In a few places and not yet in a perfect manner, but this is good news nevertheless.
Albany and Palm Desert in California; Portland in Oregon; Minneapolis in Minnesota; Eastpointe in Michigan; Cambridge and Amherst in Massachusetts; and Arden in Delaware. These are the cities that have incorporated some form of Proportional Voting for their local elections. They are trying to fulfill their US Constitutional duties.
That means we are on the right track. Yet even these cities do not get everything right.
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First of all, kudos need to go to FairVote USA for delivering the option of Proportional Voting together with their otherwise mostly ranked-choice voting agenda. While RCV does not deliver us greater representation (it incorporates runoff elections into one election), as soon as Proportional Voting is thrown into the mix better representation of the voters is automatically guaranteed.
Still, it is too early to hang out the celebratory flags and decorations. The early signs indicate that boards and councils still incorporate a divide-and-conquer aspect to these races. Like Coca-Cola light, we find Proportional Voting light in these places.
For instance, when half the seats are up for election, then this undermines the proportionality of the voters. By cutting the elections into two separate events, the officials are still interfering with our Constitutional rights and are still incorporating a game that benefits them and not the voters. Somehow, the political parties and the people behind the scenes just can’t help themselves, afraid to provide us representation that is actually representative of all voters.
- Imagine renting a hotel room and noticing on the bill that 40 percent is charged for breathing air while in the hotel. That will not go over well of course, but this setup is actually what we have today with winner-take-all. Many voters show up, and about 40 percent gets nothing.
- With Proportional Voting for just half the seats at a time, the hotel bill now has 20 percent charged for breathing air while in the hotel. We are still given a lousy hand, though it is better than before. Nevertheless, the hotel owner gets money for something that is not an extra service.
- With true Proportional Voting, the hotel bill will not show any charges for breathing air while in the hotel. None of your money is handed to the hotel owner for services that aren’t real services.
Your voter empowerment is undermined when there is a game in our voting booths.
You are handing over power to the political establishment for no good reason at all.
The US Constitution guarantees us Voter Equality, and yet we do not have that anywhere in the United States for any of our elections. Again, only when there is no game involved at all, only then do we have voter equality.
Kudos nevertheless to FairVote for trying where they can and getting some traction going for where we should be today already. Yet there are still games inserted in these elections that need to be removed.
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What is Local Revolutions grassroots organization’s role in all this?
- We stand up for Voter Equality, based on the US Constitution. We have a legal position, supported by the Ninth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
By expressing the legal position that local and state officials cannot deny us voter equality, both in process and in outcome, we strengthen the struggle for our political freedom, exactly as the Founding Fathers described in many of their documents.
- Voter Equality is Enlightened
The Founding Fathers were enlightened and yet they did not want us to vote proportionally for the Federal level (for instance, two senators per State, which is then not a proportional outcome of course). They wanted a strong Federal government at the national level to better withstand foreign enemies and to better overcome extreme internal conflicts.
Anywhere else, and therefore anywhere not mentioned in specific detail in the US Constitution, we are entitled to voter equality, both in process and outcome. The Founding Fathers could not be clearer with the Ninth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments — they guarantee us that we must have that enlightened voter equality in place for all elections not described in finer detail in the US Constitution.
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Come join Local Revolutions grassroots organization. Help our voice for legal justice become stronger. Help support us (not with money, but with your voice) to insist we get the voter equality that was promised by the Founding Fathers at all levels, per the exact descriptions found in the US Constitution.
