No Political Campaigning on the Ballot

[New Democracy]

Dear list members,

     I want to speak about political campaigning on the ballot.

There may be several reasons why a voter will decide to vote for a certain
candidate. Some of the reasons may be expereience, education, incumbency,
race/ethic, famous name, age, position on issues, gender, and of course
political party. During the campaign, all of this information is advertised
to the voting public, but none of this information should appear on the
ballot. The campaigning should not run over onto the ballot. The ballot is
only to be used to record the final decision of the voter.

The political party label is the one advertising that many people seem to
think should be on the ballot - even some people that believe in election
reform want to hang on to this policy of allowing people to vote more for
political parties and less for candidates. We know that some people vote
for the party and not the candidate because the people are known to vote
for the party candidates in the same order as they are listed on the
ballot. If the candidates are in alphabetical order, then these people vote
the candidates in alphabetical order. Canadians for Proportional
Representation wrote: "Many voters in Australia and Ireland simplified
their vote by picking a party's candidates by alphabetical order". Markus
Schulze in Germany wrote: "...it is always said, that the voters tend to
vote alphabetically..."

If people are voting in some order then they are not voting for the
candidates. These people are voting for their political party. The people
are merely using the candidate as a carrier to carry their vote to their
political party. Now the question is: Should people be allowed to vote for
a party? I say no - please listen to my rationale.

I say that most political parties should be allowed but that these parties
must be democratic - that is controlled by the members of the party. This
means that the direction of the party is to be controlled by all the
members of said party. I contend that the best way for the members to
control the direction of their party is for them to consider each candidate
of their party and make a decision before they get to the ballot. It will
be our hope that they make this decision based on some information. In any
event I say this should be forced by not having any party label on the
ballot. All the candidates for the same office should be in the same column
in some order. The voter will have to know which candidates are from their
party in order to support their party - this is not asking too much.

A democracy means that every voter has a small slice of the right to
govern. We exercise this right when we vote. The people should not be
allowed to give away this right to vote - not to a king - not to a ruling
class - not to a political party. People should be forced to keep this
power to select candidates. The power to select candidates is not to be
transferable. If this power is given to a political party then that party
is not democratic.

Preference Run-off will eliminate the need for party primary elections.
Therefore the only need for party labels on the ballot is eliminated.  The
ballot should not be used by political parties to advertise their
candidates. The advertising of the candidates is to be done before election
day - not on the ballot.

Needless to say but I will say it: Neither party List nor any combination
of party list should be used as an election method.

Now the remaining question is: How should the candidates be listed on the
ballot? I have already said that all the candidates should be together
without any labels but we can do more.

Consider this: The city of Cambridge,Mass has had a proportional
representation method of electing their city council since 1943. The law
requires that the names of all candidates be in cyclic alphabetical order,
with each candidate's name appearing at the top of an equal number of
ballots at each polling place. This should even out the flaw if some people
do vote alphabetically.

The ideal way in which to list the candidates is to give each a ballot
number and then list only these numbers and the three initials of the
candidates on the ballot. The voter would have to know ahead of time which
number and initials belong to the candidates they wish to vote for. Doing
it this way takes away the advertising of the candidates by gender, ethnic
group, or famous same name.

Don,

Donald Eric Davison of New Democracy at http://www.mich.com/~donald

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