1. Ranked choice voting in single-winner districts (AKA “IRV” or instant-runoff voting) as proposed in Maine will lead to top-two-style reforms later like in California because that system isn’t fair and so that will cause more needs for more changes and the wrong system will likely be proposed like in California.

   There is only one perfect voting system and that’s known as pure proportional representation (PR), Hagenbach-Bishoff method, and that’s the only system that generates teamwork because two or more people are elected simultaneously with the exact same threshold and ties are broken by one vote.

   I spoke at Ballot Access News offices during my 1993/1994 campaign for Governor of California with the Green Party for state voting reform through pure proportional representation (PR).

   Google founder Sergie Brin later changed his search engine domain from http://www.backrub.com to http://www.google.com because he copied my business program he was able to register the domain and so I am largely anti-google-anything. Many people were present in Usenet when that happened and google doesn’t want anyone to know.

   Google search engine deleted all the links to the United Coalition in 1995 and so we were set back and now pluralists are predominant in their company and search results.

   Read about that here:

   http://usparliament.org/how-google-got-its-name.php

   The United Coalition has been doing it right by using pure proportional representation for more than twenty-two consecutive years. We are spearheading write-in campaigns for California municipal elections in November of 2017.

   Nobody has it as good as the United Coalition of Candidates:

   http://www.international-parliament.org/ucc.html

2. Maine should implement RCV Top Two primary elections. The Top 2 candidates would advance to the general election where it is quite likely that one would have a majority or a large plurality, even with write-in candidates.

   This clearly complies with the Maine constitution and would permit a uniform election system to be used for legislative, gubernatorial, and congressional elections. It could easily be extended to presidential elections if individual presidential electors were elected from four electoral districts.

   It would also let ALL Maine voters to participate in the primary, where the final result is usually determined.

   Maine has 151 House districts. In 2016, only five had three candidates, and in four of those, the leader received a majority of the votes.

   Open seats often have competitive primaries, at least for the dominant party. It is illegal for independent voters to vote, and even among the dominant party, participation may largely be limited to more extreme or partisan voters. Candidates would be more likely to reach out to all voters. Under the current system of segregated partisan primaries, a candidate might knock on the door of a voter of the opposite party. After an agreeable exchange, the voter might reveal his party affiliation. “I really like your views, but you see I’m a 10-Center and you are a Dimer. I can’t vote for you in the primary.” The candidate thanks the voter for the exchange (while thinking that he just wasted 10 minutes), and then suddenly realizes to asks the voter to vote for him in a few months. Or the candidate might skip the residence solely on the basis of party affiliation.

   Independent candidates might be encouraged to run. Maine House districts are quite small (about 8000 persons, 5000 votes). It may actually be feasible to knock on every door in the district. Voters may have a personal connection.

   There is no need for fancy equipment that requires voters to respond in an arcane fashion that results in errors, such as ranking a candidate as their first and third choice. Plain paper ballots can be used in which the candidates are ranked by the numerals that they learned in kindergarten. These are easily counted by hand.

3. Top-two is better than top-one. Top-one IRV is no good, but top-two IRV is more acceptable.

   In general, the more seats the better, because the bigger the elected team. Top-ten under IRV is still better than top-two. But enough of this top-two primaries, with a single winner. Just end with two winners and eliminate the runoff.

   Two winners in each congressional district is better than one winner. Five winners is better than two, and 53 winners is better than five.

4. Under pure proportional representation, with each additional winner per district, the maximum threshold for winning is lowered proportionately.

5. I think I like Jim Riley’s “RCV top-two primary” idea. But would the RCV purists operating behind the scenes in Maine have been willing to back such a common-sense proposal? Surely, they had to know their RCV plan for state elections conflicted with the plain language of the state constitution. But they thought if they won the referendum, they could somehow power through any subsequent constitutional challenges.

6. Top-2 invariably leads to third parties being shut out of the general election since so few people vote in primaries that could be several months before the real election.

7. If the primary were moved closer to the election (say September, maybe even October), third parties could still have a meaningful role in the election and not have to beat themselves to death gathering petition signatures.

8. Top creates a situation where three candidates can be tied at 33.33% each; the maximum guaranteed threshold. With additional names on the ballot, the vote gets split randomly thereafter (i.e. the “split vote problem”).

   I thought the Green and Libertarian Party bosses want a three-party system? So they believe they can’t attain 33.33% (plus one vote) to advance to the primary? So what is the threshold without top two? 50% (plus one vote) within each party.

9. When the Maine legislature was considering RCV a few years ago, I believe it did include RCV at the primary level.

   The two major political parties like the segregated partisan primaries, since it helps maintain their control. Minor parties have to show enough support to even have a primary, and then candidates have to gather enough signatures from voters enrolled in the party. Voters are less willing to enroll in a minor party because it locks them out of other primaries, and if the minor party had a primary it would likely be uncontested.

   In 2016, the Green Party had two legislative primary elections (out of 186 seats). Both featured a single candidate. The House candidate withdrew before the general election. The Senate candidate received over 50 times as many votes as had been cast in the primary, and finished ahead of the Republican candidate.

   When Angus King ran for governor in 1994, he was running television ads during the primaries. Lloyd Cutler had the financial resources to attract support and voters to the primary. In 2014, the primary vote was way down, but that was because neither Republican or Democratic nomination for governor or senator was contested.

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