Lessig

Professor Lessig, sir, when will it be permissible for voters to vote for the candidate of their choice? When can we vote for whom we please, for whatever reasons we consider appropriate?

In what election will it be 'safe' for voters to 'waste' their votes on a third-party candidate? In what election may voters who do not consider either of the major parties representative of their interestes vote for a party that they believe does represent those interests?

Will it be safe in four years? Eight? Twelve? Sixteen? Twenty? Forty years? Eighty years? Never?

Or perhaps those voters who do not feel represented by the major parties should merely accept their voicelessness, understand that they should expect nothing better, and cease to participate in the political process.

Well, Professor Lessig? When is it going to be 'safe' to vote for the candidate of our choice?

If Gore hadn't run, would Nader have won?

This is getting ridiculous. We should ignore Gore's poor campaigning (he didn't even carry his home state for Christ's sake), the debacle of Florida and the Supreme Court stealing the election for Bush and concentrate on stopping Nader from running??? No wonder this countries in the state its in. This is blame others and don't take reponsibility for our own actions. This is addressing the symptom and not the problem. This is RIDICULOUS!

In 2004, as well as 2000, I think Democrat's energies are best expended in putting forward a strong candidate of their own than in trying to quash "minor" candidates, whether in their own party or elsewhere.

The sense I've been getting from this thread, and from other exchanges I've seen online, is that the main concern of many Democrats and others on the left is to get Anybody But Bush into office. Indeed, the anger over Nader's 2000 run seems to be largely over the fact that Bush won rather than that Gore lost.

"Anybody But Bush" sentiment may well attract many folks to the Democratic nominee (and indeed, is a lot of why I plan to vote for him this November, whoever he turns out to be). But I doubt whether it's enough to win in November. There are only so many voters outside the Democratic party who will vote for Anybody But Bush, when the time comes to enter the voting booth. And though I've seen a number of candidates from both major parties run on an "I'm not the incumbent" platform, I haven't seen it have a particularly good track record, unless the incumbent is seen as a weasel across the political spectrum, or the economy or other state of the world is in terrible shape. Well, there's still a sizable portion of the electorate behind Bush, and I don't like the "we can gain power if things get worse" tactic any more when Democrats
use it than when Naderites use it.

If "being electable" is the primary selling point of a candidate, and the party faithful are more concerned about stopping the competition than in putting forward a better offering of their own, we're in deep trouble already.

I vote for a candidate, because I believe they will best represent my interests. That is what a representative form of government is about.

A candidate for elected office runs because they believe that they can best represent the views of their potential constituency. That is what a representative form of government is about.

"Electability" as a factor in the above? That is what beauty pagents are about.

I am angered by the outcome of the 2000 election as much as anybody who has taken the time to comment on the good Professors musings. But I am also willing to honor the strength of belief in both Mr. Nader, and those who chose to vote for him.

The message from Democrats to Greens is a simple one: This is a winner-take-all race. The prizes for second and third place are exactly the same, and we're better off working together to select and elect a president than allowing a plurality of Republicans to divide and conquer us.

I'm a Dean supporter, and it's increasingly apparent that my preferred candidate will not be the Democrats' nominee this year -- but I recognize that supporting the Democratic nominee is still my best option. Writing in Dean's name will only assist Bush, and if I wanted to do that I could just vote for him directly. A Democrat will be more likely to enact Dean's issues and policies, and be a more effective representative of my interests.

Coalitions exist for a reason. If Nader and his supporters want to stand on principle, go down in flames, and be shut out of government entirely -- again -- then by all means, do your thing: We can watch from the sidelines together as a Republican Congress rams through legislation that's horrifying to both our parties. But if you can see even one iota of difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, and have any sense that one of these parties may look out for your interests better than the other, then it's time to join forces and work together to achieve our mutual goals.

Scott Forbes: "Coalitions exist for a reason."

Yes, the reason in point is that Nader does have a fairly large number of supporters.

But the way to build a coalition is not to just tell the smaller group to drop dead and fork over those votes, or else.

The fair and reasonable way to do it would be to talk about exactly what the Democrats are ready to give back in return. Nader for President might be unreasonable. But Nader in John Ashcroft's seat, going after big corporations in a big way? Would that be too much to ask for in return for having "Nader with us"?

