EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Danny Kleinman
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
General Comments
Comment : | Here, I suggest, are some desirable criteria for such a voting system. (4) No Tie-In Sales. The inclusion of Vice-Presidential candidates on a “ticket” with Presidential candidates creates other insoluble dilemmas. In the 1988 election, for example, voters who favored the current George Bush’s dad but were horrified at the thought that “running mate” Dan Quayle might ascend to the Presidency were in an impossible position. Their votes might have depended on the accuracy of the available information about the elder Bush’s health, and on the imponderable probability that the elder Bush would be assassinated. I wouldn’t have known how to advise them. In the 2000 election, supporters of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader face not only the dilemmas cited here for supporters of the elder Bush in 1988 (“Who is this Winona Laduke that is Nader’s running mate, and how qualified is she to be President?”) and in (3) for supporters of Buchanan, but a third dilemma. The public-financing law makes the funding of the Greens in the 2004 election dependent on how many votes Nader receives in the 2000 election, a “tie-in sale” that those who wrote and voted for the public-financing may not have considered.