John's Blog: February 2004
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A View From the Maine Caucus
Mary and I attended Westbrook's Democratic Caucus last night at our local high school, and it was a cool experience in democracy. The Maine Democratic Party scheduled the caucuses at different times in different towns around the state, so they were staggered throughout the day. This means that any candidates who are were around could attend a good number of them. As a result, our little town meeting (several hundred people) was addressed personally by Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich, as well as John Kerry's representative, Ed Markey.
The meeting was conducted in three major sections, which I would describe as interesting, boring, and interesting. First were the speeches by the presidential candidates. Although Howard Dean got the majority of the media coverage, Kucinich entered first and immediately began circulating and shaking hands. Dean, by comparison, mostly stood by the front table talking with the party regulars until it was his turn.
Contrary to popular expectations, we thought Dean was the least dynamic speaker of the three. Mary even said she felt kind of bad for him, that he was being forced to keep his passion in check because of the negative reaction from his post-Iowa speech. Kucinich is nearly always a dynamic speaker, and this was no exception. Markey (for Kerry) was the surprise for me. Standing waiting to speak, his looks reminded me of Sen. Liebermann, so I wasn't prepared for the passionate speech he delivered. (Too bad all the TV cameras had followed Dean out by that time.) It would be hard to say whether his or Kucinich's speech was more moving, although they were definately of a different tone. Predictably, Kucinich reviewed his progressive platform of repealing NAFTA, which played well in this former paper mill town (and where the small shoe factory on my very street just last week announced plans to close down and move the jobs to the Dominican Republic), as well as having voted against the Iraq "war authorization", while Markey drove home the point of Kerry's experience and electibility. Markey's speech was much more Bush-directed, as if Kerry were already moving beyond the nomination stage into the general election. I must say that it had the positive effect of a confident and seasoned politician.
One thing that really annoyed me about Dean was that twice he referred to himself as the only candidate to oppose the war before it started. The first time I mumbled to Mary "except Kucinich", and the second time was glad to hear some other, bolder Kucinich support in the other corner of the room call him on it. Dean promptly repeated "except Kucinich", to which the other called out "thank you" in a justifiably annoyed tone of voice. Several more times, he said something about himself and added "except Kucinich" afterwards, which said to me that he knew the first time he was being inaccurrate and had hoped no one would call him on it.
After the presidential hopefuls spoke, some local candidates for the state house and senate spoke, which started getting really old really fast, and Mary and I began to be concerned about getting the babysitter home at a decent hour. Then came some Robert's Rules of Order stuff about electing the caucus officials, as well as officials for the local Democratic party committee, which, judging from the speed by which it occurred, seems to have all been worked out ahead of time, which was just fine with us. Then we could finally get on with business.
Each ward went to its own classroom, where we separated further into corners to indicate our candidate preference. We had 24 people in our room (plus 2 represented by absentee ballot), and it broke down into 15 for Kerry, 6 for Kucinich, 2 each for Dean and Clark, and 1 for Edwards (who later abdicated to Kerry to make 16). The point of it was that we were choosing delegates from amongst ourselves to the statewide convention in May, and our ward is allocated 8 delegates. Mary and I left before it was all over, but not before we knew that our Kucinich delegation would send two delegates, and that I would be one of the primaries! Having never been to a caucus before, I definately didn't have particular goals for the evening, but I'm pleased to have the chance to go on to the state convention in neighboring Portland in a few months' time.
Just a short word about my vote: For me, this basically came down to voting for the person who I think I agree with the most versus the person who may have the best chance of beating Bush. The former is definately Kucinich, and the latter is looking increasingly like Kerry (at least in the Northeast, which may yet turn out to be a dangerous assumption). Even though I'm a Kucinich supporter, I won't say he has much of a chance of getting the nomination, or certainly not the general election if he did get the nomination. But that actually makes the way clearer for me to vote for him in the caucus, because I'm not worried that he'll actually be a "spoiler". So I voted for him because I do want to "send a message" (despite Markey's explicit warning to not do that, directed no doubt towards people just like me) that what he's saying is important to me. Check him out!
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Open-Source Voting Systems
As promised, here's a review of the three US-based open-source voting initiatives that I have discovered so far.
The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development, maintenance, and delivery of open voting systems for use in public elections. They are currently developing a prototype version of free voting software to run on very inexpensive PC hardware. OVC voting systems will accommodate different languages and scoring methods, as well as voters with special needs. A collaborative project is already well-established at Sourceforge.net.
The Open Vote Project is an open source effort to develop free software for Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines. Based on the Australian System, where source code is freely published for public review, the Open Vote Project's initial goals are to make a touchscreen voting system fully compatible with California election law, including a voter verifiable receipt and easy access for the disabled. Once accomplished, the project will then expand into a global standard for secure, reliable, and full featured voting machine software, including features such as multi-lingual ballots, vote-anywhere technology, and onsite voter registration.
[A lot of good talk, and a very well-organized website-out-of-the-box to support the model, but still in the very early stages, and very scant content. Looks like it will be a while before anything concrete comes out of it. - John]
3. Center for Voting and Democracy / Voting Solutions
Statement: In the interest of easing the burden of administering ranked-ballot elections and of ensuring the integrity and accuracy of election software, the Center for Voting and Democracy is partnering with Voting Solutions to release Voting Solution's Choice Plus software under an open license.
The Center for Voting and Democracy is "dedicated to fair elections where every vote counts and all voters are represented. As a catalyst for reform, we conduct research, analysis, education and advocacy to build understanding of and support for more democratic voting systems. We promote full representation as an alternative to winner-take-all elections and instant runoff voting as an alternative to plurality elections and traditional runoff elections."
Voting Solutions "develops and markets ChoicePlus Pro, a cross-platform program used for counting preference style elections including Choice Voting (STV) and Instant Run Off Voting (IRV)." (Follow the links to see these terms explained.)
[This is an interesting effort, but involves more systematic reform than I'm looking for. I want something that will start making a difference sooner. - John]
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