The discussion here is binary, run or not run. What was that name for a binary thinker again? That's not the way to build a coalition. And it certainly won't help to get Nader's supporters on board.

Well, at least that flash animation said "please". That doesn't offer anything substantial, but (contrary to many other statements on the issue) it doesn't offend the people you want to win over for the Democrats.

Karl-Friedrich Lenz said:

The fair and reasonable way to do it would be to talk about exactly what the Democrats are ready to give back in return. Nader for President might be unreasonable. But Nader in John Ashcroft’s seat, going after big corporations in a big way? Would that be too much to ask for in return for having “Nader with us”?

KERRY/NADER 2004 has a nice ring to it.

Nader isn't trying to build a third party. If he were, he would have actually joined the Greens--but he didn't. If he were, he might have competed for the Green Party nomination this year--but he knew he was unlikely to get the nomination, so he dropped out.

Why is Ralph Nader determined to make a Lone Ranger run for the president? Why doesn't he get behind the eventual Green Party nominee? If he were to do that, there'd be a case that he's acting in a principled manner--but he isn't.

Why is Ralph Nader's ego so important to him? Why should it matter at all to me?

As to Kallah's complaint:

The far right wing moved in on the Republican Party, which is now their party. They didn't piss and moan about, "Oh, why don't you support the Constitution Party?"--instead, they turned the Republican Party into the Constitution Party.

The left could learn from their example.

No, that's not true--let me rephrase it: The left would benefit by learning from their example, but leftists don't seem able to do so. Ego, I think.

The Green Party has shown incredible incompetence and stupidity in hitching its wagon to a star named Nader. Twice they gave him their nomination, and twice he failed to focus on building the party. The idiocy of trying to build a bottom-up party from the top down is now obvious.

If the Greens can get it together to compete on a local level--they can't even win a city election in San Francisco, in no small part because of the stupidity of Gonzales' last-minute entry into the race and the potential allies this alienated--then they can talk about running for the presidency.

I put a lot of my hopes the last fifteen years into the Green Party. They've failed.

It's time to build the Democratic Party back into the party of Roosevelt and Johnson, the party of the New Deal and the Great Society.

Re: the comment on voting systems

EXACTLY! The problem here is not with Nader or Ross Perot 'deciding' elections, but rather with the system of voting. We need to adopt a system where people can vote for their favorite candidate without fear of being a spoiler. The system we have is broken - people are so scared of the Nader effect that elections are now being decided by 'electability', rather than candidate positions on issues.

I strongly advocate the adoption of 'instant runoff' voting. It works by allowing you to specify which candidates get your vote, and in what order. If your first choice (say, Nader) is defeated, your vote then gets counted toward your second choice (say, Gore). No more election spoilers, no more Supreme Court picking a winner, no more Nader Traders, and maybe (just maybe) a bit less flaming on the Professor's blog!

Read about instant runoff voting at http://www.fairvote.org/irv/, it may be coming to a city near you soon!

As the anti-Nader flash pointed out, the 2000 presidential election was the closest in history. Any time you have an election that close, any minor change could have tipped it one way or the other. You can blame Nader, but you can just as easily blame any other of hundreds of factors.

Statistically, it's unlikely that the next election will be so close. That's because there is no systematic mechanism to drive elections to tend to be very close to 50-50. It's a somewhat random distribution, and as the site points out, they usually are not that close. Having two elections in a row as close as the one in 2000 would be like winning the lottery on two consecutive days.

Therefore, it's unlikely that Nader's candidacy will make the kind of difference that it (along with many other factors) arguably made in 2000. The 2004 election will probably not be so close, and the presence of one or more additional candidates won't tip the election one way or the other. Nader should not be discouraged from running solely on the grounds that in a rare and unusual circumstance, it could have a negative consequence.

Hi Larry. I won't identify myself here, but I'm someone you know vaguely; I've reviewed your books and been generally impressed.

I'm less impressed now. The candidacies of which of these two people is likely to take more voters away from [presumably Kerry] in November 2004:

a) Ralph Nader
b) George Bush

So, uh, why aren't you urging Bush not to run? He's much more likely to make [Kerry] lose the election.

