Cobb and Badnarik on electoral reform

This page is a draft. It will be updated in the coming days or weeks.

Introduction of the debate

Constitutional Amendments

If better voting have to be adopted at the federal level, there may be a need for a constitutional amendment.

The United States is one of the oldest constitution in the world. (...) What constitutional amendments do you support if any and do you think we should make it easier to amend the constitution?

No I do not think we should make it easier to amend the constitution. The constitution is supposed to be the Supreme law of the land and it sets a general context for the republican form of government what we are supposed to have. The founding father understood that the constitution must be changed eventually but they deliberately made that process difficult. Article 5 of the constitution outlines that process. It requires two thirds of both houses even to propose an amendment, even to talk about the issue and it requires 75% of the State legislature, basically a super majority, to enact that amendment. So I would not make amending the constitution easier because it only outlines fundamentals.

I'll agree with Michael Badnarik that the constitution is the supreme law of the land. However, I will say that there are constitutional amendments that are desperatly needed because the supreme court has incorrectly interpreted the [constitution] on several crutial occasions. (...)
Sadly, there is another need for a constitutional amendment underscoring that we have the right to vote. It may seem self-evident that we have the right to vote, but our supreme court has held otherwise. I support a constitutional right to vote.

In any case, members of the Election Method mailing list have discussed at length on how to achieve a nationwide change of voting system. The need for a constitutional amendment makes it difficult. A state by state change for the presidential elections may not be easy either, because it may upset the balance between Democrats and Republicans, which of course they will not accept. It is however much easier to envisage a change of voting system only for local and State elections (mayor, governor...).

Campaign finance

We shall not repeat this enough: the fact that third parties are so small is not related at all to the public support rate for those parties. Many people probably would empathize with what third party candidates have to say. The problem is that most of the time people do not get to hear what they have to say. The election method in use marks them as candidates who have no chance at all to win. The media treats them accordingly and do not give a fair coverage of their campaign activities. The financial resources of small parties are extremely limited, so that they never get a chance to publicize their platform.

Here is what David Cobb has to say.

We should remember that elections are like the infrastruture of our democracy and we the people are going to have a representative democracy. We need a voting system that is financed by we the people. I and the Green party are unflinching in our support for publicly founded elections. We the people need to understand that our elections are currently financed by a very small number of people. They are all extraodinarily rich. They are all extraordinarily white. I actually believe that campaign financing and who's doing the campaign financing may well be the great civil right struggle of our generation. The green party calls for publicaly funded elections over our public airwaves so that we can actually engage in debate over the issues.
Money is property, it is not speech. The expenditure of money is not speech. So the first amemdment does not apply under this circumstance, otherwise it means that only the super rich and the super wealthy get to speak loudly enough for everybody else to hear. The green party is committed to real democracy, and the only way we can have real democracy is with full publicaly funded elections.

Voting systems

Here is the one topic that the two main parties would never discuss: a fair voting system allowing the voters to vote according to what they really think.

You both are running for president as nominees for parties that have never elected anybody to congress or as governor. Polls indicate that it is unlikely to change this year even though a strong majority of the people, 77 millions baby boomers, believe the nation needs a strong third party. Why don't third parties have any more success in the US and what would you do to boost multi-party democracy?

Well, it's interesting, isn't it, that so many Americans want another party, but they don't end up voting for them. Frequently, I think the answer is obvious. We have a voting system that forces voters to vote against what they hate rather than for what they really want.
It's the voting system, stupid!
The reality is that our voting system is directly responsible for the United States of America having one of the lowest participation rates in the industrialized world. You know, what other people call spoiling, the Greens call participating. We are going to exercise our democratic right to participate and the solution is not to try to restrict the Green party voice or squelsh the choice of the voters.
The solution is to change our voting system to Instant Runoff Voting. A voting system that empowers voters to be able to rank order their preferences: my first choice, my second choice, my third choice. It's as easy as one, two, three because voters actually get a chance to express their preferences amongst the candidates.
Counting the ballots is equally easy. You just count first preference votes and say: did anybody get a win? a majority? If so, you declare the winner. If not, you eliminate the lowest vote getter. However the voters who cast that ballot didn't waste their votes because they've already indicated their second preference on that ballot. Transfer the ballots and find about a majority. Instant Runoff Voting is the easiest solution to expanding democracy and proportional representation is another electoral reform that the Green Party supports.

