The fighting over advisory referenda in Cunningham Township is getting more and more vicious:
Two Cunningham Town Board members have called a special town board meeting for 7 p.m. Monday, where the board (which also serves as the Urbana City Council) will consider placing three advisory questions on the Nov. 4 ballot.
The meeting will be in the Urbana City Building, 400 S. Vine St.
The move could wind up pre-empting a special town meeting that had been scheduled for June 30, where two advisory ballot questions were going to be considered by township residents.
And:
"Isn't that really dirty?" Kruse said. "I can't believe they would stoop that low to prevent the people from discussing issues.
"Our meeting should take precedence," he added. "We're going to have to get an attorney. This is really crazy."
But Prussing said the move by the town board is fair and that it is Kruse and others who keep bringing the issues up after being defeated.
"I think they're misusing the township," she said. "I don't want to have to be called into a special meeting every month to talk about the same stupid thing. These meetings take time and energy and money to conduct. If they're making the contention we need discussion, we'll put it on the ballot."
Discuss.
The question on transparency seems to be whether Urbana's WQ has something to hide or if she simply is being uncooperative. Her actions seem to indicate the former, since she has said that there were expenditures that she did not want the public to know about. Interesting how the top-down approach to government seems to be the dominant model (no pun intended) in every level of government and politics, and also interesting how the top-down model fights against grassroots activism.
The IRV question can be viewed as voting preference issue and perhaps as a more fair method particularly supporting grassroots democracy (as I view it). Plurality voting (the present mode) tends to lead to a 2-party system. Emergence of significant minor parties (Greens, Libertarians, "Independents", etc.) causes IRV to have practical significance. In Democrat-dominated Urbana, it is not surprising that those who prefer to maintain the status quo would feel threatened by any un-quoing of the status (which might be bad Latin).
What I find interesting is that the system worked the way that it was supposed to, and now Mr. Kruse wants a do-over, over and over again, until he likes the outcome. I don't think the failure to include these items on the ballot prevent people from discussing them, and people can always note their opposition at the next election when the mayor and others are up for re-election.
A historical perspective on IRV--this system, then known as the Hare System after the person who developed it, was used at the institution that I attended as an undergraduate. As with all voting systems, there are hitches. The strategy used to win was to campaign for #2 due to the way the votes roll over. So the campaign signs usually stated, "Vote Jones for #2." The system did not work very well and was replaced by the voting system used by most of the country.
You can read more about this system in Wikipedia.
Pattsi Petrie
Undergraduate elections, at least in most places, don't have two major parties or two major frontrunners, though.
Essentially people are asking for a system that doesn't have the "spoiler worry," a system where they can vote for whom they really want to elect rather than caving and only voting against the guy they really don't want in. IRV, it seems to me, is at least closer to that ideal, in the real system where there are two main parties. Right now, if you vote for anything other than the two main ones, people will say (with some justification) that you're only "throwing your vote away" or worse yet "letting the other side (notice, only ONE "other side") win."
I'm sure it has its shortcomings. What system would people here suggest, to avoid the spoiler effects?
IRV is more representative of the people's choice on the whole. It would enable more people to vote their conscience.
I know that there is someone out there who can write a mathematical model that can test whether the IRV model or the two-party with fringe parties model works best toward the goal of democracy. The Hare model is a mathematical statistical calculated risk model because of the manner in which the votes roll over. So the whole strategy of campaigning has to adjust to affect what those supporting this model want accomplished.
These were not dumb undergrads, but very smart undergrads who figured out how to skew the voting system. :-)
Pattsi Petrie
Arrow's theorem is sometimes raised as an objection to IRV. Actually Arrow's theorem says that all systems of voting have theoretical imperfections, so invoking Dr. Arrow as an objection to IRV is fallacious.
Another misleading objection to IRV is that "the person with the most votes might not win", which is the confusion between the meaning of plurality and majority and the connotated misconstrue of "majority = plurality". Of course plurality means "most votes" while majority means "more than half". Our present system does not insure the support of a true majority when there is more than two candidates.
