Cornel West, 70, announced today that he is seeking the nomination for President of the United States of the People’s Party, more formally known as Movement for a People’s Party, which is a Progressive minor party in the United States. Dr. West is an academic who has previously held faculty positions at several Ivy League universities. The People’s Party currently has ballot access only in Florida. Based on numbers in the June 1, 2023 edition of Ballot Access News, The People’s Party and the West Campaign (assuming he receives the party’s nomination) will need to obtain 674,072 valid signatures in 45 states and the District of Columbia, plus pay filing fees or become organized in four states, in order to appear on the November 2024 ballot in all 50 states and DC. Here is an in-depth interview and analysis from Chris Hedges:

https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/dr-cornel-west-announces-he-is-running?utm_source=cross-post&publication_id=778851&post_id=126040205&isFreemail=true&utm_campaign=1156402&utm_medium=email

HT to Eric Garris for drawing my attention to Mr. Hedges’ article.

Edward B. Foley, a Professor of Law at The Ohio State University, recently posted on Election Law Blog a proposal for “Total Vote Runoff” (“TVR”), which is like Single Winner RCV, except for the vote transfer methodology. Instead of using only first place (and transferred first place) votes to decide which candidates are eliminated, he proposes calculating each remaining candidate’s “Total Votes” score using Borda count, then eliminating the candidate with the lowest Total Vote score before votes are transferred to each voter’s next choice candidate. This continues until one candidate has a majority of votes.

For example, in a four candidate election with a single winner, if no candidate received a majority of first choice votes, the candidate with the fewest first choice votes would not necessarily be eliminated, as is the case with standard single winner RCV. Instead, a Total Votes score would be calculated for each candidate using the following formula:

(3 x # of first choice votes) + (2 x # of second choice votes) + (1 x # of third choice votes) + (0 x # of fourth choice votes).

Therefore, each voter would be allocating six (3+2+1) Total Vote score points among all four candidates. If a voter did not rank all four candidates, the unused points would be evenly split among the unranked candidates, including fractional points.

The candidate with the lowest Total Votes score would be eliminated, with each affected voter’s vote then transferred to their next choice candidate.

This process would continue with three or two remaining candidates until someone had a majority of votes or had more votes if only two candidates remain.

Mr. Foley argues that there is a greater chance of a single winner candidate having majority support with the TVR methodology than with the standard RCV vote transfer process. He cites evidence from the August 2022 US House election in Alaska that “non-MAGA” Republican candidate Nick Begich was probably more popular with voters than Representative-elect Mary Peltola, but had fewer first choice votes than Sarah Palin, and was therefore eliminated first in the three-way race using the standard RCV vote transfer process.

His close to finished draft article on TVR, soon to be published in the University of New Hampshire Law Review, can be read here:

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