1. Maine is a good place to try this because independent candidates have been doing well there.

2. The author of this piece suggests that Eliot Cutler would have benefitted from IRV in 2010 since many Democrats wold have ranked him second in preference to Paul LePage and an IRV would have resulted in him being elected.

   Maybe. Maybe even probably. But then the author goes on to say:

   “RCV also prevents strategic voting, whereby a voter casts his ballot for a candidate who isn’t his first choice because he doesn’t want to “waste” his vote on a candidate he thinks has little hope of winning. As a result, RCV is also the most practical method of opening up the current two-party system and giving third-party candidates a chance of winning.”

   In 2010, the Dems had put up Libby Mitchell, one of the weakest candidates for guv (or any other office, for that matter) in recent memory. She was polling miserably for weeks prior to the election. Absent any study of hard data (and such is not cited in the article) one might reasonably speculate that Democratic voters, using IRV, might not have abandoned their party’s nominee in numbers in favor of Cutler. Certainly most of them, like myself, would have preferred a can of rancid lard to LePage, but they could read the polling numbers and made the “strategic” choice. Although I’m an independent, I voted “strategically” for Cutler, ex-lobbyist and a candidate who didn’t exactly make me feel warm and cuddly for a variety of other reasons, and I suspect thousands of others voted the same way, for the same reason, and perhaps with the same reservations. But had IRV been in use, Mitchell would have been my first vote, and Cutler my second. The author’s conclusions about how third party candidates might benefit from IRV may therefore not be valid…in this instance. Consequently, although I support IRV, I think in this case the article makes an unjustifiable, or perhaps I should say unsubstantiated, overreach.

   And let me take this opportunity to say this to Eliot Cutler – you can run along now, you self-absorbed, self-important pantload. You’re done the job on us in Maine twice now. That’s quite enough, thanks.

3. But if the Maine IRV initiative gets on the ballot and passes, we will have Eliot Cutler to thank for making it happen.

   Sometimes “spoiling” has to happen twice to have a real impact on changing policy. The Prohibition Party spoiled two presidential elections for the Republican Party, 1884 and 1916. The first “spoiling” didn’t do seem to have any impact, but the second one seems to have caused the Republican Party to pass the prohibition amendment to the US Constitution. It had been sitting in congress since 1875 and had never made any headway until early 1917. By analogy, Cutler is that rare person who “spoiled” two elections, not just one, and it seems to have had an impact, so far anyway.

4. IRV = HOW TO GET STALIN AND HITLER WINNERS.

   34 L–M–R
   33 R–M–L
   16 M–L–R
   16 M–R–L

   With IRV/RCV, M loses.
   50 L beats 49 R.

   Head to Head –
   65 M beats 34 L
   66 M beats 33 R

   M has a mere 99 of 99 votes in 1st and 2nd place.

   Means NOTHING to the many Math M-O-R-O-N-S who love electing Stalin and Hitler clones — to get those all powerful tyrants into public offices with mandates from HELL — esp. to get a Stalin or Hitler clone as USA Prez.
   —
   P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.

5. Just for the record, Stalin would have been my fourth pick in a five way race.

6. In 1917, the Democrats had their largest majority in the senate since the Civil War, and would have until the Depression.

   The Republicans did not have a true majority in the House. A constitutional amendment needs a 2/3 majority in both houses. I’m dubious of your cause.

7. I anticipate that after this next four year stretch is over, most Mainers will have many things to “thank” Eliot Cutler for, but a successful IRV initiative is unlikely to make their lists.

8. Southern Democrats had been supportive of the amendment for some time, but they couldn’t pass it without Republican votes.

9. Neither one of the men listed above would have received my vote.

   I would have written in [or perhaps “written on”] such ballot, the name of someone else, or would have stayed home.

10. Statewide prohibition had gone from a handful of states to nearly 1/2 the states in the decade-and-half preceding the 18th Amendment.

    I’m dubious that a 4th Party in a small western state could trigger a change in Congress. How much was due to the Progressives pushing their agenda within the Republican Party. The 16th through 19th amendments were passed within a few years, after no constitutional change over the previous nearly half-century.

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