One real advantage of IRV in Urbana is that it could encourage more voter and candidate participation.
Yes, how to skew the voting system in an undergraduate election, which is a very different thing in most cases - namely, a bunch of people running for office, most of which have the support of their various equal-sized cliques. I don't see why regular "who gets the most votes" won't work in such a situation, or why anyone would have wanted IRV there to start with.
That's not the same thing as a two-major-party system at all. I can't imagine "vote me for #2" making sense in the two-major-party situation - the logical thing to do, which is why many people want IRV (considering IRV vs. the current winner take all, that is), is to say "I vote for who I like, but if he loses, I'm not 'spoiling' anything for my backup #2 choice party, and I'm not 'throwing my vote away.'"
People want to, for instance, be free to vote Consitution but not worry that they're just helping the Democratic candidate win. Etc.
So what system would people here recommend to eliminate this spoiler effect? If there's something that is better than both IRV and the current "winner take all" system, surely people would be interested.
Durl Kruse is only playing by the rules- the system working as it's suppose to...
Here's an essay discussing and comparing various forms of voting: http://bolson.org/voting/essay.html
The Condorcet method is interesting too, but more complicated than our current system or IRV:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method
I think we need a system that produces a winner who was chosen by the majority, not just a plurality. Preferably a majority of all eligible voters. And election day should be a holiday. Unfortunately there is no perfect system (Damn you, Arrow!), but IRV is a better than plurality. And what is Prussing hiding?
We really need some better way of deciding how referenda are placed on the ballot - right now, it's a matter of who can stack a meeting with the most supporters or call a meeting with the shortest notice.
"We really need some better way of deciding how referenda are placed on the ballot - right now, it's a matter of who can stack a meeting with the most supporters or call a meeting with the shortest notice."
Given that these are advisory referenda, finding a better system ranks very low for me. The results, even if the meeting is stacked by Kruse-clones, will be ignored by the Council.
If people want more transparency or IRV, they'll have greater effect by working to elect a different mayor and council members in 2009.
Given that these are advisory referenda, finding a better system ranks very low for me. The results, even if the meeting is stacked by Kruse-clones, will be ignored by the Council.
If people want more transparency or IRV, they'll have greater effect by working to elect a different mayor and council members in 2009.
True. I had no idea why Prussing and some of the other Dems cared enough about advisory referenda to fight about it. I'd thought about showing up to observe, but taking my dog to the park would be more fun.
Both Kruse and Prussing think that they are playing by the rules. Right now, the difference seems to be that Prussing is a more skilful player. Ralph Langenheim
"People want to, for instance, be free to vote Consitution but not worry that they're just helping the Democratic candidate win. Etc."
Specious argument because people who vote Constitution already want the Republican nominee to lose.
It is all about the Greens, that is why the establishment Dems oppose it. Really not complicated - just politics.
This meeting isn't on the Urbana City calendar anywhere. In fact, there are no events at all listed for today. Nor does the agenda appear on the "Cunningham Town Board Agenda" page. That seems a bit sketchy.
There isn't a voting system certified for use in Illinois that can handle IRV.
Certification is expensive and getting it for a small IRV jurisdiction seems to be a rather innefficient use of resources.
Also, it wasn't too many years ago that people were claiming that Florida's simple butterfly ballot was so complicated as to be the equivalent of voter disenfranchisement. Can you imagine the wild claims which will be made after the first close election using IRV?
Kruse-clones? A motley group of Independents, Democrats, Libertarians, Ron Paul Republicans and Nondescripts hardly qualify as clones. Clowns, maybe...What could be more appropriate for making a difference in Bozo Urbana?
Anon 7:59 PM - we have been told that there is NO additional cost of modification of the present voting system for IRV.
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It will be interesting to see how tonite's meeting turned out.
SmilePolitely and the NewsGazette had reporters on hand.
It looks like grassroots participatory democracy may work in Urbana after all.
The issue of Transparency appears to have been clarified, and Instant Runoff Voting moves forward to the June 30 Special Meeting.