bend their will to the will of the people and support popular policy or they won't be elected. There cannot be a lesser evil argument when your votes can be transferred. Establishment must adopt popular policy or will lose to another group that does.
• The gerrymander killed, since PR is applied to entire municipalities or to large permanent "super-districts", which completely kills the need for re-districting and hence partisan re-districting ("gerrymandering").
• A solution for reapportionment, making it easy to vary the number of representatives in the legislative body by simply requiring one representative for every set number of votes (for example, 75,000 votes). In this way, the number of representatives changes with the population automatically each election, and there is no need for reapportionment and re-districting after each census as we do now.
• Continuity, meaning that PR prevents sudden "landslides" that can push a minority into majority rule as under our current system. PR simply increases or decreases representation proportional to the votes, and popular leaders will remain elected, with only the unpopular ones losing their seats. Going from 49% of the vote to 51% means only an extra seat or two in PR, with each side retaining roughly equal control, while under plurality might mean the difference between total defeat or total victory.
• The development of leadership, allowing representatives to be independent leaders rather than "rubber stamp" the political party's goals. The party cannot threaten "losing endorsement" and ballot access, as happens under today's system. Anyone can be on the ballot regardless of party endorsement and still win, since voters can choose the best platform and not simply tactical voting.
• Development of interest, meaning that as the conversation changes from "lesser evil" to choosing the best platform, more voters will become interested in politics and elections and join the conversation. Many voters are today turned off by the angry discourse that results from a two-party system that pushes voting for a "lesser evil" that is still unacceptable. Why participate in a system where all of your options are ones you hate? With better options, we see more civic engagement, which is good for democracy.
• Reduction of fraud, as one would need to stuff a ballot with A LOT of votes under a PR system to get all of the candidates you want elected, and such a massive "landslide" would be immediately suspicious and investigated. There's less payoff for small fraud under PR, so less will even bother to attempt it.
• Elimination of primaries, since voters can simply pick their favorite candidates at once and have their votes transferred. There is no need to hold a separate, expensive election just for party nominees, especially when such primaries operate under party rules and can be manipulated. Parties are free to endorse as many candidates in the election as they wish, but they cannot prevent candidates from appearing on the general election ballot as they do with primaries.
• Cooperation and good feeling, since all of the above reasons contribute to campaigns focused on issues rather than simply attacking and trying to beat a particular candidate. Talking about issues wins votes as people find they agree with your platform, but there is little advantage to attacking an opponent when it might alienate voters and they'll simply pick some instead of you or the opponent.

Anticipating questions and retorts, Hallet's book provides a chapter on answers to common objections to PR:

• Does PR promote racial and religious blocs? While some voters may vote strictly along racial, religious, or other lines, most voters focus on issues important to them. Should some voters stick to small groups, even then the proportionality of PR means that they would not get a majority of elected officials and would not be able to pass legislation on their own if they are too radical. The book points out Cincinnati and other cities that used PR in the early 1900s held several successful elections and never saw evidence of this happening.
• Does PR deprive localities of representation? If we don't have districts, do the representatives really represent each neighborhood or locality? This is sort of the inverse question of promoting blocs as above, and has a similar answer. In order for each locality to NOT be represented, a different locality would have to form a voting bloc and win more seats. Since the seats are chosen proportionally, it is very difficult to imagine any scenario where voters in a locality would rank candidates from other localities that did not have their best interests in mind above candidates from their own area. In practice, this issue was not seen either, since voters focused on issues which tended to benefit their locality or the entire area as a whole.
• Does PR help extremists? Some worry that extremist groups may win seats in PR. For example, a Nazi may try to win a seat. But this fear is again unfounded because of proportionality. A small extremist minority is unlikely to have votes to win even one seat, and even if they did, would not have majority rule to pass any extremist agenda. Any such risk under PR is overblown, as it is much easier for an extremist party to take advantage of our current system's unfair districts and two-party primary process to take majority rule. Consider that the "Tea Party" of 2009 was a very small group of Republicans but was able to target certain districts and win a large amount of seats in Congress, and influence the entire Republican party, whereas such a win would not have been possible under PR since the Tea Party was clearly not endorsed by a majority of Americans (or even a majority of Republicans). Tea Party would have at best won a couple seats in PR, not a takeover of party goals as was what happened under our current system. You need majority backing in PR to win a majority, but that's not true under the current system.
• Does PR increase the bargaining power of minorities? Certainly minorities would have representation in PR and so a bargain or compromise would sometimes be needed to win a majority vote, depending on the proportions involved. But again the issue is overblown, as any "risk" of needing to bargain with a minority is much less than our current system which can give minority parties outright control to do completely as they wish.
• Does PR make legislation harder? Since PR focuses on issues that affect the community, in most circumstances the representatives would all be focused on the same or similar issues affecting the whole community, and can make compromises to ensure it happens. Our current system focuses on winning elections only, leading to two major parties that constantly flip flop, getting nothing done. PR actually would make the system work more efficiently for things we all agree on instead of focusing on the "horse race" of who is "winning".
• Does PR break down one-party government? Effectively, PR allows for a one-party (effectively: no parties), two-party, or multi-party government, so if you feel on one side of spectrum or other, PR is neutral. PR chooses the best candidates based on the issues, and so will reflect the will of the people. If there are many important issues, there will be many parties. History has shown some cities to be satisfied with two parties, while others like New York saw a vibrant multiparty system form due to the large amount of issues for a city of such large size. It is up to the voters that live in the area to determine how best to structure politics, and PR works with any choice.
• Is PR hard to understand? For voters, it is easy to understand that you simply number the candidates in order from favorite to least favorite. The counting process is a little more complex, but most voters already don't know the process of handling votes under today's system, so not much would change in terms of what voters need to know. PR does open up the ability to monitor and challenge elections since the votes are centrally counted and the arithmetic easily verified, which would actually make elections more transparent than they are today.
• Does the PR count take too much time? People are used to hearing the preliminary results immediately on election night. PR would take a bit longer to go through and transfer votes to second choice, etc., but election workers can do this over the course of only a couple days. We can allow a day or two to ensure a correct count when we're choosing leaders for the next 2-4 years. And if you want a preliminary estimate, exit polls might help.
• Does PR lend itself to manipulation? Since PR requires several vote counts, during which we transfer votes from losing to winning candidates, the ballots will be counted several times by many poll workers with many poll watchers monitoring the entirely process. Thus, fraud and manipulation are actually harder to pull off and the system is much more transparent. More than worrying about PR or voting method, if we are concerned about manipulation, we should focus on electronic voting machines currently in use in Pennsylvania. Such machines have no audit trail and may be easily manipulated. We should use paper ballots with PR for maximum transparency.
• Does PR cost too much? While PR would likely require hiring extra workers to count votes in a timely manner, the cost is much less than the costs of a primary and a potential run-off vote. PR replaces the need for these extra elections since votes are transferred automatically during the count. The net cost historically has been much lower in cities that moved to PR.
• Does PR make the ballot too long? In most cases the ballot won't be too long because there is no need to artificial raise the number of candidates to "split the vote" as is sometimes done in today's primaries and general elections. Even if there are many candidates, voters need not rank EVERY candidate, but only their favorites or the ones they know well. Even if the ballot has 30 candidates, voters can rank their top 5. In practice in cities that moved to PR, this was not an issue.
• Does PR make it harder to know the candidates? While there are potentially more candidates, most voters will find it easier to learn about candidates and their choices. Under today's system, most voters are not sure which district they are in, and media (newspapers, etc.) tend to devote their resources to top races like mayor or governor and less resources to every small district. The effect being that many voters don't have any idea about who the candidates are in their local races. If there are no districts, coverage must be more fair for all candidates rather than only the larger races and districts, if for no other reason than any candidate a voter hears about is someone that the voter can choose (since districts no longer restrict choice).
• Does PR make campaigning harder? While it is true the campaign area can be larger since there are no more districts, the flip-side is that candidates are no longer competing for a majority of votes, just the amount of votes necessary to win a seat. Therefore candidates can customize their campaign to reach the constituency they want: focus on a certain neighborhood or group to win the voters needed or a seat. Campaigning in every neighborhood in the whole city is therefore not strictly required to win. Since PR removes the need for primaries, this also frees up more time and money for the general election.
• Does PR decrease interest in elections? Since PR elections tend to focus on issues, more citizens tend to become interested. Historically, cities that used PR saw increased voter turnout.
• Does PR mean minority rule? This is an objection already seen and answered, basically. PR allows for some minority representation, but ultimately the majority of elected representatives set the agenda. Majority rule does not require that each representative strictly represent the majority, it requires a majority of representatives that decide a question to represent a majority of voters, via coalition and agreement.
• Does PR infringe the rights of the voter? The PR system presented allows for a single transferable vote (STV), such that you get a single vote that is transferred to your next choice should your top choice not be able to win a seat. This system is the most fair because if you give everyone multiple votes (say, 7 votes for 7 seats), the tendency will be that the largest group will elect its 7 candidates (Democrats will vote for the 7 Democrats on the ballot, for example) and the resulting election will not proportionally represent all voters. Each person choose a single representative that best represents them, regardless of party affiliation or district.
• Does PR leave elections to chance? This is an objection based on the method of counting votes described in Hallet's book. Specifically, the objection is to the idea that votes for a winning candidate over the threshold are also transferred to second choice candidates; essentially, how do you choose which votes are transferred and which stay with the first choice? I'll leave the full details to the book, but effectively PR's method of counting is so fair and accurate that randomly choosing ballots to transfer and which to not still accurately represents the whole (because of statistics over a large group of people). And if one is not convinced by mathematics, there are ways to more deterministically decide the question (although they are a bit more complex). The winners are not left to chance in either method.
• Is PR "un-American"? PR carries out the American principles of majority rule and equality of voting power better than any other system.
• Is PR unimportant? Some object to a campaign for PR, because there are "more important things" to focus on than PR and we just need to "elect the right people" to get it done. However, focusing on "electing the right people" to accomplish the will of the people is much more difficult under today's system. PR makes it easy to stick to the issues and elect the right people, so PR needs to be a top priority reform before we can focus on other issues.
• Has PR failed where it has been tried? Many cities have moved to use PR successfully, producing the most balanced and issues-focused budgets in recent history. Where the establishment has attempted to repeal PR, voters historically soundly rejected it. (There were cases of PR being removed due to changes in state governance, and racism as we'll see, but most voters that tried PR were extremely satisfied with the results). In a nutshell, nearly everyone that tries it prefers it and sees immediate results.

Hallet's book was published in 1937 as PR was becoming very popular; unfortunately, many cities and counties that adopted PR would see it phased out later in the 1950's and '60s. So I would like to add one more "modern" bullet point to the previous list of objections:

• If PR has obvious advantages, why did cities that used it in the past almost completely abandoned the method in the 1950s and '60s? As FairVote's brief history of PR discusses, PR worked almost too well. PR was incredibly successful at breaking down party machines and including minority representation in government, and Hallet's points above have proven to be true across the country in all municipalities that adopted PR. However, during the civil rights movement era and the "red scare", leaders from the two major parties -- angry at being unable to control elections and therefore government like they used to -- used racist appeals to fear of "Negro mayors" or fear of Communists winning elections under PR in order to convince the population to vote to repeal PR and move back to the older plurality systems. Unfortunately, the scare tactics were successful in most places, with white voters voting 2:1 to repeal PR due to those fears. So after decades of successful use of PR, many cities votes to scrap it, not for any problem with PR itself (as said above, previous repeal attempts were unsuccessful due to huge satisfaction with the system) but fear-mongering from the major parties. To me, this is actually all the more reason and evidence that PR is successful and a worthwhile goal, and that we need to fight to educate voters and establish PR in the US once again!

In light of the history of the PR movement and the points above, one final question comes to mind. If we want to implement PR today, how do we actually get it implemented around our current corrupt system that will not support PR for fear of losing power? If the Green Party would like to address concerns of "splitting the vote" and gerrymandering, what can it do aside from running more candidates in an unfair election system?

Hallet's book and FairVote's article actually provide historical evidence of one path to victory: utilize the voter referendum. What does that mean, though? I will post a follow-up blog post where I will discuss referenda at length, and I will review my research on whether this is feasible soon.

