NOTE: There are 3 messages in this posting (one pertaining to Canada). Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 17:30:32 -0800 From: Randy Schutt <•••@••.•••> Subject: Voters' Bill of Rights Dear friends, As the last election made painfully clear, many people are not allowed to vote and the votes of many people are ignored. To address this, the second annual Progressive Dialogue conference held in Washington, DC in December of 2000 launched a Pro-Democracy Campaign and came up with a ten point platform dubbed a Voters' Bill of Rights: <http://ippn.org/BofR.htm> The Campaign has now been endorsed by 83 progressive organizations: <http://ippn.org/Endorse.htm>. The Voters' Bill of Rights calls for: 1. Strict Enforcement and Extension of the Voting Rights Act 2. Abolition of the Electoral College 3. Clean Money Elections 4. Instant Runoff Voting 5. Proportional Representation 6. Voting Rights for Former Prisoners 7. Make Voting Easier and More Reliable 8. Easier Access to the Ballot, the Media and Debates for Candidates 9. Create Independent and Non-Partisan Election Administration Bodies 10. Statehood for District of Columbia (Full details can be viewed at: http://ippn.org/BofR.htm) Please spread the word and support this campaign. You can get more details here: <http://ippn.org/Pro-DemocracyMain.htm> --Randy ----------------------------------------------------------- Randy Schutt P.O. Box 60922, Palo Alto, CA 94306 <http://www.vernalproject.org> ----------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2000 22:28:01 -0600 From: "David J. Parker" <•••@••.•••> Subject: Motion 155 toward Prorportional Representation June 3, 2000 David J. Parker. PEng Leader Alberta Green Party Box 133, Station M Calgary, T2P 2H6 Dear Prime Minister, I wish to place the support and enthusiastic endorsement of our Party behind motion M-155 submitted by Lorne Nystom MP (Regina-Qu'Appelle). Proportional Representation is an electoral objective whose time has come. The people of Canada desire and deserve a representative democracy similar to the vast majority of other democracies in the world. We strongly encourage the time table of the motion which includes: a. A report on Proportional Representation prepared by an all-party committee after extensive public hearings. b. A referendum to be held on this issue where the question shall be whether electors favour replacing the present system with a system proposed by the committee as concurred in by the house. c. The referendum may be held either before or at the same time as the next general election. The existing FPTP system is fundamentally undemocratic, as even the UK Government has admitted. Efforts are afoot to change the British system which, as you know, was the model for our own. 1. FPTP has the propensity to satisfy only a minority of the electorate since elected governments are most frequently chosen by fewer that half the eligible voters. 2. In some notable cases provincial governments hold power after receiving less votes that their opposition colleagues (B.C and Quebec). 3. In the case of Alberta, the ruling PC party have an overwhelming majority of seats after being endorsed by a mere 51% of the electorate and proceed to enact legislation contrary to the wishes of that electorate, because they can (Bill 11). 4. Voting habits are affected such as to cause the electorate to vote against a party rather than for the party they wish to be in power. 5. Coalitions, which more closely reflect the wishes of the electorate, as well as to temper the excesses of the ruling party, seldom occur. 6. Large minorities of the voting public receive no representation (Federal Tories and NDP). 7. Regional parties achieve disproportionate shares of power (Block Quebecquois and Reform) with objectives contrary to the majority of Canadians. 8. Coalitions are, by definition, inherently cooperative and would satisfy the electorate much more than the adversarial system currently extant. 9. Many different models of PR exist and, as such, a choice of system would not be fraught with too much difficulty or insecurity. 10. Parties such as ours, which reflect the views of a large and growing sector of society, receive few votes as a result of the "strategic voting" caused by FPTP. Green parties all over the world are affecting policy toward a more sustainable future for humanity. Not so in Canada. No electoral system is perfect but this should not be an excuse against moving toward a better, fairer and more democratic one. We anxiously await acceptance and implementation of motion M-155. Yours Sincerely, DJP c.c. Reform Party Progressive Conservative Party New Democratic Party Green Party of Canada ****************************************************************** From: "Marty Jezer" <•••@••.•••> To: "Marty Jezer" <•••@••.•••> Subject: Friday's Commentary: McCain-Feingold, Good but not Good Enough Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 23:16:54 -0500 >From the Brattleboro (VT) Reformer, 1/26/2001 As always, feel free to re-post this commentary on the internet. Commercial websites should contact me). If you wish to stop receiving this commentary, just let me know by reply e-mail. McCain-Feingold: Good, but not Good Enough By Marty Jezer John McCain has kept his promise to introduce legislation for campaign finance reform. The bipartisan McCain-Feingold bill (Democratic Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin is the co-sponsor) is matched in the House of Representatives by a bill sponsored by Democrat Martin Meehan of Massachusetts and Republican Christopher Shays of Connecticut. A past version has passed in the House and had majority support in the Senate. It was defeated there by a Senate filibuster organized by Republican leaders. This year the bill has a new co-sponsor. Republican Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi has broken with his fellow Mississippian, Senate leader Trent Lott, to endorse the bill. Cochran claims to have always been a supporter of campaign finance reform. As a freshman Representative in 1972, he voted