You know or should know that one of the most broken things about our electoral system is the fact that there are only two parties. Other countries manage, somehow, to have 3, 4 or 5 effective and powerful major parties, that are much more inclusive of the electorate's viewpoints than 2 parties ever will be. In a race between Kerry and Bush, both candidates support war against Iraq, the death penalty, institutionalized discrimination against gays.... the list goes on and on. What about people who want to vote for a candidate that has some different views? I assure you that your belief that all the Nader-voters will "fall in line" and vote for Kerry is wrong - I know that my spouse, for one, will never vote for a death-penalty supporter - she'll tear her ballot up first.

Larry, you should be spending your time and typing on advocating a better electoral system, not bashing people who dare to do the best they can with the one we've got. Code is law, but law is law, too, and in this case the law of our electoral system is causing the result you decry, not the people who participate in it.

eric a says: "Have you looked at federal spending lately, under the Republican Chief Exec and Congress? Virtually all areas are increased, and new entitlements added. The GOP has become the Great Society party."

It's not the amount of spending that's important, it's how the spending is allocated.

These media clips do a pretty good job of demonstrating how Green positions differ from those of the Democrats, which help explain why the Greens won't back down, and will run someone even if it isn't Nader (David Cobb, presently leading their race, promises a "safe states only" strategy, indicating some Greens do prefer that).

On this particular issue, there is a MP3 debate between Norman Solomon and Peter Camejo which covers the ground well. Larry, if you're going to talk about this, you should know what the positions are, and why people take them. It's ill informed to just cite Democrat shill sites.

Also Medea Benjamin debating Richard Perle about Iraq on PBS is worth listening to. It gives you an idea of how someone seriously debates the issue, rather than flailing all around it as the Democrats do.

Nader nominated to the Supreme Court would make for a fine Senate hearing. He'd have more on the Senators than they have on him! It would rule. Best TV since Clarence Thomas.

Adamsj, I wonder if you know the law. There is no need to "get the consititution amended for reforms like “multi-member bioregional districts” because it already allows them. As you yourself note: "Multimember districts can be used for gerrymandering. The recent redistricting plan here in Georgia was recently struck down, in part on exactly this question." The solution is NOT to fall back to single-member first-past-the-post districts with all their well known problems (including, still, gerrymandering) but is to require a more objective means of border-setting, that being, boards of ecologists setting up bioregional borders based on ecological criteria (there is now a nice map of all the world's ecoregions, and watershed lines can serve as default rural boundaries, water and sewage and transit system lines can serve as default city bioregions). It isn't "the constitution" that needs to change. It's the rules for redistricting.

With adequate criteria for redistricting, requiring all borders to become more ecologically sane over time, no gerrymandering is possible. And, politicians are forced to identify with, and cooperate regafding the management of, something objectively real, which is, the ecosystem they live in.

Look at the Waterkeepers and Riverkeepers. Look at all the conservation organizations. They ALL organize by watersheds, riversheds, bioregions. The borders are very well known and as nearly objective as you will ever get.

Adamsj, I think literally everything you have said here has some serious confusion in it, and you must rethink your views.

As for the Green vs. independent thing, there's an equally long list of good reasons for Nader to run independent. It's a good cop bad cop thing, letting the Green (maybe David Cobb or Peter Camejo) play nice and not campaign in safe states - leaving those (and "the blame") to Nader.

More candidates also increases the odds of a hung election, which is good, as it discredits the whole US electoral system - as if Florida and Diebold weren't enough!

What do you want to bet that the Democrats, at all levels, start pushing for Instant Runoff Voting this year? Do you seriously believe they would be talking about this if not for this kind of vote-splitting challenge? No way.

These candidacies will end the split-vote problem once and for all, and put all "progressives" (and for that matter all "conservatives") on the same side, and signal clearly to candidates when they are first vs. second place choices (which has major implications for the policies they implement, look at Australian politics).

