Both Wisconsin and Illinois held local non-partisan elections on April 5. Green Party members won six elections:
1. Steve Alesch was elected to the Warrenville Park District Commission in DuPage County, Illinois, in a contested election.
2. Toni Williams was elected to the Thornton Township High School District 205 board, Cook County, Illinois, in a contested election.
3. Don Crawford ran unopposed for a seat on the St. Elmo Library Board in Fayette County, Illinois.
4. Michael Drennan ran unopposed for a seat on the Ridgeville Park Board, Cook County, Illinois.
5. Bob Poeschl was re-elected to the Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Common Council, in a contested election.
6. Marsha Rummel was re-elected to the Madison, Wisconsin, Common Council, district 6, in a contested election.
Thanks to Brent McMillan for this news.
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oh no!! Wisconsin and Illinois are being destroyed by the ugly Green monster!!!
Before libertarians like me panic, we must realize that fortunately, these are extremely unimportant posts with almost NO influence whatsoever.
Cool! It’s nice to see the Green Party get some candidates in at the grass-roots level. 🙂
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With a little work this could be made into a decent Onion story.
I can’t understand why most 3rd parties “stick their nose up at non-partisan” elections. One of the reasons – as I’ve pointed out before – is they love seeing their party name and logo on the ballot. Many drool at the sight of such.
If 3rd partisans would go after and win some of these local offices, they could build up potential qualified candidates with experience, who then could run in the partisan races and have a better chance of being elected.
In many of these “non-partisan” elections, there are no laws which prohibit the candidate from still campaigning as a 3rd party candidate – using their party label and loco on their literture and campaign stickers and posters.
But, as I’ve also said before, “3rd partisans are their own worst enemy.”
Cudos to the Greens for their grassroots successes!
Time and personnel being scarce resources, the best you can say about this sort of activity is that it’s a waste of time if you’re actually trying to oppose the current ruling elite consensus.If you oppose the current ruling consensus you need to advocate PR in as pure a form as is practical in a given situation. That of course doesn’t mean you can’t start small at a local level.
Here’s an example showing how a party outside the ruling consensus fares in plurality vs. PR:
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2011/03/fears_move_to_p.php
(…)
“Proof of my point was the Member of European Parliament elections a year prior, which does use the D’Hondt Method — The BNP got close to 9% of the vote, compared to the about 2% it got last May. That 9% translated to two MEP seats, one for Nick Griffin and the other for Andrew Brons. Because BNP voters and those that sympathized with BNP positions knew that they had a “horse in the race,” i.e. their vote wouldn’t be wasted, they could vote BNP and not fear that their vote was going down an effective rat hole. And it did make a difference.”
(…)
So a small marginal party-in elections about one year apart-gets a percentage of the vote 450% greater in a PR election than it does in a traditional first-past-the-post election.
Greens have a seventh win on April 5th: Peter Schwartzman
http://www.galesburg.com/features/x1700900541/Look-here-for-live-election-results
Peter Schwartzman is the son of DC Statehood Green David Schwartzman. David was a recent candidate for the DC Council At-Large seat.