Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

How Ranked Choice Voting Could Make the 2020 Election More Democratic

In September, Rep. Jamie Raskin introduced the Ranked Choice Voting Act in Congress. If adopted, the legislation would mandate the use of ranked choice voting (RCV) for House and Senate elections. 

The bill doesn’t currently have the votes to pass through the House, but the lack of establishment support obscures an exciting truth: Outside the beltway, RCV is on a track to becoming the next major widespread democracy reform. And, ahead of the 2020 elections, reformers have an unprecedented opportunity to take this formerly fringe idea mainstream.

RCV allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference on the ballot. If no candidate receives a majority of first place votes, the last place vote-getter is eliminated and their voters are reallocated according to second place preferences. This process continues until one candidate surpasses 50%. 

RCV better guarantees that every vote counts, eliminates the “spoiler” effect that occurs when third party candidates run for office, and ensures that, in a crowded field, no one wins with merely a fraction of the vote. It also decreases negative campaigning.

The road to mainstream appeal begins in New York. Tomorrow—Tuesday, November 5th—New York City will vote on a ballot initiative to bring RCV to primary and special municipal elections. 

According to data provided to In These Times by electoral reform group FairVote, over 4 million Americans currently live in a jurisdiction that uses or will use ranked choice voting. A victory in NYC—a city with over 8 million residents—would triple that number. It would also expose the reform to the many journalists and pundits who live in the city, which could better prime them to cover it moving forward. 

Widespread competency in reporting about RCV will become critical. Following the NYC ballot initiative, up to five Democratic presidential caucuses—Nevada, Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas and Wyoming—will likely use RCV to determine convention delegate allocation. (In the presidential primary, votes would be re-allocated until all remaining candidates garner above the delegate threshold set by a political party.)  

Though not all voters in these states would use an RCV ballot in 2020 (Nevada intends to restrict RCV to those who vote early), seamless implementation will greatly increase familiarity with the reform. After its first usage in Maine last year, almost three quarters of the electorate found the process relatively easy to navigate. All the while, media coverage will educate those out-of-state.

While the state Democratic parties have approved the use of RCV in these states, there is still some uncertainty about where it will ultimately be implemented. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has yet to give final approval to each plan.

“Iowa and Nevada had proposed allowing virtual caucuses via the telephone. The proposal raised security concerns about hacking and the DNC rejected it,” FairVote CEO Rob Richie said to In These Times. “Nevada Democrats, though, still plan to have early voting with what amounts to ranked choice ballots. We expect the party to accept this new plan

The DNC has recently approved RCV in Hawaii and Kansas, which are moving forward on plans to hold vote-by-mail primaries and use a traditional RCV tally in each congressional district. According to Richie, Wyoming and Alaska Democrats have formally notified the DNC of their intent to use RCV in a similar way and expect approval for use in 2020. And because of the use of vote-by-mail, FairVote’s Richie also projects caucus participation will greatly exceed that of 2016, which he says saw approximately 175,000 caucus-goers.

If the DNC and state parties work together to ensure the usage of RCV in these caucuses, it would ensure a more democratic allocation of delegates—after all, the DNC requires candidates to surpass 15% of the vote to receive any delegates, inevitably leading to many wasted votes in a crowded field. 

Accompanying efforts to reform the primary, a handful of presidential candidates—Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, Bill Weld, Michael Bennet and Marianne Williamson—have gone on record supporting RCV. By doing so, these politicians have signaled to their millions of supporters that the reform is worth pursuing.

In August, Maine Gov. Janet Mills allowed a presidential election ranked choice voting bill to become law without her signature, delaying its implementation until mid-2020. This precludes the adoption of RCV in the upcoming presidential primary, but permits it in the general election. As a result, the 2020 election will mark the first time in U.S. history a state will use RCV to elect the president. 

This—in addition to the 2018 Maine law requiring RCV for federal elections, including for Sen. Susan Collins’ contested re-election race—will generate historic attention for the reform.

Election day 2020 may also see two ballot initiatives to adopt RCV statewide in Massachusetts and Alaska. The Attorney General in Massachusetts has certified the language of the RCV initiative, and Bay Staters are now collecting signatures to qualify for the ballot.

The effort in Alaska has been delayed, as Lieutenant Governor Kevin Meyer rejected the campaign’s proposed initiative on the grounds that it violated the state’s single issue requirement for initiatives (RCV was included alongside other democracy reforms in their proposed ballot language). Nevertheless, a Superior Court Judge ruled that signature gathering can begin. The state is expected to appeal this ruling to the Alaskan Supreme Court.

In both Alaska and Massachusetts, should they make it to the ballot, advocates’ biggest obstacle is the lack of popular knowledge about RCV. But with New York City, potentially five caucus states, and Maine using the reform in high-profile contests over the next 12 months—and presidential candidates endorsing it—momentum is on their side. 

By 2021, if reformers hit their mark, approximately 20 million Americans could live in a jurisdiction that uses some form of RCV. Millions more will have been exposed to the reform through the presidential election. All of this, in turn, would lay the groundwork for future state-based mobilizations to advance RCV in states such as Colorado, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Vermont where activists are currently building campaigns, as well as for federal legislation. 

Ranked choice voting is not the panacea to our democracy crisis. And state-based reform has its limits—federal reform is needed to bring our democracy into the 21st century. But ranked choice voting will undoubtedly solve many of the undemocratic tendencies rooted in our current electoral system.

The path towards a better democracy is now open. The only question is if we will take it. 

City apartments or jungle huts: What chemicals and microbes lurk inside?

Researchers found city homes to be rife with industrial chemicals, cleaning agents and fungi that love warm, dark surfaces, while jungle huts had fresher air, more sunlight and natural materials with which humans evolved.