Be Careful Labeling 2017 Democratic Elections as "Wins"

Initial analysis of 2017 seems to show that many high profile races resulted in democratic socialist candidates winning, even in districts that previously voted for Trump or GOP in past elections. Here in PA and Pittsburgh in particular, we saw an independent candidate Mik Pappas win against an incumbent establishment Democrat (who held the office for 24 years!), as well as Our Revolution and DSA candidate Anita Prizio also winning a seat on the county council. But independents, progressives, socialists, and Greens won races across PA and the nation yesterday. Greens have been elected to more than 44 local offices just this year so far. More ran for office, with some like Jabari Brisport in New York City receiving some of the highest third party votes in decades. In fact, the Green "success rate" (percent of all Green candidates that won their races) was something like 27%, which is pretty impressive for a smaller third party that rejects corporate cash and relies solely on small individual donors in a strongly unfair electoral system.

This is a great start for progressives, and I think shows an upward trend for third party candidates. Imagine what we can do as the Greens grow with more volunteers and candidates! While we should definitely celebrate some early wins against the establishment, I think we also need to pause and be wary about how we interpret these events.

The media is already reporting this as a "blue wave" of Democrats and trying to co-opt the movement. Ex-Clinton campaign staff are already out saying Democrats are winning and that Bernie should be a Democrat or get out of the party because they don't need him. And to some degree, they're right: despite the strong showing from Green/DSA progressive candidates, many more corporatist right-wing Democrats have been elected solely on an anti-Trump agenda. As Draft Bernie points out, the media has been focusing on a few Democrats: Ralph Northam, a conservative that voted for George Bush in past elections, and Phil Murphy, a former Goldman-Sachs executive. As is typical, Democrats think that catering to conservatives and financial elite is OK since they'll get elected anyway just for not being Trump.

We need to watch these newly elected officials, because we've seen this behavior before. Remember a "blue wave" swept Obama into his first term with a majority in Congress, which Democrats then squandered and made sure very little of the progressive agenda was actually accomplished. In fact, some of Obama and the Democratic Congress's first acts were to extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich, expand war in the Middle East, and pass a right-wing health insurance plan that relies on for-profit insurance to deliver care (Obama quickly dropped his earlier proposals for a public option once elected). And in fact he was willing to cut social security and other programs to get a deal, and pushed on that idea throughout his presidency. None of that is progressive at all, and it's really par for the course with Democrats. They (at best) sound progressive on the campaign trail, but as soon as elected, the donors pull the strings to get what they want. The needs of the people come last, every time.

It's even harder to believe that Democrats will change much from this election when you consider these progressives are being swept into a larger party that is still set up to squelch progressive voices. DNC chair Tom Perez is fresh off of kicking progressives out of leadership roles in the party and is still out repeating Clinton campaign talking points. Donna Brazile's truth-speaking about the stolen Democratic primary is now being called Russian propaganda, among other things. Most disappointingly perhaps, even Bernie Sanders has dialed back his expectations for the Democratic Party, with a recent email to supporters saying he wanted the DNC to "reduce" the number of super-delegates in the party, rather than previous calls to eliminate the undemocratic super-delegates all-together. The local candidates that won office today are only a few small voices within a giant political machine that is continuing to do as much as it can to crush those progressive voices, and I worry those local candidates will quickly find themselves frustrated by party leadership.

While we celebrate some local wins, let's also be careful not to get too excited about the overall Democratic Party victories as a sign of progressives winning. While progressives certainly had some encouraging victories, they haven't taken the party yet, and Democratic leadership thinks 2018 will be an easy win because of Trump; not only do I think that is a dangerous attitude to have (as we saw in the losses of 2016), but the 2017 elections reaffirm Democratic beliefs that there's no need to change the party because they still win votes by default by simply not being Republicans. I think progressives are really shooting themselves in the foot when they donate their time and energy into the Democratic party by running as Democratic candidates. Exactly as we're seeing, even when progressives win, the Democratic Party machine simply uses it as an excuse to support its agenda and attack insurgent progressives even more. You're emboldening your enemy the more you try to play nice with them and think you need to follow their rules. Martin Luther King, Jr.,'s non-violence movement wasn't to work with the oppressors within the system, it was to peacefully build a new coalition outside of the system that would force the needed cultural changes.

Power never gives up power for free. You generally can't appeal to power's "sense of fairness", because it has none. Democrats will not give up their power, their rich donors, their corporate influence in the party until forced to do so. They will continue to attack progressives and rig elections because it has worked in the past for them. Democrats have to lose big time and see their voter base dry up before they will make changes; only when the voters leave and Democrats are no longer a "sure thing" will the donor money dry up too, and it will take hitting their bottom line before they get the message. Whether you believe we need a whole new party or believe Democrats can be reformed, both strategies I think require a strong Green Party challenger to the Democrats to win some high profile elections and force Democrats to re-think their position in politics.

I'm looking forward to the opportunity for the Green Party and progressive movement in general in 2018. I hope you'll join the Greens too and help us run more candidates and expand our movement.

DNC Revelations

There have been some interesting revelations this past week regarding the Democratic Party. ... sort of.

In reality, Donna Brazile's allegations regarding DNC corruption & the Clinton campaign's takeover of the party are nothing new to Bernie Sanders fans. I even wrote a blog post last year arguing Bernie should join the Greens after suspicious voting problems surfaced in the primaries. There were reports more than a year ago of voter purges (recently confirmed by the NYC board of elections). Now, Brazile is confirming that the DNC did in fact have a bias toward Clinton -- because Clinton campaign and the DNC signed a contract allowing the campaign to effectively control all DNC decisions!

It feels to me a bit like posturing. Perhaps Brazile and some of her allies want to have the "tell all" in order to either get their 15 minutes of limelight as they retire. But I lean toward thinking that Brazile and others know that the DNC is on a bad path, voters are angry, and they don't want to receive the full blame. Brazile is probably hopeful she can retain her cushy job in the DNC by being the "whistleblower", for example; I have not seen any story so far mention that she was recently appointed to the DNC's rules committee, meaning she is one of the members that sets the rules for the 2020 primaries. As far as I know she has't resigned from the post, and it would now look super suspicious if Tom Perez fired her after these allegations came out, so she probably feels fairly "safe" in her position of power within the party now. Voters are angry, fundraising is way down, the party is doing terribly, and she doesn't want the blame, she wants to sneak in as a "well I never supported the corruption, I'm the whistleblower!". Don't fall for it, she hasn't changed and magically become more progressive, she's fighting to save her source of income.

