Libertarian Eric Schansberg made a bit of a ripple in a poll by Louisville Courier Journal columnist Dale Moss, receiving 12% of the vote as a “write in”, or 72 of 656 respondents. The poll is unscientific and libertarians tend to be disproportionately represented online, so I suspect his support among the general public is somewhat less. Still, in a race between Baron Hill and Mike Sodrel that is likely to be extremely close, the Schansberg is likely to be a factor.
I predict both Sodrel and Hill will try to keep Schansberg out of any debates, but the greater his support is or is perceived to be, the more care they will have to take in order to avoid alienating those sympathetic to Schansberg who might, nevertheless, vote for Hill or Sodrel.
Again, another good reason for instant run-off. Vote for your first choice, second choice, so on. Add up all the first choice votes, drop the lowest scoring if no one has over 50%, take the second choice vote for all those who voted for the dropped one, repeat.
It pretty much requires electronic voting, but with a proper paper trail that shouldn’t be an issue.
Jason,
IRV is susceptible to the “favorite betrayal” voting tactic. That is, betray your favorite candidate by ranking him or her lower than your sincere preference. This is exactly the same problem that Nader voters faced in 2000 and 2004.
Thanks to Arrow’s Theorem, no voting method used to choose between more than two choices is perfect. While IRV is better than most, it pays to understand its strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes the Approval method (already in wide use to elect school boards) or a Condorcet method is better.
Even with only two candidates, we still hear about choosing the lesser of two evils.
I believe the solution is to have as many parties and as many candidates on the ballot as wish to run, thereby giving the voters the best opportunity to find a candidate that best represents them.
Exactly, Mike.
Branden, I’ve seen Arrow’s Theorem too, and I agree that every system that has more than two options has the risk of unintended results. I think we can all agree that the current way is about the worst for more than 2 candidates, and that we should change to something that does better and the people can understand.
Until we do this, we’ll remain a two-party system and people will just be voting against the person they can’t stand rather than voting for the person they would like to see in office.
Ah, goody, a discussion of election methods.
Mike Kole, what you say is absolutely true — what is interesting, though, is that the two-party system is, according to voting theory, a consequence of the plurality voting method. This finding is known as Duverger’s Law.
This doesn’t mean that the current two -party system isn’t interested in preserving the current voting method; they very well may be. Or at, least, the Republicans may be, for the moment, because the nature of the internal ideological conflicts in the Democratic Party work to Republicans’ advantage.
From where I sit, the Libertarian Party can claim much credit for helping to drive wedges between the parts of the Democratic Party’s historical coalitions over the past 25 years or so. The LP, as far as I can tell, has neither sought to do with the Republicans, or managed to do so accidentally — though it is possible, as we’ve seen with the Cato Institute and Lew Rockwell, that the big-government, foreign-interventionist, and anti-civil liberties excesses of unalloyed Republican government over the past four years is teaching Libertarians about the prudence of being Republican fellow travelers.
Should the Democrats get better at exploiting Republicans’ wedge issues, or should the Republicans manage to blunder into an internal schism on their own initiative, the roles may reverse.
For the time being, however, I think voting method reform is a friendly issue for the Libertarian Party, and for Democrats outside of the party apparatus.
Branden- There will always be game theory to be played out in elections. Even if there is only one party or candidate on the ballot, there is still the choice of whether or not to cast a ballot. It’s funny that those who object to true multi-party systems do so on the basis of coalition government. In fact, per Duverger, we have coalition government in the US- it’s just converged under two parties in most states.
Funny enough, I’ve been most interested in driving the LP wedge in the Indiana Republicans. I’ve spent a lot of energy pointing out to fiscal conservatives how Republicans are nothing of the sort, showing the size of the Bush Admin’s discretionary spending, etc. I’m hoping tht making such a case here will boost my campaign in November.
I think the internal conflicts within the GOP are coming to a head. When your party is in power and you aren’t getting what you want, you start to question everything. There is great impatience among the fiscal conservatives and small government Rs, who have watched social conservatives and big government Rs get their way while they get pushed aside. It’s a function of being in power, in my estimation. There hasn’t been a one-party domination like this at the Federal level in most folks’ lifetimes.
Libertarians like me form the welcoming committee standing ready at the escape hatch.
What you observe about the LP generally rings true enough because most Libertarians are most interested in Federal issues. The LPIN is distinct from many other state affiliates in that we focus on state and local issues, because we are state and local LP affiliates.