I agree with Mr Cobb that we need to change the way that we elect our candidates in the United States, and Instant Runoff Voting is certainly an improvement over the system that we have now. But we can also change that system earlier than that by having freedom of speech exercized in the United States.
I think that it is very sad that the two major candidates for president of the United States chose notto be here to debate Mr Cobb and I. I am confident that David will agree with me when I challenge George Bush and John kerry to join us in these debates. If we are third party candidates, if we are insignificant and not much of a threat then there should be no reasons to keep us out of the debates. On the other hand, if George Bush and John Kerry are terrified that the american voters may actually respond to a libertarian or Green party platform, that they might loose their grip on Washington, I can understand why they are reticent to join us here at this table of ideas.
Let me remind you that there are 535 members of Congress and 285 million americans. If you demand that David and I and other third party candidates be in the debate, then there is no way that they can resist us.

Notice that Badnarik only says that Instant Runoff Voting would be an improvement on plurality voting. Well, almost any voting system would be better. What Badnarik doesn't say here is that he knows that there are ever better alternatives to IRV. He is on reccord for saying that he believes that Approval voting would be better.

Here is the question asked by Slashdot users, and his reply to them, as published on the Slashdot forum:

Re:Question (Score:5, Interesting) by celeritas_2 (750289) (#10237051)

How can we change the system so people have the choice between multiple candidates and not just two?

It's a long, hard, uphill battle. A lot of Americans don't know that until the 1890s, the government didn't print ballots at all. Voters wrote their own, or used pre-printed ballots provided by the party of their choice. The adoption of the "Australian ballot" gave the politicians control of what choices were put in front of voters.

Today, the Libertarian Party -- and other third parties, of course -- have to fight to get on the ballot. In some states, we have to gather enormous numbers of signatures. In others, we have to drag the state to court. We've been very active on this front. In 1980, 1992, 1996 and 2000, the Libertarian Party's candidates appeared on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This year, it's 48 states and DC -- we missed the signature requirement in New Hampshire and are in court in Oklahoma.

A better question, of course, is how do we offer the American people REAL choices -- choices they can vote for without fearing that their vote will be "wasted" on a candidate who "can't win?"

There are various alternative voting systems that address this problem.

Instant Runoff Voting allows the voter to assign a rank to each candidate; if no candidate gets a majority of "first place" votes, then "second place" votes are counted, and so on, until someone gets a majority. This allows people to choose a "third party" candidate as their first preference, but still get a vote between frontrunners if their candidate loses.

Personally, I prefer Approval Voting. In this method, each voter can select as many candidates as he likes -- he can vote for all the candidates whom he can live with. All of the votes are counted, and the candidate with the most votes wins. The result is that the winner is not necessarily "the most popular," but "the one that the most voters are okay with."

Of course, the "major" parties don't approve of anything that might threaten to break their shared monopoly on power. That's why they've instituted the Australian ballot and draconian ballot access laws. But we'll keep fighting them until we win.

Please note that support for Approval Voting is not part of the Libertarian Party platform. Actually, there is nothing about electoral reform but in the Libertarian Party web site and in Michael Badnarik campaign web site. He just said on several occasions, in this interview and probably on other occasions that he supports IRV and he confided to the Slashdot users that he would prefer Approval Voting.

