Would you support Alternative voting?

[HUGGY]

Former Governor of Minnesota, Jessie Ventura, the nation's highest ranking independent office holder in memory, spoke with Glenn Beck about Alternative voting. Here is how Wiki explains it:

Instant runoff voting (IRV) is the American English term for a voting system in which voters rank candidates in order of preference, most commonly in single-winner elections. Indeed, IRV can be considered a special case of single transferable vote for the case where there is a single position to be filled. If no candidate is the first preference of a majority of voters, the candidate with the fewest number of first preference rankings is eliminated and that candidate's ballots are redistributed at full value to the remaining candidates according to the next ranking on each ballot. This process is repeated until one candidate obtains a majority of votes among candidates not eliminated. The term instant runoff is used because the method is said to simulate a series of runoff elections tallied in rounds, as in an exhaustive ballot election.[1] In the contingent vote form of IRV, all but the top vote-getters are eliminated before the instant runoff.

Instant runoff voting is sometimes referred to as alternative voting, or the Alternative Vote (AV) in the United Kingdom; the preferential ballot, or preferential voting, in Canada and Australia; and ranked choice voting in the United States. It is also, more rarely, called Ware's method, after its inventor W. R. Ware.

As it was explained on Beck if you voted for Jessie Ventura for President, and he did not have enough votes, you could have recorded a second choice like for example Tom Hanks. After the elimination of the Ventura candidacy your vote would go to Hanks. If Hanks failed your vote could go elsewhere.

As an independent I heartily endorse Alternative Voting. What do you think?

Voting with the exception of the theft of same by gaming the electronic voting machines is not the problem. It is not now nor ever was. Reason being that all our elected officials and repreesentatives must run for re-election and can be removed in a civil and orderly fashion. The problem is and always has been the giant gorilla in the room which is the unbalanced access that lobbiests have to manipulate our democacy with many billions of dollars in every and especially presidential election cycles and major legislation that effects our lives vs profit of multi national corporations. The tweeking of the form will not change the outcome when all that get elected get corrupted. The insidious preasure to conform to the will of the insider money is backed up with threats and action. If they need examples made they provide them. Check out Paul Wellstone's and Jon Jon's plane crash. John Kennedy's assasination.. There are numerous examples... The anthrax letters.... on and on. These people play hard ball. I'm not trying to go off on some stupid conspiracy ...just pointing out that wolves, jackals and hyenas ...do what they do. The only real and serious way to free our government from the tentacles of these vermin is to chop them off literally, slit thier throats and bleed them out. Nothing short of that will ever change a goddamn thing. You can dance a little jig and change a handfull of election outcomes and the same billions will be there waiting for whomever you chose.

Wow, you had held me close up until you started on Wellstone, Jon Jon's plane and anthrax. I am new to USMessageBoard, so I don't know what threads you might have posted expressing these ideas. Don't apologize for conspiracy theory or the reality of hard-ball politics. I don't think any of us really understand all the important aspects of how politics works in this country.

The old TV show "Twilight Zone" comes to mind. Was it all the creative imagination of Serling and other writers, or were we given a glimpse "realities" that only some have the ability to understand. Do we simply write these people off as crackpots, or are they connected in someway to some 'whole soul' or 'universal truth.' A college professor of mine once advised his students, "Before looking into the paranormal for answers thoroughly investigate all options of any given question in the here and now that we all understand."

I think that is a good point, and worthy of a thread on one of these quieter lists like "Media" or something by YOU. Strange, now I've got the momentary feeling like that line from the TV commercial in the movie Ghostbusters, "We're ready to believe you." Sorry, it's just me. I am not smoking anything, but I am laughing at myself. I get a little squirrely with some subjects - I am sincere.

If you start a thread, let me know. I have an open mind, and will approach whatever you have to say with my professor's advice "to question in the here and now."

Honestly...I am not prone to whine about conspiracies. The dark side of these shapings of the political landscape is rare. Huge bags of money usually do the trick. There are plenty of tin foil hats around here. Me not so much. I just stick to what I know for sure before I spout off. Being a pilot stuff like the pentagon attack cannot go unchallanged only just because a 160 foot wide airplane cannot fit in a a20 foot wide hole. The "whys" shit happens...I don't know or care so much. It is above my pay grade until I would have a clean shot..and then I wouldn't get to enjoy the fruit. Its easier on a personal level to just randomly point out what I cannot swallow. I don't eat bugs either

 

[Flopper]

It's an interesting idea if we had a strong 3 party.

 

[Rick]

This is fascinating. But people with good ideas dont make it anywhere nowadays.

 

[Stainmaster]

It looks like so far, no one is adamantly against the idea of alternative voting. A good point was made about a possible Constitutional issue. I did not quite understand the idea about a ballot with first choice, JFK, second choice Nixon, and goodbye LBJ. Why poor LBJ?

I'm new, and no I do not have my shirt on in my avatar because it is the only picture I have of myself on the Internet, but this is about the closest thing I have seen to agreement in a thread anywhere.

As an independent voter, I very much wanted to vote for Ralph Nader for one reason, his background in consumerism would have been a protest vote about the quality of American product design, development, and guarantee. Damn, we were the best in the world at this. Just today, the guy at Office Depot told me I got pretty good use out of my American made computer chair because it lasted 3 years! A $200 desk chair lasts 3 years! Now it has to be junked because it costs more to replace a faulty mechanism that it does to by a new chair! I think we have totally lost this important battle of product quality.

In the end the choice would was McCain or Obama. I could not throw away my vote with health care on the table, an issue that touchs my family very personally. We Americans are incredibly stupid. We lead the way with new ideas, and then forget everything we have learned.

 

[Stainmaster]

It's an interesting idea if we had a strong 3 party.

With or without a third party, I think America could do well with alternative voting. It seems like a good way to get a better reading on the pulse of voters. What if in 2008 voters could vote for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? I suspect the end result would have been the same, but we could have learned some interesting things. You would think the Democratic Party would be happy to avoid a split.