Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

You can download the brochure. Nicely done, Tyrtle!

Click here to download: Why Vote Green brochure (70K pdf file)

Andrew put the issue of Instant Run Off voting very well in a recent Village Green Posting–adam

Hi folks,

What has been pretty successful as far as I can tell face to face with
voters (and maybe in large groups, but haven’t experienced that one) is
to point out that the current voting system allows a non-majority
winner. Greens offer a “majority winner” voting system; i.e., a system that
REQUIRES that the winner receive more than half the votes.

The classic example I’ve used most recently is Will Campos, District 2,
PG County Council. He won the Democrat nomination (with 90K from Al
Wynn in a 19% turnout special election) with 33% of the vote, while 7
other candidates split the other 67% of the vote. With our system, the
other seven, choosing each other in no particular order as the “next
choice” candidate, would have easily defeated Will Campos. The
non-corporate candidates can indeed “gang up” on the corporate candidate with
ranked choice voting. I think explaining this fromt he point of view of
“majority winner” elections might be effective. Maybe some of us can try
it and see what response we get.

My sense of things is that people respond to the notion of “majority
winner”, and even the weakest majority, 50% +1, is not guaranteed by
current election systems, but is guaranteed by the democratic reforms in
the voting systems Greens support.

More on this soon but gotta go…