| Tomorrow voters in Saint Paul face a tough choice. They'll be asked to weigh in on a new method of voting. On the ballot will be the Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) ballot measure.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, IRV, or Ranked Choice Voting, allows voters to rank candidates on the ballot according to their preferences.
It's an exercise I'm sure many of you do on a daily basis. I know I've done it before. It happens nearly every weekend when a group of friends of mine want to go see a movie. We huddle together and list in order the movies we'd individually prefer to see that night.
More after the jump: |
| This weekend I chose Zombieland, Where The Wild Things Are, and Whip It, in that order. One of my other friends chose, Where the Wild Things Are, Paranormal Activity, and Michael Jackson's This Is It. While another friend chose, Saw VI, Where the Wild Things Are, and was open to suggestions on the final choice.
I think it's pretty easy to guess what movie we went to see right? We saw Where the Wild Things Are.
Now I understand that opponents of IRV will call my example simplistic. They'll throw out all the fear, uncertainty and doubt they can muster. They'll claim that voters will become disenfranchised, and that their voices won't be heard. They'll even claim that there are those in our society that are too uneducated, too simple minded, too easily confused to figure out something as complex as IRV.
But don't believe them for one second.
Just remember one of President Clinton's political rules:
If one [side] is trying to scare you, and the other one is trying to make you think, if one [side's] appealing to your fears, and the other one's appealing to your hopes. You better vote for [those] who wants you to think and hope.
IRV is about hope. It's about removing the fear that the candidate you wish you could vote for will be a spoiler. It's about all those people that refuse to participate because they know their candidate just won't win due to the two party system. It's about letting you have more say than what the party apparatuses give you each election. It's about giving you more power at the ballot box, not less. It's always been and always will be about changing our politics for the better, by giving more access, by giving more choice.
Change is never easy. But I promise you this, even if every doomsday scenario came true as the opponents suggest, we can always afford the time to overturn it in another ballot initiative in another election. What we cannot afford is to be paralyzed by fear when our democracy is paralyzed by voter apathy.
This is why I'll be voting for Instant Runoff Voting tomorrow. This is why the ballot initiative receives my strongest endorsement. I encourage you to vote for it as well.
And even if one of your friends really wants to see Couples Retreat, rest assured that their second or third choice will probably win out. |