However weak Badnarik's endorsement for electoral reform, he is as far as I know the only candidate to have publicly supported either Approval Voting or Condorcet voting. It is up to the voters to show in this election or in future election that we do care about electoral reform. Americans may vote for M. Badnarik and tell him why. Americans may also write to whomever they would have voted otherwise, may it be Bush, Kerry, Nader or Cobb, that a vote that was originally for them has gone to the Libertarian Party instead because he's the only one to have shown support for a good voting system.

Saying that, we do not take any position at all on the merits (or lack thereof) of the other candidates platform. We would just like to remind candidates, especially small ones, that however good their policies may be, our vote is spoiled more often than not until we have a proper voting system.

Preparing for tomorrow

So much of what presidential candidates debate addresses the immediate self-interest of Americans. Let's put yourselves in the shoes of those who will follow us 100 years from now. What decision that we'll make in the next four years that you believe will be most important to those Americans a century from now?

The decisions that we need to make long term all need to conform to the constitution. The constitution is the supreme law of the land. It doesn't give specifics, it gives generalities. And let me remind you something that you already know: We the people ordained and established the constitution. We the people created government in 1789 Therefore government works for us, not the other way around.

We don't need to be a big polling company to figure out that citizens would like to have a government working for them. Certainly, we are all part of a huge majority of people who would want that. How come then that election after election we seem to elect some self serving person? How come that a huge number of people have a cinique view on politicians and don't even bother going to the polling station? Before we can dream to have fair taxes or an honest environmental protection policy implemented, the single one issue that could have a long term effect must be the voting method one.

The question is actually proufound, isn't it. The decisions that we are making now, what impact would it have a 100 years from now? The reality is this: our current social, economical and political system is taking us over a cliff. There is a looming ecological catastrophy, not only in this country but worldwide. And the Green Party is willing to tell you the truth about that. (...) The reality is this: if there is going to be a future, it is going to be a green one and a sustainable one. (...)
[Solutions] are not being applied right now because we the people do not control our government. Government is not just something out there. If we actually had real democracy, it would mean that we would be that government and the reality is that we the people are not the government under this system.

That's right. Help us campaign for the best voting system that there could be then, Mr Cobb. More people need to tell him that IRV is flawed.

Size matters

I have two questions. Your chances of winning are small, what goals do you hope to achieve by running a third party campaign? Can Greens and Libertarians ally in any way to give america a second strong, different party or are we forever condemned to be in a battle for third. One is a question about your role as a middle to long shot campaign and two are there ways that you can see these two parties working together in common interest.

First of all, let me point out that my chances of winning are not zero. So anyone who tells me that I cannot win is lying. My chances maybe slim and my job is definitely difficult, but, as I said earlier, if I could vote for either George Bush or John Kerry and respect myself in the morning, I would still be in Austin Texas watching television. I am running for president of the United States, and I am running very very hard to advance the principles of liberty because I do not think that the Democrats and Republicans are doing an adequate job.
I strongly believe that if we could have George Bush and John Kerry here in this debate, it would be obvious to the American public that the Democrats and the Republicans have policies that are indefensible. The Libertarian party [whose] platform is based on the constitution, individual rights and private property is almost universal.

The goals of the Cobb-Lamarche campaign were articulated early, and constitently and I am proud of the fact that we have objective, concrete measurable goals for this campaign. We're trying to convince the American people to join us in building a genuine movement for peace, racial and social justice, real democracy, and environmental protection.
We are trying to convince people to join the green party as the growing political party that it is. Register into the green party, vote for the green party candidates. Let's conclude this campaign with even more elected greens in office so that the greens in office can continue to make people's lives better.
Because Greens are winning. Now.
Greens are winning now: in 1996 there were 40 elected greens, in 2000 there were 87 elected greens, right now there are 207 elected greens, so we are going to continue to elect greens and make people's lives better. We are going to articulate a genuinely progressive agenda that is unfliching in our demands for systemic change. It's important to remember that it's always taken alternative political parties to advocate for real change. I am proud that the green party is doing that. I am proud to be working with my brothers and sisters of the Libertarian party for fair ballot access laws, changing the voting system, because we demand a multi-party system so that everybody gets representation in this country, not just the corporatists and the militarists.

