Hi.
This is just a quick post to direct all to recent blog posts on the best electoral reform site bar none:
http://www.fairvote.org/blog/
t.tc
When elections are close the most important votes are always the ones that weren't counted and that includes especially all the votes that went to neither of the neck and neck runners, but to other candidates. Which of the top two would they have voted for?
Many folk are seeing the light in the two very tight Senate races. How would Instant Runoff Voting have made a difference? Then there are the controversial high profile appointments in Illinois and New York!
The editor of Denver Forgotten Communities Examiner says, "Instant-runoff voting has been tried in municipalities in the United States. It should be tried in statewide elections. The place to start would be in elections for U.S. Senate vacancies. Take the power away from the Governor to make an appointment and let the people vote in a single election with an instant runoff. We will end up with better senators." You can visit:
http://www.examiner.com/x-1173-Denver-Forgotten-Communities-Examiner~y2009m1d6-We-will-have-better-senators-with-instant-runoff-voting
to find out why he has come around to this opinion.
I have started a group: Obama Supporters for Instant Runoff Voting in Tompkins County, NY. Please feel welcome to visit us, help us, and see how we go about working on it locally.
I have today heard and read a great deal about President Elect Obama's recent appointments to his National Security team. Huge concerns over Blair have surfaced. I want to recommend a post in the following location when you click on "obamabloggerforum" and then "What is Change?":
http://www.obamablogger.org/
The quote that anyone considering this nomination should understand and appreciate is in there and I include it here. It pertains to everything that Blair will need to revise in his repertoire if he should attain to more power than advisory influence in the administration. In any formal or informal "agreement" with historical adversaries.....
"for everyone's sake, do not bind the agreement, when it comes, with military aid grants for grease: we cannot throw these arsenals into the hands of mortal opponents as a way of waging peace. Does not compute."
Thanks to devens (ObamaDoug) for his articulate and articulated insights.
My first post is here to say that I am pleased and proud to be involved in the most exciting turn-over in government in my lifetime. Thank-you for opening this site to us all and let's make the most of it.
I recently attended a group meeting in Ithaca, New York to find out how we can all help to advance the best interests of this country by helping our new president elect. I want to summarize my impressions of that meeting here in a future post, but one thing that struck me was the need for ideas to percolate to the top right away if they have merit. The mechanisms for this are still vague and in the process of being worked out I'm sure. Still, in order for Barack's wish for input and ideas from the grassroots to get to him as he hits the ground running, it occured to me that we might find a way to "digg" creative bloggers that we want to see getting heard in order to push their ideas to the top of the heap and that we might want to find the way to do this as soon as possible. (I guess this might be a hint to the webmaster.) This would be just one of many ways to promote participants and hope to give them influence, but it would would combine both qualitative and quantitative evaluation of suggestions and I think that that combination is a dynamite way to feed the forum from way down here among the hard working ants and good grubs. (grassroots, get it...) More later.