In a mass media culture, also, there's no way to build any party "bottom up" without having it smashed from the top down. So it's absolutely necessary to have a mass media national and big state governorship campaign. Peter Camejo made Matt Gonzalez's 47% possible. It's obvious that Matt would have won, if the Democrats hadn't specifically poured in cash and names (both Clinton and Gore showed up to help Newsom). So if nothing else, this is fair revenge for that top-down squashing of a bottom-up movement for real change in a big city. DEATH to the Democratic Party. It's time to END it.

This stuff just has to happen about every 150 years...

Make A Deal says:

Adamsj, I wonder if you know the law. There is no need to “get the consititution amended for reforms like “multi-member bioregional districts” because it already allows them. As you yourself note: “Multimember districts can be used for gerrymandering. The recent redistricting plan here in Georgia was recently struck down, in part on exactly this question.”

The redistricting plan to which I referred was for the Georgia State House, not Georgia's federal representatives.

You are correct that the constitution does not specifically require single-member districts; however, the principle of "one person, one vote" rests on firm constitutional ground, and multi-member districts violate that principle.

I mentioned this example of your proposed reforms because it is both constitutionally suspect and anti-democratic.

The solution is NOT to fall back to single-member first-past-the-post districts with all their well known problems (including, still, gerrymandering) but is to require a more objective means of border-setting, that being, boards of ecologists setting up bioregional borders based on ecological criteria (there is now a nice map of all the world’s ecoregions, and watershed lines can serve as default rural boundaries, water and sewage and transit system lines can serve as default city bioregions).

In other words, you want gerrymandering, but you want it to be done on Green principles. You make no allowance for preventing the dilution of minority voiting. Again, like so much Green ideology, this is an anti-democratic proposal.

Take this together with your multi-member districts, and I think I can give you an all-white southern Congressional delegation.

Adamsj, I think literally everything you have said here has some serious confusion in it, and you must rethink your views.

Rethinking my views is what caused me to abandon the Green Party. It was not an easy or a pleasant decision to break with friends and allies of many, many years. It was the right decision, though, and I'm sticking with it.

“what goals have the Greens acheived by running Nader?”???!!?!!

We’re TALKING about them, aren’t we?

The politics of attracting attention--gawd! Aren't we past that by now?

unlikely allies - by letting fascism run its course as far as it has, unlikely allies like Jim Jeffords or Pat Buchanan, then even less likely ones like Paul O’Neill, maybe Colin Powell eventually, emerge.

This is one of the sillier sentences I've read this week. Jeffords allied with the Democrats, not the Greens. Paul O'Neill is one of those corporate power-brokers you say we should oppose. Pat Buchanan? I'm supposed to want an ally against "fascism" who idolizes Francisco Franco?

Building a party is entirely different from finding allies. There's a tension betwen the two.

I have personal bitter experience with a local Green effort to ally with the far right against the middle. The far right won. The Greens lost.

What do you want to bet that the Democrats, at all levels, start pushing for Instant Runoff Voting this year? Do you seriously believe they would be talking about this if not for this kind of vote-splitting challenge? No way.

Show your real name and put quantifable terms on what you mean by "pushing". If your quantification is in any way realistic (which I doubt), I'll bet a hundred bucks on it. In fact, I'll cover your action and go you one more--double or nothing on the same bet in 2006.

The Flash production is also quite wrong. I've tried to disscuss this with those that run the site but they refuse to even consider they have made an error.

The supposed facts they present are incorrect and the analysis is wrong. Even the DLC studies, and public statements, say that if the 2000 election was a two candidate race GB would have WON by 1% of the popular vote (remember he lost the popular vote).

Some people refuse to see that in elections you just can add a+b=c.

Adamsj, if you don't recognize that an ecologist makes his decisions about borders in a way that is objectively "fair", then, you are not and never were a Green. If you wish to achieve minority representation, you can do that by various means including the German-style proportional scheme which lets under-represented parties send members to the house based on popular vote. It is not a solution to carve up something real and alive, like a watershed, or which has a unified infrastructure which must be run the same way all over town to work, like a city. There is just as much violation of "one member one vote" in the First Past The Post mess as in any multi-member scheme.

If you really think that ecologically defined multimember districts would yield an all-white Southern delegation then the only reasonable answer is 1. new parties that put Blacks first in line for office 2. social change that isn't part of the political system.