It is certainly true that it's in their best interest to tell people that they do have a chance, however slim. Citizens had better believe them. The success of our primary purpose however does not depend on a small candidate to get elected president. It is enough for a third party candidate to regularly score over 10% in local, state and national elections so that one of the two major parties puts electoral reform on their own platform. Once the voting system is changed, your favorite "third party" candidate would have much more chance to win.

A profound revolution

I was reminded of a comment XXX made when he was running for mayor of New York, back in the 60s as a third party candidate. He was asked what was the first thing he would do if elected mayor and he responded: "demand a recount".
Obviously third party candidacies have come a long way since then. It's becoming more of a viable option at the state level and perhaps someday at the national level. Bearing that in mind, both of you, what would your first action be as president after your inauguration?

If David Cobb and Pat lamarche are elected as president and vice-president of this country, it would mean that there would be a foundamental and profound political realignment at the ballot box that reflects the way that most Americans already feel. I'm convinced that most americans already agree with us. If in fact David Cobb and Pat lamarche are elected president and vice-president it would that there'll also be about 45 elected Greens in the United States Congress and that there'd be progressive members of Congress, It will mean that we'd be able to actually enact all of the policies that we've just described.

In reply to the same question, Badnarik also said that we don't need to wait to have a Green or Libertarian president, [we] can start right now. That's what we are doing: starting now to campaign for change in areas where change is much needed.

Closing statements

for their closing statements, both candidates choose to highlight issues that I feel are important. As Michael Badnarik says, if we don't start voting now for electoral reform and other reform that will follow, when shall we? Also, as David Cobb shows, it's possible for two opponents to have a friendly and honest debate about issues, ideas and policies. Within the current voting system, it takes two third party candidates to have such a debate. With a new, better voting system, such debate would become the norm.

As a third party candidate, I am frequently told:
"Michael, I really like you. I like your platforms and I would vote for you but I mean you are not gonna get much of the percentage of the vote. It's probably gonna be less then 5%. So I have to vote for somebody esle."
So I ask them to clarify that positon. I say:
"Are you saying that if I were to get maybe 20, 25% in the polls that you would now vote for me because other people already were?"
And people usually say:
"Yeah, that's probably true."
My question to them then is:
"If you were on the Titanic, would you want to be the first person on the life boat or the last person on the life boat? Are you gonna let everybody else to go first to test the life boat to see if it's really is gonna work? I am here offering you a candidate that is in support of liberty. Do you want to be one of the first people to vote for liberty or do you want to wait until other people to test it and you wanna be the last person to vote for liberty? If you vote for the lesser of two evils and your candidate wins, you still get evil. If you vote for the lesser of two evils in 2004 then in 2008 you say you have to vote for the lesser of two evils and in 2012 and so on and so on. when do you decide to vote for liberty? If you don't vote for liberty, you will never get it."