So that said, what is the next step from this revelation?

I think many will likely use this as an opportunity to "rally the troops" to take over the DNC with more progressives. That is, Justice Democrats or similar organizations will say "we have the corporate DNC on the ropes, support us and we'll win and take over the party!". DON'T LISTEN TO THEM. This doesn't change anything, it just further exposes how fundamentally corrupt the DNC organization is and how they will never change.

The DNC chair is still a corporatist. He appointed corporate lobbyists to most positions of power and purged the progressives. They still back corporate-funded candidates over grassroots-funded progressives. They still have superdelegates to control who wins the party nomination. Party primaries are still done under party rules, meaning they don't legally have to uphold any sort of fair nomination process for any level of office -- and Brazile and others involved in this scandal are working right now to set the primary and debate rules for 2020! Do you think they'll make rules that favor a progressive winning? (Look at the DNC's recent resolution that specifically said Bernie and other independents should join the Democratic party -- they know he won't, but they will use it say he isn't qualified to run for office in 2020, mark my words) And they're working harder than ever to shift their platform to the right and court more right-wing voters and, in particular, rich donors. With the GOP self-destructing under Trump, they want to step in and basically be the "new" right-wing party.

A few Democrat officials will be thrown under the bus, fired from their jobs as a sacrifice to "save" the party in its current form, but make no mistake: the corporate influence is not gone. Just because the influence has potentially turned against Clinton doesn't mean it decided to give up and go home. Power gives up nothing when it doesn't have to. This just means the power and influence has decided Clinton is a liability, and is looking at other candidates and leaders for future elections, and you can bet those new leaders won't be progressive. Oh they might appoint a mild progressive to some ceremonial position with no power (as they did to Keith Ellison), but there is no way corporate donors will let a real progressive that threatens their influence on the party into any position of power within the party.

These allegations show how deep the corruption runs. Those that run the DNC let Clinton basically have the party so they could make more money from her. They filled up the DNC budget with "consultants" that got big paychecks that didn't pay off when Clinton lost an election that should have been easily winnable. That's why this is coming out. Not because they're changing strategy, but simply that they're changing the face of the party.

We cannot fight corporate Democrats on their terms. When we play their game and run in Democratic primaries, we lose, often in that election but even if a progressive sometimes wins, we lose the long game. They can suppress primaries, as we've seen. They can work against progressives. And in the off chance a progressive wins a race, they can use the party machinery to crush dissent and make the progressives "compromise" or smear them. Even with progressives within the Democratic party, they're fighting a corporate platform trying to blend into the party instead of proudly pushing for a true left-wing agenda with a party that supports them.

We must fight on OUR terms. We do that with a two-pronged approach:

1. Join the Green Party. Don't compromise on ideals. Greens have a strongly progressive platform, much more progressive than even Bernie Sanders. Greens are more accurately referred to as "eco-socialist". We must not settle for compromise with Democrats; we must take our agenda straight to the Americans people and convince them of the need for a strongly socialist platform. We must not let Democrats unilaterally set what the "moderate" or "centrist" or "compromise" viewpoint is; who appointed them in charge of defining those terms, defining what Americans want? I think most Americans actually want a Green agenda if they only knew what it was! I think the Green platform *is* the centrist, *is* the compromise agenda. The Democrats are a largely right-wing platform, moving further and further away from Americans' ideals every year, and it's time to start treating it that way. Joining the Green Party, supporting Green candidates, and running for office as a Green gets you a platform to talk about a real progressive eco-socialist agenda instead. You can proudly speak your mind knowing the party is behind you, rather than angry.

2. Many objections to Greens boil down to "the system is rigged against them, so we have to run as a Democrat". Think about that for a second: the system is so rigged that no other candidates even have a chance, and yet you think Democratic primaries are not rigged and can be won by the opposition? Those two statements are fundamentally opposed, and I encourage you to reflect on that strategy and ask if primary opponents will really work better long run than running in general election.

I personally believe that, while there is definitely corruption within the major parties and their processes such as their primaries, our election and justice system on the whole still work reasonably well. Most Americans have a sense of fairness and do not share the attitude of party leaders. Most elections (even primaries) went smoothly, it was only some districts that had problems. While court is complex and costly and needs reform, it does still work, and was the preferred method of getting justice for activists such as Martin Luther King, Jr.

So I say we run candidates as much as possible. When corruption and problems surface, we attack them in court. We can win court battles to make a more fair system. Jill Stein, the 2016 Green presidential nominee, already did this in Pennsylvania: her lawsuit last year got a state law struck down that required any candidates not in the two major parties to go through extra hoops to get on the ballot that Republicans and Democrats didn't have to do. For example, Greens would need thousands of signatures to be on the ballot, but Republicans and Democrats only would need 500. How is that fair? It wasn't, and a court struck down that law. We won, which is why we're seeing more Greens this year running for office, and I hope to see even more in future years.

While the presidential elections are high profile and so the most complex and corrupted (and so need a lot of work!), we're seeing a lot of progress at the local and state level. So we need to be running more candidates at those levels, and filing lawsuits as necessary to continue to pave the way for future elections. Those campaigns, even when they don't win, help educate voters and the general public about these sorts of issues, so it's even more critical to run for office -- hopefully you win, but even if you don't, it's a very important voter education task that needs done anyway.

Now I'm saying Green here as it is the largest party that I feel shares my values, but we see others popping up that may also work. Socialist Alternative, Progressive Independent Party, "Draft Bernie" (not sure if they made a better name yet, People's Party?). Choose whatever party best interests you. I encourage you to join the Greens because we're growing and I think have the most momentum, but do what makes sense for you and your area. Let's also get all of these parties together to talk how we can form a coalition.

