Green Parties of California, Michigan, DC, and Wisconsin
Floor Manager
Rebecca Rotzler
Phase
Closed
Discussion
04/03/2006 - 04/16/2006
Voting
04/17/2006 - 04/23/2006
Result
Presens Quorum
0.6666
Consens Quorum
A Majority of Yes and No Votes
Background
The two-party electoral system has maintained a stranglehold
on political expression in the U.S. since before the two
parties became the current ones. This has proved disastrous
for progressive politics in this country. While each of the
two dominant parties (the Democrats and Republicans) use
wedge issues like abortion or gun-control to persuade voters
to continue to vote for them, they spend the vast majority
of their time in office serving the same corporate elite
which funds and controls both parties. This is their true
constituency, and therefore both party institutions continue
to promote war and the elimination of our constitutional
freedoms. The nominal "opposition party," the Democratic
party, provides virtually no real opposition to these
policies. [Countless examples include the refusal to
filibuster to oppose Supreme Court nominees (the vote on
Scalia was 98 to 0), giving Bush the right to invade Iraq,
passing the Patriot Act multiple times, refusing to hear the
case of electoral fraud in Florida in 2000, leading the
fight to gut welfare and pass NAFTA and GATT under Clinton,
etc.]
The Green Party was formed to pose an electoral challenge to
this system. Reforms of the two parties and lobbying of
those parties are the strategy of caucuses within those
parties and progressive groups which are not political
parties. The reason for being a political party, as opposed
to a caucus or general Green issues group, is to pose a
challenge to the two-party system within the electoral
arena.
Every election year, the inadequate plurality system of
voting is used to create a tremendous pressure against third
parties running full-out and making their challenge as
strong as possible. It is our party that promotes electoral
reforms such as ranked voting, which would render lesser
evilism powerless, and yet we are the ones expected to give
way, time after time, to the inferior and corrupting
two-party system.
The Green Party needs to take a stand on this issue - in
order to make it clear both to its membership and the
outside world our identity and purpose as a political party,
and in order to strengthen all of us in the face of the
regular onslaughts of "lesser evil" pressure against our
right to organize politically according to our values and
platform.
Proposal
Be it resolved that the GPUS affirms one of its main
purposes to be that of posing an electoral challenge to the
corporate-funded and controlled two-party system.
Be it resolved that the GPUS therefore declares its
intention to run electoral campaigns full out, in order to
promote its messages for peace, civil liberties, social
justice, and environmental protection; in order to give
voters an opportunity to cast votes for these values and
create a new mandate; and in order to build the Green Party
to be able to pose even stronger challenges. Full-out
campaigns include running in all states possible as actively
and as eagerly as possible, running on all Green Party
ballot lines possible, participating in Green Party primary elections
wherever possible, and running for all levels of public
office for which the party is able to find credible
candidates to run as Greens and sustain Green Party
campaigns.
Be it resolved that the GPUS encourages state and county
Green Parties to stand firm against the pressure of lesser
evilism, and to use it instead as an opportunity to promote
the reforms of ranked voting (i.e., instant runoff voting
and proportional representation).
Resources
Contact Persons:
Karen Shelley, Michigan delegate
Cat Woods, California delegate
References
None
Questions about this system?
Contact the Voting Admin.
The Green Party of the United States voting system is free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
You can download a copy here.
To independently verify a ranked choice vote, or for information about how that works, go to Jonathan Lundell's Voting Page and upload the ballot file from the ranked choice vote result page. JL's ranked choice module is licensed under an alternate free software license.
Green Party of the United States