Voters guide! Electoral reform newsletter

March news on electoral reform
Voters guide! Irish voting in Illinois! San Francisco & Vermont wins!

The Midwest Democracy Center is a non-profit, membership advocacy 
group that works to make our governments more democratic and 
representative. 

Our main goal is to revive cumulative voting for the Illinois House 
of Representatives (used from 1870 ? 1980) so that political 
minorities will have some representation. Electing three people from 
one big district instead of three people each elected from their own 
smaller district ensures that all voters have someone who represents 
their views, wherever they happen to live, and lessens the number of 
one-party fiefdoms.

Our other goal is to use instant runoff voting for single-winner 
elections (like governor) to end spoiler candidacies and ensure the 
majority gets to pick the winner. 

Our website is www.midwestdemocracy.org and our telephone number is 
312.587.7060. We encourage your participation and membership (join 
online)!

VOTERS' GUIDE ONLINE FOR ILLINOIS PRIMARY

The Illinois primary is Tuesday and we've asked all the candidates 
for state office where they stand on our issues. On our website at 
www.midwestdemocracy.org you can find out who supports cumulative 
voting and instant runoff voting.

We know there are candidates who favor our issues but did not return 
our survey. We felt that it wouldn't be fair to include those 
candidates in this voters' guide, and we also felt it wouldn't be 
fair to follow up with phone calls to some campaigns and not to 
others. Every campaign got a letter through the mail sent to the 
address listed with the State Board of Elections. If you represent a 
campaign that supports these issues, please email our volunteer 
webmaster Kevin O'Malley at kevomalley@Juno.com and he will put you 
on the website.

Without further ado, on to the voters' guide!

Here are the candidates who responded to our survey that FAVOR a 
return to cumulative voting for the Illinois House of Representatives:

Governor	Corrine Wood	(R) 
Lt. Gov.	Joyce Washington	(D)
A-G	 	Joe Birkett	(R) 
8th Senate 	Ira Silverstein	(D)
18th Senate 	Mary Nolan	(D)
27th Senate 	Michael Minton	(D)
29th Senate 	Chris Cohen	(D)
29th Senate 	Susan Garrett	(D)
51st Senate 	Frank Watson	(R) 
55th Senate 	Dale A. Righter	(R) 
58th Senate 	Charles Goforth	(D)
5th Rep. 	Andrew Boron	(D)
5th Rep. 	Leslie Sturino	(D)
6th Rep. 	Keith Harris	(D)
8th Rep. 	Glenn Harris	(R) 
12th Rep. 	Sara Feigenholtz	(D)
17th Rep. 	Michael Ian Bender	(D)
17th Rep. 	Pat Hughes	(D)
21st Rep. 	Randy Kantner	(R) 
25th Rep. 	Barbara Flynn Currie	(D)
30th Rep. 	Richard F. Kelly	(D)
33rd Rep. 	Herman Baker, Jr.	(D)
38th Rep. 	Robin Kelly	(D)
42nd Rep. 	Terry Tyson 	(R) 
50th Rep. 	Wade Joyner	(R) 
55th Rep. 	Steve Bruesewitz	(D)
61st Rep. 	Timothy Osmond	(R) 
64th Rep. 	Rosemary Kurtz	(R) 
68th Rep. 	Dave Winters	(R) 
71st Rep.  - only unicameral	Mike Boland	(D)
79th Rep. 	J. Philip Novak	(D)
79th Rep. 	James H. Taylor, Sr.	(D)
79th Rep. 	Robert Ryan, Jr.	(D)
103rd Rep. 	Laurel Prussing	(D)
104th Rep. 	Charlie Mattis	(D)
106th Rep. 	John Martin	(R) 
107th Rep. 	John Cavaletto	(R) 
110th Rep. 	Ronald H. Hunt	(R) 
110th Rep. 	Chapin Rose	(R) 
114th Rep. 	Wyvetter Younge	(D)

These are the candidates who FAVOR implementing instant runoff voting:

Lt. Gov. 	Joyce Washington	(D)
A-G	 	Joe Birkett	(R)
18th Senate 	Mary Nolan	(D)
27th Senate 	Michael Minton	(D)
29th Senate 	Susan Garrett	(D)
51st Senate 	Frank Watson	(R)
58th Senate 	Charles Goforth	(D)
5th Rep. 	Andrew Boron	(D)
5th Rep. 	Leslie Sturino	(D)
6th Rep. 	Keith Harris	(D)
8th Rep. 	Glenn Harris	(R)
12th Rep. 	Sara Feigenholtz	(D)
16th Rep. 	Lou Lang	(D)
17th Rep. 	Michael Ian Bender	(D)
17th Rep. 	Pat Hughes	(D)
21st Rep. 	Randy Kantner	(R)
25th Rep. 	Barbara Flynn Currie	(D)
30th Rep.  	Richard F. Kelly	(D)
33rd Rep.  	Herman Baker, Jr.	(D)
38th Rep. 	Kelly Robin	(D)
42nd Rep. 	Terry Tyson	(D)
50th Rep. 	Wade Joyner	(R)
55th Rep. 	Steve Bruesewitz	(D)
64th Rep. 	Rosemary Kurtz	(R)
68th Rep. 	Dave Winters	(R)
71st Rep. 	Mike Boland	(D)
79th Rep. 	James H. Taylor, Sr. 	(D)
79th Rep. 	Robert Ryan, Jr.	(D)
89th Rep. 	Terrence Ingram	(R)
92nd Rep. 	Ricca Slone	(D)
94th Rep. 	Jon E. Mummert	(D)
103rd Rep. 	Laurel Prussing	(D)
104th Rep. 	Charlie Mattis	(D)
106th Rep. 	John Martin	(R)
107th Rep.  	John Caveletto	(R)
110th Rep. 	Ronald H. Hunt	(R)

IRISH VOTING FOR ILLINOIS
(St. Patrick's Day parade this weekend)

Join us Saturday at noon at Jackson and Columbus at the St. Patrick's 
Day Parade as we promote Irish voting in Illinois. 

The Irish use instant runoff voting to pick their president, and we 
want to use it in our primary elections. We want to rank our 
candidates (1, 2, 3) instead of just voting for one, so that in a 
three-candidate race, we'll know that the winner will have the 
broadest amount of support. 

Following this newsletter is a column that appeared in Thursday's 
Daily Herald by Burt Constable, who now has earned the spot 
as `smartest columnist in Chicagoland' that explains why instant 
runoff voting would be such a good reform for Illinois primaries.

LOBBY FOR THE REST OF THE SPRING SESSION WITH US

We'll be lobbying the Illinois General Assembly for the rest of the 
spring session ? starting the day after the Tuesday March 19th 
primary. We'll be pushing our bills on cumulative voting (HJRCA 4 and 
SJR 43) as well as our bill on instant runoff voting (SB 1789). 

Call your state representatives and tell them to support those bills. 
Go to www.legis.state.il.us for details on the General Assembly. 

SAN FRANCISCO AND VERMONT VICTORIES

On March 5th, voters in San Francisco implemented instant runoff 
voting! The next mayoral election of San Francisco to replace Willie 
Brown will use instant runoff voting ? and the election this November 
may use IRV (if the city can get ready in time for preferential 
ballots).

On the same day, voters in 51 Vermont cities passed a non-binding 
referendum that called on the legislature to pass instant runoff 
voting to elect the governor.

We've got momentum now ? check out www.improvetherunoff.com for the 
San Francisco story and www.FairVoteVermont.org for the Vermont angle.

And see www.fairvote.org for details on the whole thing.

CHECK OUT THE NEW YORKER THIS MONDAY FOR AN IRV ARTICLE

Here's a scoop: this Monday's edition of the New Yorker will feature 
on article by editor Hendrick Hertzberg on instant runoff voting. How 
do we know? We've got contacts. . . .

INTERNSHIPS AT THE MIDWEST DEMOCRACY CENTER

Interns are always welcome to work with the Center. Interns can be on-
site in the office or predominantly on campus. Research, advocacy, 
lobbying and media work are all needed. To inquire about potential 
internships, please email Dan Johnson-Weinberger at djw@fairvote.org. 
The internships are unpaid, although travel expenses are reimbursed 
(so at least you don't lose money on the deal). 

