45 minutes to go
I slacked off a bit today and now only have 45 minutes before I’m kicked out of work, thereby severing my internet connection. I looked for some news that I hope everyone hadn’t already found and decided there wasn’t anything exciting enough for here today. Instead, I’ll be treading the grounds of ‘livejournal, myspace, facebook whoring’ by posting about my presidental pick for 2008.
There are currently 6 candidates for the democratic nomination for president, among them is Barack Obama. He’s relatively young, very outspoken and not Hilary Clinton. I’ve read over several of his speeches after signing up at my.barackobama.com. He’s very well spoken, and if its not him, he has several great speech writers working for him.
Personally, I’d love to be able to support a libertarian candidate, but with our current electoral college voting system, there’s no sane person who would waste their vote on a 3rd candidate.
While I was in college I created a voting system that used the Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) system. Cornell didn’t often have more than 1 candidate, but doing the research learning how IRV works enlightened me to a system that the US needs. If you want to have a wide candidate base, with people unafraid of wasting their vote and creating a Gore/Bush or Kerry/Bush disaster, then you need a system that lets people have a ‘back-up’ option. IRV allows you to rank all the candidates so everyone is your back up, even the people you hate you can order from least to most hated on the ballot. This would also make sure people read the entire ballot before voting and no careless 1/2 hole punch ballots could be cast.
In short, I’m voting for Barack Obama. I’m also waiting for the day when our country fixes it electoral system.
You’re absolutely right. In these big-field races, you already see people making calculations. “I like Dennis Kucinich for his uncompromising anti-war position,” such a person will say, “but I don’t think he can win.” Candidates get caught in vicious circles of expectations/polls, and whoever finishes first in the early states, no matter who low the plurality, will get all the media attention.
Iowa caucuses already have an IRV-type process, where people go to their next choice if their first choice doesn’t reach the threshold of support required to elect delegates. It would be easy to extend that to allow everyone to cast an IRV ballot and find out who the majority winner is when people vote freely for whom they like. Check out http://www.fairvote.org/irv to find out how to get involved in promoting reform.