Jason Peck had it right (1/12, Letters) in his description of our flawed political system. The big two parties don’t offer enough of a choice. There are excellent candidates representing more diverse parties, but the problem is that our election system discourages people from voting for third-party candidates.
People don’t vote for third-party candidates because they feel their vote will be wasted, meaning they know the person they are voting for won’t win.
The solution is an alternative voting system used in many U.S. cities, like San Francisco and Burlington, Vt. It’s called Ranked Choice Voting (or Instant Runoff Voting).
In this system, you rank the candidates from best to worst. If your top candidate comes in last, then your second choice vote will be used instead. This continues until some candidate has a majority. For more information, see www.fairvote.org/irv.
I hope Kansas City will follow the lead of these forward-thinking cities someday.
Eric Barr
Green Party of Kansas City
Kansas City
Think of Florida 2000 if such a system had been in place. Talk about FUBAR.
Posted by: Engineer | January 19, 2008 at 08:03 PM
People need to understand that there is no prize for picking the winner. You need to vote in your own long term best interests, paying no attention to who the polls or the media say will win.
If you follow them, you give them control of your vote to the detriment of your interests.
Posted by: Mike4Freedom | January 19, 2008 at 02:58 PM
Voting as a multiple choice test? I bet the winner would be "None Of The Above".
Posted by: jack | January 19, 2008 at 02:20 PM
If you don't vote for MY candidate, you are an unpatriotic, God hating, baby killing, war mongering, selfish, evil, biased, rich people hating, poor people blaming, fascist, socialist, lazy, idiot who just wants to steal from me, while letting children die in the streets for lack of health care and criminalizing the pursuit of excellence.
So there!
Posted by: jack | January 19, 2008 at 11:35 AM
If you don't vote for my canidate you are uninformed.
Posted by: T. Hanson | January 19, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Vote wasted, what a concept.
I hate to inform you of this but voting is an illusion. The big kahuna is already in place before the circus starts.
Posted by: NoMoreMrNiceGuy | January 19, 2008 at 09:54 AM
People need to wise up about voting. Vote for the candidate who represents what you believe is the right platform.....NOT for who the media tells you is going to win. This is how the media has been rigging elections for years.
Posted by: Stifled Freedom | January 19, 2008 at 09:07 AM