BURT CONSTABLE COLUMN IN THE DAILY HERALD ON IRISH VOTING

http://www.dailyherald.com/oped/col_constable.asp

Just because majority of voters hate you, it doesn't mean you can't 
win

Posted on March 14, 2002 

By Burt Constable

Democrats could go to the polls Tuesday and elect a governor 
candidate the overwhelming majority of party members didn't support. 
The GOP could hand the nomination to a gubernatorial candidate most 
Republicans shunned. Consider these possible scenarios:

Buoyed by a turnout of abortion rights advocates, Corinne Wood takes 
34 percent of Tuesday's Republican primary vote to upset Jim Ryan and 
Pat O'Malley, who each capture 33 percent of the vote. This would 
mean the abortion rights candidate wins even though two out of every 
three Republicans cast votes against her.

Meanwhile, Paul Vallas captures 34 percent of the Democratic vote to 
win the nomination even though 66 percent of his party preferred Rod 
Blagojevich or Roland Burris.

The bottom line would be that we enter the general election with two 
candidates who couldn't even win support from 40 percent of their own 
party members, many of whom actually donated money that was used for 
TV commercials blasting the eventual winners.

And we wonder why voter turnout is low.

"I don't think that strengthens our democracy," says John Anderson, 
the popular 10-term Illinois congressman who left the Republican 
Party to wage an invigorating third-party campaign for the White 
House in 1980 as an independent candidate against Jimmy Carter and 
Ronald Reagan. "People aren't turning out. People aren't voting. And 
we need to change that."

For the last decade, Anderson has been a leader in an election reform 
movement that promises to curb attack ads, increase voter turnout and 
ensure that the winning candidates actually garner more than 50 
percent of the vote. Called Instant Runoff Voting, the process won 
approval from voters in San Francisco and Vermont earlier this month.

"We are tremendously heartened by those victories," says Anderson, 
who just celebrated his 80th birthday with a party in his hometown of 
Rockford. A bill before the Illinois Senate, sponsored by Chicago 
Democrat Barack Obama, would establish instant runoff for primary 
elections in Illinois and permit cities to use it to decide mayoral 
contests.

"I think it would be a tremendous boost and encourage a lot of people 
who think voting is a waste of time," Anderson says. "It would 
broaden the debate, bring ideas ... and increase the vitality and 
strength of our democracy."

Under Instant Runoff Voting, voters rank the candidates. If no 
candidate wins the majority of the votes, the candidate who finishes 
last would be eliminated and the second-place votes on those ballots 
would be counted. This continues until one candidate captures more 
than 50 percent of the vote.

In 1992, Americans who voted for Ross Perot essentially "wasted" 
their votes on a third-place candidate. Had the instant runoff system 
been in place in 1992, the nearly 20 million Americans who voted for 
Perot would have seen their second choices counted. Without instant 
runoff, Bill Clinton won the election with 43 percent of the vote.

In 2000, supporters of third-party candidate Ralph Nader faced the 
same dilemma, and George W. Bush won with less than 48 percent of the 
vote.

"With Instant Runoff Voting, the 93,000 Florida residents who voted 
for Nader, of which I was one, would not have had to wait 36 days for 
a Supreme Court decision to tell us who won," quips Anderson, who 
teaches classes in the electoral process and constitutional law at 
Nova Southeastern University Law School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

"This is the time to ask for Instant Runoff Voting," notes Rob 
Richie, executive director of The Center for Voting & Democracy, a 
nonpartisan, not-for-profit agency that advocates election reform. As 
states update and reform the election machinery, the idea of touch-
screen computer voting, which reduces errors and makes Instant Runoff 
Voting ridiculously easy, is gaining momentum. For more information 
on Instant Runoff Voting, check out the Web site www.fairvote.org.

"The idea is totally sound. It really makes a reality out of the 
notion a candidate should be elected by a majority," says Anderson, 
who captured 6.6 percent of the vote in 1980 but clearly lost votes 
from supporters who didn't want to "waste" their vote.

"I don't think I would have affected the outcome really," Anderson 
says when asked how he would have fared with Instant Runoff 
Voting. "But it would have given some people the satisfaction of 
voting for the candidate they thought was best for the job."


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Midwest Democracy Center
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