for public financing of congressional elections. When he was elected to the Senate in 1978, he was told by the Republican leadership to put his reform instincts behind him. In an interview with USA Today he recalled them telling him, "Thad, when you come over here, forget the Anderson bill. We don't need that." But the soft money that swamped the political process in the recent election campaign was so offensive, he said, that he decided to oppose the leadership and come out for reform. With Cochran and a few other Republicans on board, McCain and Feingold seem to have enough votes to stop a right-wing filibuster. Alas, the McCain-Feingold bill is a limited reform with obvious loopholes. Even if passed without amendments, it will not break the hold that special interests have over American politics. It's worth supporting, however, as a symbolic expression of the popular will and as a first small step towards comprehensive reform. As introduced, McCain-Feingold will ban soft money from federal elections. Under current campaign finance law, individuals and political action committees are allowed to contribute limited amounts of ("hard") money to candidates of their choice. Soft money was introduced in order to give political parties resources to fund party-building activities. There is nothing wrong with that idea, but the Federal Election Commission has interpreted it to allow wealthy individuals, corporations and labor unions to invest hundreds of millions of dollars ($487.6 million in the last election) in shrill TV attack ads that have drowned out more dispassionate political discussion. McCain-Feingold will ban soft money. But, as Feingold has acknowledged, special interests will likely find other means of maintaining their financial stranglehold on the political process. In an interview in American Prospect http://www.prospect.org, Feingold suggested that big spenders will pour money into "independent expenditures," special interest ads that are not coordinated with candidates or parties, and so exist outside the campaign finance regulations. Soft money and other large campaign contributions give big donors privileged access to government officials. It's a form of bribery that enables their lobbyists to custom-craft legislation for subsidies, contracts, tax write-offs, and environmental exemptions. Big money donors also influence the outcomes of elections. More than 90% of the winners of most recent elections had more money to spend than the candidates they defeated. As a further pay-off for their election investments, special interests are able to determine what issues are raised and how they are presented. Polls indicate that most Americans know this and therefore support reform of the system. McCain-Feingold includes a second initiative, introduced by two Republicans, Jim Jeffords of Vermont and Olympia Snowe of Maine, which would prohibit special interests from broadcasting their self-serving attack ads just prior to an election. This would be a good first step in encouraging political discussion that isn't shaped by special interest money. A more comprehensive bill would also provide candidates with equal access to the publicly owned airwaves. The GOP leadership will try and destroy McCain-Feingold with killer amendments. Even if these amendments fail, George W. Bush has the power to veto it. Here are some of ways that the GOP leadership will use to destroy McCain-Feingold. First, they will try and raise the contribution limits on the "hard money" that PACs and individuals can legally give to candidates. Allowing more special interest money into the system would neutralize the effect of the soft money prohibition. More dangerous is the Paycheck Protection Act, favored by Bush, which would require labor unions to obtain explicit permission from their members for all electoral activities. By effectively discouraging campaign contributions by labor unions, this bill would effectively legalize corporate control of the American government. To attempt to balance this, some legislators have proposed that corporations get the permission of their stockholders in order to give political contributions. This is a farce. Labor unions operate on the principle of one-person, one vote. Corporations operate on the principle of one share, one vote. Financial institutions and other corporate shareholders would retain all the power. Opponents of McCain-Feingold will also hide behind the constitutional arguments advanced by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU is a wonderful organization but in insisting that "money is speech," the ACLU endorses giving TV ad time to those who have money while silencing those who don't). Many in the ACLU disagree with their leadership on this issue. "I believe the national ACLU's position on campaign finance reform is wrong on constitutional and policy grounds," Burt Neuborne, a former National Legal Director of the ACLU, has stated. "Opponents of reform should no longer be permitted to hide behind a constitutional smokescreen." The way to maintain the integrity of McCain-Feingold is to ban soft money without any compromise. The way to comprehensively deal with the corrupting influence that special interest money has over our political system is to pass the Clean Money, Clean Elections Reform that includes full public financing. Clean Money legislation has already passed in Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, and in McCain's own state of Arizona. McCain-Feingold is a small first step towards correcting a major injustice in the way we conduct elections. Even if there was no harassment of minority voters and all votes were accurately counted, our system would still be flawed. Ballots, not dollars, should be the only currency of a democratic election. -30- Marty Jezer is author of Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words; biographies of Abbie Hoffman and Rachel Carson, and The Dark Ages: Life in the USA, 1945-1960. He lives in Brattleboro, Vermont and welcomes comments at <•••@••.•••>. Copyright (c) 2001 by Marty Jezer