From cone snail venom to pain relief

Conotoxins are bioactive peptides found in the venom that marine cone snails produce for prey capture and defense. They are used as pharmacological tools to study pain signalling and have the potential to become a new class of analgesics. Scientists have now provided an overview on the status quo of conotoxin research.

With the Help of Teachers Unions, the Climate Strikes Could Be Moving Into Phase 2

As young people across the country join the global movement to mobilize school strikes to demand climate action, one group is starting to think more seriously about how to best support those efforts: their teachers.

Educators, like those in the California Federation of Teachers and the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA), are beginning to leverage their power both as teachers and union members to push the bounds of climate activism.

This Isn’t the First Time the United States Has Abandoned the Kurds

The Trump administration announced October 6 that U.S. troops were withdrawing from northern Syria—not leaving the country, but retreating just enough to leave Kurdish allies defenseless.

Unsurprisingly, Turkey used the opportunity to invade. Roughly 180,000 people living in northern Syria were displaced, while more than 200 were killed in fighting. On October 22, a Russia-brokered peace left Turkey and Russia in control of a swath of northern Syria.

The United States had allied with Syrian Kurds in the fight against ISIS in 2014, but U.S. support was purely militaristic. Turkey—itself a U.S. ally, through NATO—continued repressing its own Kurdish population while receiving U.S. security assistance, and considered the Syrian Kurds on its southern border a terrorist threat. Meanwhile, the United States offered no diplomatic support for Syrian Kurds. Instead, the United States used Kurdish fighters to beat back ISIS, at great human cost, then left them behind.

It’s not the first time the United States has treated an ally badly, nor even the first time we have done so to the Kurds, as James Ciment wrote for In These Times in September 1996. In his article, “Useful Victims,” Ciment lays out the precarious geopolitical position of one of the world’s largest stateless people:

The roughly 30 million Kurds, who inhabit a broad swath of mountainous terrain in the northern Middle East, have been called “history’s losers.” A fiercely independent and culturally distinctive Muslim people, the Kurds have had the misfortune of occupying the territory of several aggressive and repressive regional powers, including Turkey, Iraq and Iran, [regimes] determined to build coherent nation-states where none existed before. Viewing the Kurds as an obstacle to that mission, these regimes have dealt ruthlessly with them. After the Iran-Iraq War … [Saddam Hussein] murdered up to several hundred thousand Iraqi Kurds … in retaliation for their support for [Iran].

In response to Hussein’s aggression, the United States helped establish a “safe haven” in northern Iraq for the Kurds.

The United States used the safe haven as an excuse to expand its military presence in the region and mount attacks on the Hussein regime—but showed little interest in the Kurds themselves. In 1995, Turkey invaded the safe haven and the United States stepped aside. By 1996, Ciment wrote, “Clinton administration officials [were hinting] that the United States may be attempting to distance itself from” the Kurds. He concluded:

If the United States chooses to abandon the Kurds in the near future, it will not be the first time. After cutting off military aid to the Kurds in 1975, thus betraying them in their struggle against the then-pro-Soviet, anti-Shah Baghdad government, [then-Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger was heard to remark: “Covert action is not missionary work.” Indeed.

The Final Reveal

These gender reveals have gotten a *little* out of hand.

Anti-Flag Announce New Album “20/20 Vision”, Stream Video for “Hate Conquers All”

Political punk stalwarts Anti-Flag have a new record coming out next year. It’s titled 20/20 Vision and will be available on January 17 via Spinefarm Records. To get you lot in the mood for it, the band have been good enough to put out a single ahead of its release. You can check out the video […]

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We have been mapping public cctv cameras on openstreetmap.

https://thejeshgn.com/2019/10/07/surveillance-in-bengaluru-updates/

Why It’s Got to Be Bernie

We’re headed for a climate catastrophe, and it’s capitalism’s fault.

Introducing Skate Punk Act: Basement Sound

So many Dying Scene readers make this humble website a daily virtual stop in their Internet wanderings because they crave new discoveries. Navigating the vast sea of new bands popping up daily on Spotify or Bandcamp is a daunting task but that’s what we’re here for – to save you hours upon hours of listening […]

The post Introducing Skate Punk Act: Basement Sound appeared first on Dying Scene.

Chicago Teachers Didn’t Win Everything, But They’ve Transformed the City—And the Labor Movement

Chicago teachers and staff returned to the classrooms Friday after more than two weeks on strike. Their walkout lasted longer than the city’s landmark 2012 strike, as well as those in Los Angeles and Oakland earlier this year.

System provides cooling with no electricity

Imagine a device that can sit outside under blazing sunlight on a clear day, and without using any power cool things down by more than 23 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius). It almost sounds like magic, but a new system can do exactly that.

In and out with 10-minute electrical vehicle recharge

Electric vehicle owners may soon be able to pull into a fueling station, plug their car in, go to the restroom, get a cup of coffee and in 10 minutes, drive out with a fully charged battery, according to a team of engineers.

Rice yields plummet and arsenic rises in future climate-soil scenarios

Research combining future climate conditions and arsenic-induced soil stresses predicts rice yields could decline about 40 percent by 2100, a loss that would impact about 2 billion people dependent on the global crop.

System Error

Twitter is banning political ads. Your move, Zuck!

This Perfect Shitstorm Crystallizes the Climate Crisis We Face
https://earther.gizmodo.com/this-perfect-shitstorm-crystallizes-the-climate-crisis-1839483105 #climatechange #climatecrisis

#Fishery #collapse ‘confirms Silent Spring #pesticide prophecy’ | #Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/31/fishery-collapse-confirms-silent-spring-pesticide-prophecy

#Neonictinoids #Ecology #Farming #Agriculture