The Santa Monica Daily Press has this op-ed about California’s top-two system, and other aspects of election laws and debate practices in California and the U.S. The author is Mike Feinstein. The Santa Monica Daily Press is a print newspaper that is free, and which has 43,000 readers.
Mike Feinstein wrote:
“…corporate California funded the propaganda campaign to sell us Proposition 14 — the Top Two primary, which eliminates all but two voices from the general election ballot in all state and federal races (except president)”.
Me: Corporations are democratic entities just like guilds, unions, political parties and even the Catholic Church (the Pope is elected you know).
To polarize any entity is a bad policy because we need to help everyone evolve.
Top Two has been a step in the right direction for the electoral system in California, and a steady contributor for such a unity.
Since 1992, the United Coalition has been able to identify and attract many cool political candidates who were interested in the unifying voting system of pure proportional representation (PR).
In 2014 under Top Two, our numbers grew at a much faster pace, we attracted far more Ds and Rs in 2014 than in 2010 state elections before Top Two.
I know, because I phoned and emailed all the candidates from all six ballot-qualified parties in both years – 2010 and 2014, before and after Top Two was implemented. In 2010, no Ds and Rs were interested and in 2014 many candidates, from all parties and independents, INCLUDING Ds and Rs.
In fact in 2014 the United Coalition grew to 36 candidates for state and federal office who accepted the nomination of their names to the United Coalition team and we’re still growing rapidly on all geographical levels..
Mike Feinstein was contacted by me as well about the unity in 2014 in regards to his campaign for Santa Monica city council and he declined. He chose to rhetorically divide the voters of Santa Monica into three sectors in his hopes to garner 33.33% plus two votes, in hopes that the others would garner 33.33% (plus no votes).
Instead, his campaign attracted less than 7% of the votes.
He organized the state Green Party convention here in Monterey several months ago and reportedly only about twenty people showed up.
I personally could have helped him increase those numbers but he declined, deleted my name as a facebook friend for messaging him the invitation since non-greens are not wanted by his methodology and so none of my video crew who I work with at the Monterey County Producers Club were interested.
Can the Green Party win without support from the whole? Not likely, because people are tired of fussing and fighting.
Mike writes; “The next time you hear about candidates from smaller parties being excluded from debates, remember that it’s not the candidates’ and parties’ voices that are being excluded. It’s your own.”
To him I say “we need to look in the mirror to find out why our team can’t get traction and don’t worry about things we can’t control.”
If we can’t work with people who ARE interested in unity, then how can we expect to work with hostile people?
To succeed, we need to promote unity and the correct way to unite; conciliation, forgiveness, cooperation, communication and other confidence building attributes.
Practice, practice, practice … repetition, repetition, repetition … the team the team, the team.
We need to help the initiators of Top Two learn how unity of all parties and independents is the smartest strategy and a continual division; us against them, my way or no way, is not a good strategy at all.
The 9th USA Parliament has been unifying candidates and voters for twenty consecutive years and it works fine.
Won’t you join us?
http://www.usparliament.org
If your United Coalition has so many active participants, why are you the only person who ever comments here discussing the United Coalition? The United Coalition gives me the impression of an army with one human being and hundred’s of mannikins dressed up in military uniforms.
All the United Coalition members are very busy working on our team and we’ve not involved with the perpetual dysfunctions of plurality elections except when accessing free speech by running as candidates.
Why would a team of people unified under pure proportional representation be attracted to BAN? Maybe they can’t buy in to the direction the conversation goes on this site.
If you want to be more involved with our team you’re welcome to participate! The operation is always increasing in activity especially in the Spring.
If you expect a team which is organized under pure proportional representation (PR) to be interested in commentary about demoralizing plurality elections then you’re being unrealistic.
Perhaps because the grass is so much greener on our side and there simply isn’t any grass on your side.
Really, which side of the news do you think people interested in unifying voting systems like; continual promotion of being dysfunctional or perfect unity?
The minority rule math with top 2 is even worse than before — due to the added NON-votes in gerrymander districts NOT having 1 D and 1 R.
i.e. the 2 D, 2 R, 1 D or R and an other districts.
i.e. about 25 percent with top 2 versus about 30 percent in the old system.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
James, you say the other activists of your organization are too busy working on your goals to make comments here. Can you give an example of some work that they are doing?