Third parties are the only way to truly break the spell of corporate rigged elections and capitalism. If we want fair elections, grassroots democracy, and a more socialist economy, we MUST fight in a new party, because the two major ones will always be against us. Fighting from within puts us at a disadvantage. While fighting as a third party is also difficult and uphill, victories we gain will be long-lasting victories that change the national discussion on our own terms, which is really what our ultimate goal is. It is worth the fight. I hope you'll join us.

Insanity is Working With Democratic Party

Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, as they say. It seems like since the late 1960s, American socialists gave up on their own relatively successful party (which was winning local/state elections and influencing the national parties) to try to work within a two-party system, and that strategy has been a massive failure. Every election, socialists try to influence the party platform and candidates, and are basically disregarded as the party picks its own candidates and ignores its own platform. For 50 years now!

This is probably one of the biggest takeaways from my most recent read, "The 'S' Word - A Short History of an American Tradition ... Socialism" by John Nichols. It's a good book that I recommend to anyone that wants a short overview of important moments in American history that were shaped by socialist ideas (sometimes those ideas were a bit ahead of their time; perhaps the better way to say is those ideas shaped American socialism?). The book covers how Thomas Paine, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others, were all influenced by socialist ideas and principles. It also is a decent short history of the Socialist Party, including the campaigns of Eugene Debs.

But the most interesting chapter to me was the last one, that talked about the socialist movement since the 1960s until today. While never a major party nationally, the Socialist Party was at its apex a very influential party that won local and state elections. In some cities, socialists were the major party, or at least the major opposition party. Socialists were often invited into Republican and Democratic administrations, as appointees or advisors. Many of the policies and programs that we know and love today - medicare, social security, five-day work week, even public water and sewer -- started as party platform demands of socialists that major party candidates adopted in order to win elections.

Unfortunately, the major parties used World War 1 (and later WW2) to stop the socialist movement. Most socialists opposed the US entering the war and spoke out strongly against it. The major parties passed laws declaring any opposition to the war as "unloyal" to the country, making it illegal with a stiff penalty of years in jail. Therefore many socialist party leaders, including presidential candidate Debs, were thrown in jail for a few years before later on having their sentences commuted. The aggressive attacks against 1st amendment speech had a chilling effect, and the party shrank. The socialist party didn't disappear because it was unpopular, it began to disappear because it was undermined by collusion between the major parties against our constitutional principles of freedom of speech. That undermining led to disagreement between factions within the socialist movement on how to best combat attacks from the major parties.

So the question is, what happened in the 1960s? There was a growing movement for the Republican party to move to the right that echoed many of the civil-war-era arguments for "states' rights". Largely the movement grew as an opposition to the expansion of civil rights, with a purposeful campaign known as the "Southern Strategy". The Republican party as we know it today -- not the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt -- was forming.

To combat that, some socialist leaders, in particular Michael Harrington (who wrote a popular book "The Other America" on poverty, which apparently influenced JFK and Johnson), decided that the best thing to do was to play electoral politics as part of the Democratic Party rather than continuing to fight on in a Socialist Party. Harrington worked with several other activists to establish what would eventually become the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which focused on putting pressure on the Democratic Party to implement policy rather than the traditional voter education goals of Socialist Party campaigns. Harrington and his activists went to the Democratic conventions to demand more socialist policy as part of the Democratic platform. They were successful getting many ideas written into the platform (at that time, the "most liberal platform in party history"), and were at first embolded by some early steps taken by Carter, but Democratic presidents have utterly failed to ever implement those socialist ideas in the Democratic platform ever since. In fact, the socialist-backed candidates were never picked, and the party instead picked pro-corporate party insiders, with candidates since Dukakis growing more and more weary of calling themselves "liberal" (we see that in today's Democratic candidates that often proudly call themselves "centrists"). With many activists moving to DSA and assisting the Democrats, the Socialist Party essentially died out nationwide (with a few holdovers here and there).

That story really stood out to me as a parallel to our recent elections. To stop Trump, Bernie and many others made the argument to hold the nose and support Democrats and vote for Clinton. Progressives were kicked out of the convention as Clinton nominated Tim Kaine, a fairly conservative Democrat, as her VP pick rather than a more progressive person like Elizabeth Warren or a socialist like Bernie. Several Bernie backers were placed on the party's platform committee earlier in the year, but Clinton-backed members defeated most proposals from the Berniecrats while the items that made it into the platform were essentially ignored by Clinton and her surrogates. Much like how in 2008 many rallied around Obama for hope and change, only to be disappointed when Obama ignored practically all of his progressive policy promises in order to implement a right-wing healthcare plan and continue much of Bush's economic and war policies.

This reaffirms my belief that attempting to work in the current money-dominated two-party system is a failed strategy for progressives and socialists. I knew that Obama and Clinton had no interest in implementing progressives policy, but I was surprised to learn it dates back much further. Progressive and socialist activists within the party have been trying to work with the Democrats for 50 years, only to watch Democrats drift further and further to the right each election. It feels insane to me to think that continuing this strategy will somehow magically work finally in 2018 or 2020, when it hasn't happened yet in 50 years.

It also confirms that third-parties can and do win; the strategy of a strong Socialist Party resisting both Republicans and Democrats has worked in the past to bring about important change. The strategy works because the major parties have to work to win the election. They have to offer better plans than you if they want to win, they cannot rest on status quo that isn't working. In a two-party system, it is too easy to be lazy and say "Well at least I'm not as bad as the other side!" and let the status quo stand, as we have seen for years now. Having third, fourth, fifth parties requires everyone to work harder, and so all Americans win with the best ideas being elected and implemented.

I view the Green Party as the spiritual successor to the Socialist Party. In fact, many Greens refer to the party as "eco-socialist", to emphasize that the Green platform is a combination of de-centralized democratic socialist economic policy with a need to practice ecological wisdom in our industries and economy (publicly-owned production that still spews out pollution is not a longer-term viable option either!). Socialists I think would find a lot in the Green platform that they would love, and probably don't even realize it! Not long ago, I had spoken with a few socialists at a rally in the early days of the Trump presidency, and asked if they'd sign to get a Green candidate on the ballot. They at first said no thanks. When I asked why, it became clear that they thought Greens weren't socialist enough for their support. As I explained the Green platform, they started to perk up, with one person saying "Oh, I didn't know that's what Greens stood for".

