Here are the candidate's reflections on the election.
One. It made sense for voters in the 8th District Council Election to NOT vote Green.
Voters who wanted change reasonably voted for “Independent Democrat” candidate Jesse Brown (who got 19% vs my 4% vs DRM’s 75%) because he had name recognition from anti-tobacco and anti-casino campaigns and secured the endorsement of the Inquirer and Daily News.
Conclusion: A third party candidate is de facto defeated under our system which allows a candidate with less than a majority to win (inevitably the Democratic incumbent unless in jail or under indictment) A fairer system that more progressive jurisdictions employ have runoff elections where the highest votegetter is short of a majority (In the primary, DRM had only 1/3 of the votes, the three challengers splitting up the remainder) Our current system pits the challengers against each other.
Two. The [Democratic] Party button, formerly lever, makes it too easy for voters to vote straight party. This is especially true when, as in the November election, there are many issues and candidates and the Green Party is not running a full slate. Voters like easy.
Conclusion: The Party button seriously debilitates the candidacies of independents and third parties
Three: Money doesn't talk; it screams.
Where, for instance, one judicial candidate (Mike Erdos in the primary)
raises funds sufficient to give the incumbent councilperson an amount
($7000) matching or exceeding the entire expenditures of the Green
Party candidate in either the 2003 or 2007 election, a third party
cannot mount a winning campaign. And that’s assuming I had been a
perfect candidate which I certainly was not!
Conclusion: Nothing
short of a national and drastic overhaul of the extraordinarily
inequitable distribution of wealth can mitigate against the influence
of money in electoral politics.
RIPE FOR A GREEN REVOLUTION
A country which
- makes it legal to pay a worker less than an amount the government recognizes is necessary to survive on,
- deprives a substantial part of its populace access to health care,
- wages deadly, devastating foreign wars and, domestically,
exploits a subclass of workers (illegal aliens)to sustain the
inequitable, wasteful, resource-intensive lifestyle of a privileged
elite
is ripe for a Green Revolution whose frontlines have not yet advanced toward electoral politics.
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