Saturday, December 27, 2014

Election Law Questions

Hey, Peter Cownie: Why get rid of the straight ticket option when three our of eight Iowa voters use it?  When in the polarized 21st century, party affiliation is maybe the single most important piece of info about a candidate?

I marked the straight ticket, and encouraged others to, though Sherrie Taha almost deterred me from doing it.

And hey, Brad Zaun: Can't you get ANY of your colleagues to run your sore loser primary runoff bill?  Not that I have anything against runoff per se - though I prefer a ranked choice instant runoff.  That would have helped someone who was everyone's second of third choice (like, um, David Young) and hurt someone who is an Anyone But choice (like Pat Murphy or, well, you.)  It's just that you personally running the bill makes it look extra sore-losery.

A change in Israeli election law, via Ballot Access News:
Israel will elect a new Knesset on March 17, 2015. This will be the first election in which a party needs 3.25% of the total vote cast instead of just 2% to earn seats in the body. The change was made in March 2013. Israel’s form of proportional representation has long been criticized on the basis that too many parties win representation.
 13 parties in the last election, rivaling the late era German Weimar Republic... and we all know  THAT ended badly.

Speaking of Israel and elections, Chris Mathews argues:
Being for the war in 2002 thinking was the smarts. She represents New York [then as Senator]. That makes sense.  A lot of people are very pro-Israel. They worry about anything in that region. She also knows that supporting wars has a better track record for people running for president than being doves.
Granted, Mathews has never been a big Hillary fan (to put it mildly). But Phillip Weiss at Mondoweiss adds:
A few years ago, the idea that support for the disastrous Iraq war was driven in any way by concern for Israel’s security was verboten. Walt and Mearsheimer were accused of being anti-Semites for saying that the Israel lobby pushed the war. Jeffrey Goldberg went in for the casual smear that they were saying that Jews started all American wars. But we’ve gone 12 years since that awful decision; the battle lines have softened; and the elites are changing; and raising the issue doesn’t seem to endanger Jews in the U.S., as was surely feared when folks kept their mouths shut about the matter in years gone by. When I started blogging at this site in 2006, I said that we needed to have this debate, inside the Jewish community and in the broader American community.

What has supporting Israel done to our foreign policy? When Roosevelt and George Marshall warned in the 1940s of unending war in the Middle East if we helped to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, were they prophetic?
Um... yes.

Something for Hillary Clinton to think about as she "looks to shore up support on the left."
Beret bidding continues, contact me for bidding...

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