I think our challenge is to teach people about the history of socialism in our country - the labor movements, civil rights movement, etc. - and work to correct those misunderstandings of both socialism as a whole and the Green platform specifically. I know my goal is to help grow the Green Party into a strong champion of progressive socialist ideals in the Pittsburgh area. I think we can finish the work that Debs and others started more than 100 years ago, and work for a more just society and economy for all. I invite all others in the area to join the Green Party and help us create that vision.

A Call for Fair Elections

In this post, I will outline the improvements we need to make for fair elections in Pennsylvania (and the country as a whole). These improvements will ideally be implemented by the next presidential election (2020), but the sooner the better as many actions will also improvement how the state handles state and local elections. I call on Governor Tom Wolf as well as state GOP and Democratic leaders to implement these changes as soon as possible.

Note that I previously discussed some of these issues in past post, but I'm putting them together in a shorter simpler format here along with some maybe new ideas not previously addressed.

1. National Popular Vote Act. By passing the NPVA, Pennsylvania would award its electoral votes for president to whichever candidate has the majority of the popular vote. This would effectively abolish the Electoral College at the state level, and would only go into effect once a winning majority of states agree to the compact. This would make our presidential election system more democratic and ensure that the candidate with the most votes always becomes president. Ultimately we should support a constitutional amendment if necessary, but as states have the authority to determine how electors are assigned, this plan is also perfectly constitutional but can be implemented faster.
2. Free and Fair Elections Resolution. By passing FFER, Pennsylvania would call for a Convention of the States under the authority of Article V in the Constitution on the topic of money in politics. The convention would be used to draft one or more constitutional amendments to limit the power of outside money and influence in our election system, possibly by overturning court cases such as Citizens United vs FEC (whereby corprorate money was equated with free speech) and McCutcheon vs FEC (whereby large donors could donate money to races outside of their home district, allowing someone from for example California to influence Pennsylvania's vote for Senate). This resolution doesn't create any new law, only calls for a convention. Any amendment drafted at the convention would then need to be voted on by all the states before it becomes law, so there's no reason to not support this resolution since all it does is call for more debate on the subject. But, it could lead to some very good outcomes for democracy by keeping our elections local choices without outside interference. Note that this bipartisan legislation was introduced and had large support in the last session of the PA assembly, but was not voted on in time before end of the session. We're pushing for it to be voted on as a first order of business in the next session in January. 6 other states have already called for a convention.
3. Switch to Ranked Choice or Score Voting. Our current system, known as "first past the goal post", is failing us. It often leads to the tactical voting we saw in the 2016 Trump vs Clinton election. Voters should feel free to vote for their favored candidate, and not against their least favorite candidate. Furthermore, in cases where ties happen, or no candidate receives a majority of votes (when many candidates are running), our current system requires a costly run-off to determine the will of the people. We can fix both issues by switch to Ranked Choice or Score Voting. In Ranked Choice voting, we rank candidate from most favorite to least favorite, and we eliminate the lowest vote-getter one by one until a clear winner occurs. We can do this because if someone's favorite candidate is eliminate, we know who their next favorite is already. Score Voting is kind of like rating each candidate on a 1-5 star scale. Everyone rates every candidate, then we average up all the ratings. Whichever candidate has the highest rating wins. In both cases, we clearly know who is favored by the most voters, and voters may effectively choose multiple candidates (by ranking multiple favorites higher than others, or giving more than one candidate a 5 star rating) which takes out some of the current party-line voting tactics we see. These methods lead to more moderate candidates everyone can agree on, rather than our current system which favors more extreme candidates. Research leans toward Score Voting being the most fair, but Ranked Choice is also ok and was recently approved by voters in Maine. Pennsylvania should be the next state to adopt a more fair voting method.
4. Universal Access to Early Voting. Currently, Pennsylvania's early voting provisions only apply to voters with medical conditions or those on active duty in the military. You have to apply for a ballot and be approved. The restriction should be removed, and all eligible voters that request a mail ballot should receive one.
5. State/National Voting Holiday. Election day should be declared a holiday. All non-essential/non-emergency workers should receive at a minimum a half day off work, if not a full day, the idea being to allow lots of time for citizens to meet up, discuss the issues, and actually go vote. Currently, many people leave the long voting lines because they need to get back to work, for example. Pennsylvania can declare the day a mandatory holiday for most workers; essential/emergency workers should have the opportunity to vote early by mail. Another option is to extend voting to multiple days (preferably including a weekend day) to ensure maximum voter turn out.
6. Increase Polling Station Numbers. Some polling locations around Pittsburgh saw long lines (90+ minute wait times). This is unacceptable. Allegheny County needs to open more polling locations, with financial/logistical help from Pennsylvania if necessary. I imagine Philadelphia also saw similar issues. We should take pride in democracy and make it very quick and easy to vote.
7. Switch to Verifiable Paper Ballot Trail. Pennsylvania voting machines currently are all electronic and do not produce a paper trail that allows full auditing of the vote count. Pennsylvania should ideally switch to a completely paper ballot, or at least a better electronic voting system. Pennsylvania would need to help counties purchase new equipment, etc.
8. Required Mailers Prior to Election. Pennsylvania should require that each county/district mail simple fliers to every registered voter, reminding them of voting day, their polling place, and providing a sample ballot with information on how to contact the campaign of each candidate for more information. This should be done at least 2 weeks ahead of time, probably 30 days. It was like pulling teeth trying to find my sample ballot on the PA Secretary of State website; that's unacceptable.

Deconstructing Fear Tactics in a Mailer

Today I received the following in the mail:

I'm assuming they mailed everyone registered Green/Libertarian; my wife answered a Democratic door-to-door canvasser the other day and so possibly they marked us as Greens after speaking with her.

Regardless, a few things come to mind after receiving this.

First, someone spent a good chunk of money mailing to Greens and Libertarians. That indicates to me a level of fear, that the 3rd parties may have significantly more support than the media wants to admit. Johnson is doing pretty well, and Stein is about at 5% in the poll they cite, which is good for party building. Obviously I hope she does much better than this, but if she does get 5% of the vote, the Green party immediately qualifies for federal funding next election, and is immediately on the ballot in many states. The Greens had to spend a lot of time money and energy this cycle fighting to get on the ballot, so it would be a huge help for growing the party next election cycle.

