Summary of our strategy to get Range Voting (RV) enacted
Get all the US third parties to unify behind RV. It is in their clear interest to
do so because of our
experimental data
saying RV benefits third parties more than any other
feasible-to-get system,
and many other reasons,
and because their survival is at stake.
These parties have about 100,000 members and 1 million votes.
Get endorsements from prominent scholar/science/religious (etc.) figures.
Build up membership.
Once 1,2,3 done, and we believe they are feasible, then
Try to get some money donations... and
Approach the Democratic & Republican party leaderships and point out to each that
they can give themselves a big advantage in the 2008 presidential race by changing the rules
of their Iowa 08 caucuses to make them be done with RV. This does not require changing
Iowa law, only internal party rules. If, say, the Repubs do this
but not the Dems, then the Repubs will get a big advantage in the 2008 presidential contest.
They want that. Also this move will make them seem "reformers" and
generate favorable publicity,
all at no cost to them (unlike, say, other possible reform moves like disowning Tom DeLay).
They want that too.
And this will get them 3rd party votes, which as we said are significant: 1M in 2004 and
in fact due to plurality distortions it is really more like 40M.
That could be enough to tip everything.
Again, this is in their self-interest to do, and there is no significant power group
with motivation to be opposed to the idea, unlike, say, if we tried to enact RV for
Illinois Senate elections.
When 4 happens, we get as a side effect a ton of free publicity and voter education.
Now once 1,2,3,4,5,6 have happened, and we have some money,
then we are ready to try to go for
ballot-initiatives &
referenda in
states that have them.
There is historical precedent for ballot-init/referenda causing the USA to change: women's
suffrage and direct election of senators only happened because first,
a lot of states did this one by one
via ballot initiatives.
We think you can see this approach really does have a decent chance to work.
It resembles the principle of the lever. Previous voting reformers have
foolishly tried a direct attack. They all failed.
That was both because they could not achieve unity (our step 1) – which we can due to
the uniquely superb properties of RV –
and because they were opposed
by some important
power group, instead of going for a scenario like
Iowa 08 where no power group
has any motivation to oppose the reform and indeed it is in the
self-interest
of every power group. For example if the GOP adopts RV in Iowa, then they will gain
a big advantage over the Democrats in terms of their chances to win the presidency, at
no cost.
Factor in the immense benefit and I think you can see this is worth working on.
At the very least, we would like your "endorsement."