All democracies on this planet have rejected the idea that "one person one vote" necessarily implies single member districts. The other three democracies that still use it, being Canada, the UK and India, ALL have active investigations of how to get rid of it. NO ONE in ANY of those countries says it violates "one person one vote" to have some non-FPTP system. So your statement is profound stupidity, and if some court ruled that, then, they simply share your stupidity here.

As for fascists being allies, you have to ask how they become fascists - by seeing power abused and concluding that it can only be abused. Rather like you have concluded that a room full of ecologists will gerrymander the way that a room full of Democrats or Republicans would.

Then you demand people's names. Why? To report to Homeland Security? Identity is irrelevant. Why enable ad hominem argument? Using your body-name on the net just gets it picked up and thrown around by liars. A real bad idea. In five years we'll never sign our name to anything. Note: neither did the authors of the Federalist Papers. But I reserve total contempt for this revolting belief of yours:

Your extreme obscenity that ecological borders are somehow only a big-G Green idea, that they have no more reality than the absurd district borders lied up by criminals of the Big Two, would make you an absolute laughingstock in any biology or earth sciences department on Earth, in any language, in any country. Walk in with the maps produced by the Democrats and Republicans, and try to justify those choices of borders in a debate with any grad student, you'll find they know what they are talking about, and you don't. It's an objective map they have, and nonsense you have. Same story in a room full of farmers. Kick out all the Greens from the room first if you want. You'll get the same result.

I repeat, your entire map of reality is wrong, adamsj. You don't know what a party is, or is for. You don't know how to choose allies, or enemies. You don't know what "one person one vote" means, and probably not what "person" means either.

Finally, if in fact black communities have so little economic and political power that they cannot gain access to even one seat in a multimember district system in the South, then, it is clear that they have no political power whatsoever. In that case it would be far better to send the real power brokers to Washington DC to cut real deals, which they could make stick, than it would be to send a few token blacks to make speeches. Your ignorance of the history here is significant: when Houston was redistricted, Barbara Jordan lost her safe seat in favour of a "community leader" who was her inferior in all respects, because he was a Democratic Party player. She had to rebuild her constituency several times in her career, at Texas and Federal levels, each time dealing with different borders. If a black woman could do that in the 60s through 80s, then, it seems hardly unreasonable to disbelieve your dismissive assertions of an "all white Congressional delegation" from the South as a consequence of multi-member urban districts. Surely one black member could muster enough support in oh say Houston to send their best to Washington? Especially with an instant runoff ballot with all choices ranked, like they use in Australia.

There's no point teaching you all of political history, adamsj. You just don't get it, and, it's a good thing you're no longer a Green. We work hard to identify clowns like you and send you off to destroy the enemy with your wrongheaded beliefs.

I bet you make three Greens every time you speak up for a Democrat. And that's just the kind of help we need.

adamsj: If you think you can repair the Democrats from within, I encourage you to detail how this would be done. When I take a look at how Kucinich is doing I see someone who is largely politically compatible with Nader but running from within the Democratic Party. Not only is he doing poorly, the mainstream media dismisses him whenever they can't ignore him (like Ted Koppel did in the ABC-sponsored Democratic Party debate last year; Kucinich's response to Koppel got a huge response for pointing out that this is where big media takes politics). I find it hard to believe that the DLC would tolerate Nader running as a Democrat; I think it's far more likely that the DLC would do whatever they could to narrow the field so Nader was not a candidate for long.

Power concedes nothing without a demand, says Frederick Douglass. The Democrats have absolutely no reason to change their Republican-lite ways without competition. And much of the corporate media and so-called progressive media is echoing their sentiment aimed at marginalizing Nader without examining his message (charges of ego-stroking are quite common). Right now, there is very little challenging the Democrats to either change their politics that cause them to lose voters or stop complaining about those voters who want to vote for someone who doesn't champion Republican policies. The Democrats make no effort to reach out to Nader voters; the Democrats apparently believe they can convince through shouting down anyone who wants to discuss the issues Nader brings up. It won't surprise me to see the Democrats use their considerable power to exclude all but the Republicans from the TV debates. Just like they did in 2000.

Isn't the real question here - why isn't Gore president if this country really values one person, one vote.

GORE WON! - wtf?