Secondly, the reasoning on the back is not very convincing to me. On the left, they cite Obama and Bernie as a "Join the Bandwagon" argument. Which is of course not really an argument.

The real issue though are the 5 points on the right. I'll copy them below in case its hard to read, then add commentary.

1. "Like it or not, we live in a two-party political system. Does that need to change? Maybe, but the two-party system is our reality."

This is completely missing the point on why many people vote third party, and actually encourages me even more to vote Green. We do live in effectively a two-party political system. It does need to change, not "maybe". There is no law, no section of the constitution, that requires that we use the first-past-the-goal-post method of voting or that we only have two parties. I am specifically voting Green because I want to break the two-party system that has been American reality in modern history (note that historically, America has had many parties, and today's modern GOP was actually initially a "protest" third party against the historically-dominant Whig party).

I think the GOP has become exceedingly right wing, and the Democratic party has become too right wing -- albeit more moderate than the GOP, but right wing regardless. Note that I meant right wing in the sense of economic policy here; yes, Democrats don't generally make a big deal about gay marriage, but that's not what I'm talking about. We need a progressive vision for America in all debates and discussions, not just a moderately right wing and a super right wing party. I'm voting Green to have another option that actually represents my views.

So I think this statement not only fails, but is even somewhat antagonistic.

2. There are only two people with a chance to win this election -- Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

This is very likely true, based on polling and historical trends. I don't argue that it is a big uphill climb for third party candidates. What I do argue with is that this statement again implies the two-party system is unchanging. It wouldn't be impossible, depending on the mood of the electorate, for a third party candidate to win. More likely, enough people will vote third party that there is no clear electoral college winner. I don't think anyone has a clear view into who would be president in that scenario; the House would vote on the President, but seeing as so many GOP are anti-Trump, it's entirely possible they'd compromise on Clinton... or more intriguingly, perhaps some other candidate.

This statement also assumes that your only goal is to elect someone that "can win", as if the presidency is the only office that matter. It is definitely important, but Congress also is. Even if Stein or Johnson are unlikely to win -- even in the electoral college loss scenario -- your vote still matters, because a party that gets 5% nationally is guaranteed federal funding and ballot access next election cycle. You can vote for someone you know is likely to lose, because you want to see a party that represents your values grow. I want to see more Green candidates running for office, and that happens if the party gets more funding and ballot access. That doesn't happen if you continue to vote status quo.

This statement wasn't statistically wrong, but leaving out a lot of important details to keep you locked into the idea of a two-party system.

3. Donald Trump is an uncompromising racist and bigot, who says and does incredibly offensive things. He's attacked immigrants, the disabled, veterans, and even said climate change is a "hoax".

4. Hillary Clinton is the most qualified option. She believes everyone should be treated fairly, regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

I think points 3 and 4 have to be looked at together.

I am glad Clinton's official statement believes in fairness. But that statement is easy; Notice it only talks about fairness and not her actual policies. Let's compare Trump and Clinton.

• "Donald Trump attacks immigrants". But, Obama has deported more immigrants under midnight raids than Bush or past presidents. Clinton previously defended deporting immigrants, even children fleeing violence, and is very likely to continue those policies. Her campaign has stated she will not do so as president, but given her past record, one would have to ask if she will actually follow through or is just going after votes.
• "Donald Trump attacks veterans". But Clinton voted for Iraq war, was the architect of Libya, which is now a failing state, and is calling for more involvement in Syria, potentially putting more soldiers at risk and creating more veterans.
• "Donald Trump attacks climate change". But Clinton as Secretary of State pushed for more fracking worldwide, which contributes to environmental pollution and climate change. She could have pushed for clean energy programs if she believed in them, but she didn't. Sure, on paper she believes in climate change, but her actions don't show someone that is very concerned with it.
• While she now believes everyone should be treated fairly, she didn't as recently as 2013, when she finally flipped on gay marriage. Previously, she strongly argued in favor of marriage being a "sacred bond" between a man and a woman only.

The Wikileaks is also exposing many instances of pay-to-play, where Clinton used her clout as Secretary of State to get favorable deals for countries that donated to her. Is that what you mean by being "most qualified", that she knows more world leaders with civil rights violations that regularly donate to her? The story about Clinton from Elizabeth Warren about how Clinton quickly changed her stance on banking laws once she became a Senator and started accepting campaign donations.

In no way am I saying that I support Trump or think he is a better pick than Clinton. My point here is that, despite what they're trying to convince you of, Clinton is not a good pick either if you care about these issues.

Stein and the Greens are the only ones that are proposing a more compassionate immigration policy, diplomacy over weapons and warfare, aggressively combating climate change, and civil rights.

5. A vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson is a vote for Donald Trump. It's not a protest or a statement - it just puts Donald Trump one step closer to appointing Supreme Court justices and controlling our military.

No, a vote for Stein is a vote for Stein and her policies. End of story. That's how voting works; I pick who I want to win. I reject the false two-party narrative that you only vote to stop someone. My vote is absolutely a statement. I don't view it as a protest, because I am voting for the candidate and platform I prefer. If I wanted to protest, I would vote Vermin Supreme.

The scare tactics here with Trump are also pretty strong.

First, Supreme Court. If Trump appoints a strongly conservative candidate, can't Democrats block the nomination as the Republicans have to Obama's appointee? If the Democrats don't have the strength or willpower to stop it, then they are a failing party and it will happen regardless my vote. What I'm more concerned about is that Trump and Clinton will both compromise and pick an exceedingly pro-corporate "moderate" justice that will continue to uphold legal concepts like "corporations are people" that have allowed unlimited money to flow into politics. Obama's pick Merrick Garland is in this mold; prior to appointment by Obama, many Republicans had praised him as a great Supreme Court justice. Why are you so afraid of Trump appointing when Republican-leaning justices when Obama has done so and Clinton will likely do so as well? Also, keep in mind that Supreme Court is not the end-all; for cases important enough, we can overturn the Supreme Court with a constitutional amendment. If our representatives are not bold enough to support a national referendum on a constitutional amendment, then again, they have failed us as leaders and my vote for them wouldn't matter. Constitutional amendments were pretty common throughout American history until the most recent generation; it's time to change that. And via Article V of the constitution, we can get amendments without congressional support if necessary. I have faith in our citizens and our system.