This has been a debate, a real political debate about issues. You know American people don't get to hear those very often because the two corporate parties have already agreed on what they are going to talk about. And in fact the commission on presidential debates is just a staged managed infomercial so even when that thing goes on it's not gonna be a real debate.
You know, I don't believe that Michael won this debate. I don't think that David Cobb won this debate. I think that the american people won this debate, specially C-Span viewers have won this debate because for the first time we have the opportunity to have a real political discussion, where we'd found so much with which we agreed and so much with which we genuinely disagreed.
And I am so proud to have been able to participate in a debate about real issues, where there were real disagreement sometimes I believe fierce disagreement, and we did it respectfully, and civily.
Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that something that we're capable of?
I want to conclude with this. The green party is committed to significant, structural systemic social change and there is a pattern, there is only one recipee to get significant social change in this country. History shows it to us. First ordinary citizens have got to organize themselves. Then we need the main social change. The two establishement parties always react one of two ways. Either they say:
"Oh, your change that you're proposing is very good, and we support it but it's really naive and unrealistic, it's impossible. Please go away."
Or the establishment party says:
"your significant social change is dangerous and un-American. you are a dangerous socialist, communist, anarchist, today they might say terrorist. Go away!"
But folks don't you see that anytime that ordinary citizens ask for systemic social change the establishment parties always say: "Go away!"
But thank goodness the people before us did not go away. They didn't quit. They continued to educate, to agitate, to organize and ultimately they learned what I've learned and what Michael Badnarik has learned and what so many other Americans are learning. We got to create our own alternative political parties. Third parties, alternative parties have been responsible for so much in this country: The abolishment of slavery, women getting the right to vote, the creation of the social security administration, the unemployement insurance and the workers compension laws. The entire fabric of what we today think of a just and compationate society was litteraly woven together by third parties. Today if you want structural change, you have got to vote for it. Don't waste your vote on the corporate parties. Invest your vote on the green party. Peace.

To Conclude...

I would like to draw your attention on the last few comments made by Mr Cobb. He says that we have to get organized, to educate, not go away. That's precisely what this web site is trying to do with regard to getting good voting systems adopted. Incidentaly, Douglas Green, an election method expert has reportedly had a conversation with David Cobb. During that interview Mr Cobb was told about the limitations and the fondamental flaws of IRV. Mr Green reported: "Cobb basically said good luck, go out and organize, but IRV is the only alternative voting method that has a base of support, so that what he’s going to push"

I generally feel very attracted by the Green Party's policies, and Mr Cobb seems to be a fine candidate to represent the party. However I feel very disapointed that Mr Cobb prefers the political expediancy of supporting a voting method that he has been told was flawed, just because more people know about it. I would have thought that the role of a politician was to get informed on the best policies and, in turn, to inform the voters and the citizens about such policies (and once elected, of course, implement them). Mr Cobb seems to take on this specific issue a more populist approach: "I support whatever the majority of people support".

Thank you very much Mr Cobb, we shall heed your advice. We shall go out and organize so that the next Green candidate as well as other candidates will support Approval and Condorcet.

The host for the debate concluded with the following quote by Thomas Jefferson:

If a nation expects to remain both ignorant and free, it wants what never was, and never will be.

He then urged people to educate themselves and to make their vote count in November. By all means, do so.

Also on the Web...

M. Badnarik campaign web site
The Libertarian Party he Libertarian Party is committed to America's heritage of freedom: individual liberty and personal responsibility a free-market economy of abundance and prosperity a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace, and free trade.
Libertarian Presidential Candidate Michael Badnarik Answers Slashdot users were given the chance to Ask Questions of the Libertarian Party's US Presidential nominee, Michael Badnarik. Here Slashdot presents to you 15 of the most highly rated comments, and the answers from the man himself.
D. Cobb campaign web site The Cobb/LaMarche campaign is committed to building a strong and vibrant Green Party, to offer voters an ongoing alternative to the two-party system. David Cobb and Pat LaMarche support the hundreds of greens running for local office. They consistently articulate Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) as the best solution to the “spoiler” problem. They endorse theMillion Worker March andRacial Justice Week.
US Green Party
Approval Voting Yahoo group Discussion group. Citizens for Approval Voting is a non-profit group dedicated to the enactment of legislation mandating Approval Voting for single member district elective offices.
Members of the group can see the message with the title A conversation with David Cobb for the orginal report on the interview with the Green party leader.
Badnarik vs Cobb debate Video of the Third Parties Presidential Debate. Libertarian Presidential Candidate Michael Badnarik and Green Party Presidential Candidate David Cobb debate issues and elaborate on their political platforms. 9/6/2004: NEW YORK CITY, NY: 1 hr. 40 min.: StreamSage