Canada has first past the post voting, and yet four parties have a presence in parliament (Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats and the Bloc). Over the course of the last hundred years other parties have had substantial followings and held a number of ridings, e.g. Social Credit, Reform (which is essentially the present Conservative Party, the old Progressive Conservatives).
The theme of many of these parties (at one time or another all of the parties except the Liberals) is that they had a regional stronghold, most obviously seen in the Bloc which exists only in Quebec. A touch of regionalism is a way to break the tendency of first past the post systems to contract to two party systems.
Southerners gave regionalism in the US a bad name. But people should notice that they longer have to play that card in the form of a Regional party because they are so dominant now in one of the two major parties. Nixon captured the White House on the backs of a Southern Strategy and in the end the South took over his party. Today’s Republican Party has the stink of pork run wild, a whiff of the South’s peculiar form of religion and taste for foreign adventure that must have Homer Capehart turning in his grave. (Not mind you that I would have agreed with much of Senator Capehart’s interesting views on things.)
Midwesterners long led the Congressional Republican caucus, but when the Republicans gained the majority in Washington, the long line of midwesterners (Dennis Hastert excepted) seemed to vanish, replaced by a Georgian in the Speaker’s chair and senate majority leaders from Mississippi and Tennessee. For a number of years Lugar was kept from chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee by Jesse Helms. Many of these southerners (excluding possibly Gingrich back in ’94) seem to regard having power as so much opportunity for pork.
The Indiana Republican Party seems to have adopted this style of governing whole heartedly. The sale of the Toll Road was all about pork (and so said St. Sen. Meeks before voting for it with most of the rest of them).
I wonder if there may be an opportunity for a little headway in Indiana for LPIN local and congressional candidates in taking a regional approach in pointing out how alien the Southern Republican agenda has been to what were regarded as virtues by midwestern conservatives. Mike highlights the small government, fiscal responsibility aspect. Some of what were Midwestern virtues seem to me to sit very comfortably with the Libertarians, an aversion to foreign adventures, small government and tight budgets.
Election predictions are always a dangerous game, but I’m a reckless guy so I’ll thrown in my own.
I think in Indiana’s 9th, Schansberg is going to parasitize from Republicans much more than he will from Democrats, and this could put Baron Hill back into Congress.
I think this is because disaffected Republicans will either not show up to the polls, or will vote for the Libertarian as a protest vote. Schansberg may command some fully sincere support as well, of course, as Mike Kole noted.
On the other hand, the Democrats this year are fired up and enthusiastic. I think anybody who was ever likely to vote Democratic is going to show up and do so this year. It’s more than just Bush fatigue; that’s only enough to motivate Democratic Party faithful, which as we’ve seen time and again, is seldom enough to carry an election.
But this year, everybody who hasn’t spent the past 6 years sniffing neocon glue can smell the Republican blood in the water, and I think that will drive historically disaffected liberals and others on the Left to the polls to finish the job.
In a few months, we’ll find out, and you can all laugh at me if I’m wrong. :)
On Schansberg, I’m not so sure that his draw will primarily be from disaffected Republicans.
Yes, he is a professor of economics, and yes, the LPIN has focused on the fiscal side as a matter of strategy. However, he is running for Congress, and in such a run, the social issues come far more into play than in a run for, say, County Commissioner, which is almost purely fiscal.
There are disaffected Democrats, dissatisfied with their party’s jello position on the war, in particular. But there are also other issues federal Libertarian candidates talk about, such as the war on drugs, national ID cards, wiretapping, etc., that Congressional Democratic candidates tend to stay as far away from as possible, and yet are meaningful issues to a good portion of the Democratic base. I expect that Schansberg is talking about these issues, too.
What I encounter on the statewide trail is that Dems are excited, but less about what Democratic candidates are promoting, and more about the Republican majorities beginning to have run their course- as Branden pointed to above.
Is Baron Hill giving them the position Dems want on the war, or is John Mellencamp fairly representative of Dems’ take on Hill and the war? Is it enough to merely sense that a somewhat conservative D wins and gives another seat to the team in blue, or is it important to vote for a candidate that holds a position that coincides with the voter’s belief? I can’t predict that. It’s the age-old political question of idealism vs. realism. But I think the outcome will answer that question pretty well.