Trump controlling the military is a bit of a scary thought, but consider this: much of the actual day to day decisions are handled by generals of the branches. Trump is, as far as we can trust him to not flip-flop, rather isolationist; he has advocated pulling out of the middle east and stopping more wars. Clinton meanwhile supported the Iraq invasion, the overthrow of Libya, and now wants to step up warfare actions in Syria. She's also blaming the Russians every time emails come out about her, which antagonizes them. Both of them could mean extended conflict. Again, the sensible choice is Stein and the Greens, which emphasizes humanitarian aid and the end of weapons sales to all sides of the conflict, to be enforced by embargoes and sanctions against any country arming any side of the conflict. The idea is without the flow of weapons feeding conflict, all sides would be more willing to negotiate diplomatically. Sanctions and embargoes got Iran to the negotiating table, so why wouldn't it work in Syria?

Overall, I find this mailer ridiculous. Stein and the Green party are the clear choice for this election.

Democratic Party Corruption and Unfair Tactics

There is mounting evidence that the Democratic Party of today, and its de facto leader Hillary Clinton, is overrun with corporate influence and greed, and nothing like the Democratic Party that many are still loyal to. The Democratic National Convention has been an amazing farce; while they've tried to put on a show that makes the DNC appear unified and positive, there is a deep amount of cynicism and division behind the scenes that rivals the Republican convention.

From Wikileaks and other sources, we have learned the following:

1. The DNC, in violation of its own rules, worked behind the scenes to form a narrative against Bernie Sanders in the media, implicitly supporting Clinton. Other emails show DNC had "infiltrated" Bernie's campaign and effectively spied on their own candidate, as well as maintained close ties to the media and relied on the media to disseminate their own fabricated stories. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has stepped down as DNC chair, which is an implict admission of guilt or at least incompetence. DWS was then immediately made honorary chair of Clinton's campaign as a reward -- no apology or other penalty required. Considering the appointment, one can assume Clinton's campaign was complicit and approved of such actions. The replacement chairwoman was also implicated in the leaked emails as having an anti-Bernie bias.
2. The DNC sold access to high level politicians to top donors. Effectively, donors that paid more were able to spend time with the president and other politicians like Hillary Clinton. The quote from the article that gets me is at the end: "John Cordisco, the chairman of the Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Democratic Committee, said that as long as fundraising is an element of the political process, these kinds of transactions will also be present." This is again essentially an admission of guilt, and was meant to be a defense of the practice. Hey, we've been doing it this way for a long time, why stop now? The reason is, money alone should not influence policy. The rich should not have more sway in our system simply because they can throw money around as political donations.
3. The Clinton Foundation, a non profit, appears to have been used to channel money to various State Department officials while Clinton was Secretary of State. It's entirely possible these alleged actions were a huge conflict of interest (ethics violation), or even illegal money laundering, but no publicly known investigation or indictment has occurred yet to my knowledge. Aside from money being sent to various people through the foundation in fishy ways, it is well known and confirmed that some large donors to the Clinton Foundation were later appointed to political positions despite not having any experience or expertise in the subject; the best example is a big donor that was appointed to an important influential intelligence board shortly after a large donation, despite having no national security expertise or experience. The donor resigned when questions were asked. This seems to be a clear example of political favors for money.
4. As Hillary Clinton's campaign hit Bernie hard for not helping "down-ticket candidates" (which he did end up helping quite a few progressive candidates that won their primaries, more pending), Clinton campaign used a funding loophole to channel money to the campaign through state party donations. This allowed Clinton's campaign to raise much more money than typically allowed by federal election law, which left almost no money for state parties or down-ticket candidates. This also happened early in the primary; note that the DNC did not offer to make a similar funding agreement with the Sanders campaign.
5. Bernie delegates were stripped of their credentials (particularly for displaying Bernie signs, or protest signs such as anti-TPP after the nomination vote) and prevented from being seated for the nomination floor vote, in an effort to make the party look unified and minimize protests. Nina Turner, a long time surrogate for Bernie Sanders, was asked to officially nominate Sanders. Last minute, Turner was turned away from the stage and had her credentials revoked, reportedly because Turner refused to endorse Clinton.
6. Clinton delegates (very likely on their own, not necessarily endorsed by Clinton campaign) were rude and possibly committed several instances of assault on Bernie delegates. While not a specific transgression of Clinton or the DNC, this sort of behavior by Clinton delegates is indicative of the tone set at the convention: Bernie delegates were never welcome from the beginning.
7. Bernie delegates then walked out of the convention in protest, leaving a large amount of empty seats. The DNC then began hiring paid actors to come in and pretend to be Bernie delegates, to fill chairs and make the party seem unified.
8. Meanwhile, outside the DNC, protests occurred. Peaceful protesters were arrested and pepper sprayed. Some protesters staged a sit in of the media room, and were locked in by police. Most media ignored the protests and did not cover. Twitter and Periscope were used to spread information. Jill Stein was there leading several protests and marches.

Remember that none of this means that I support Trump or the Republican Party. The GOP is at least as bad as the Democrats for many of the same reasons. But that is exactly the problem -- they are both corrupt parties, focused more on pleasing their rich corporate donors than doing good.

It's time we say goodbye to both major parties. I will be voting Green. I hope you will join me, but if you disagree with Green policy, I hope you will consider another party like the Libertarians. Do not give the major parties your vote. They do not deserve it.

Don't let anyone convince you a third party vote is a "wasted" vote. Truly, the only wasted vote is a vote cast for someone you do not believe in. I don't believe in Trump or Clinton. I will vote my conscience for the candidate that I believe will do the most good. I believe Jill Stein and the Green party are the best option to fight corporate greed and restore a functional democracy.

But more than this election, we need to focus on long term efforts. We need a better more democratic campaign and electoral system. To do this, we need money out of politics (join PA United to Amend, or a similar organization in your state, to push for a constitutional amendment at the state level!), and to promote better voting methods such as Score Voting or Ranked Voting. We need to mobilize and run for local office. If we all run for local office over the next few years, then we win from the grassroots up.