Category Politics

Dec 11 2018

Spoiler Alert

 

We’ve come some distance from where we started. The destination has none of the trappings advertised and, it seems, we are nowhere near the place we were promised to be. This was not in the brochure.

With the CD 2 race breaking records for the amount of money spent, Mainers are wondering, while standing knee deep in all the residual left over from campaign mud slinging, why they find themselves burdened with more of everything that RCV promised to eliminate. The grandiose, Utopian promise of a kinder, gentler, majority approved, and fiscally spartan campaigns have proven to be as fraudulent as the “everyone-gets-a-trophy” voting platform it’s built on. But when have Utopian promises ever come true?

The fundamental premise of RCV is flawed and its genesis is suspect at best. The idea that any other candidate then the two major party candidates are spoiler candidates is bereft of any respect for the right of the individual. Furthermore, the idea that there should only be two final choices flies in the face of the tenets of our Republic, which promises that any person who qualifies may aspire to public office. RCV smacks of old world European socialism, which grants the people opportunity to chose between two government sanctioned parties.

The frustration with “spoiler candidates” is not new. Republicans were livid with Ross Perot for what they perceived was a sabotage to President George H.W. Bush’s second term and paved the way for the Clinton machine. No matter what side of the political divide cries foul, the Republic has always afforded an avenue for all voices to call for power and that the candidate who emerges from the din with a majority, of whatever variety, wins.

Maine has even had a spoiler candidate for a Governor. Angus King somehow emerged from the shrouds of spoilage to gain the plurality of votes. With Governor King, for this conservative, the temptation to try and deligitimize a duly elected official based on the current political climate is real, but in fairness, that’s left to a Trump crazed media and…Ranked Choice Voting.

Its still more than ironic that those who decry the challenges to RCV as an assault on the voter’s confidence in the voting process spent millions in an effort to erode the voter’s confidence in the voting process in order to pass RCV. One person one vote, its that simple. Giving a little child an unearned trophy to take away the sting of losing is a bad way to raise children and an even worse way to elect our government.

By Andy Torbett

Dec 5 2018

Truth Be Told

“I suppose it’s a fake majority, but it’s also all that’s required,” University of Maine law professor Dmitry Bam said, adding that in the final round of tallying in a ranked-choice contest, the winning candidate does not have to receive a majority to win. Ultimately, he said, RCV is ‘still a plurality system.’”

Nov 27 2018

Impossible RCV

IMPOSSIBLE RCV: SoS claims Golden gains
604 votes from less than 562 ballots?
The numbers just don’t add up
AUGUSTA – The latest explanation from the Democrat Secretary of State about “newly found” ballots, just discovered on the eve of the 2nd Congressional District recount deadline, does not seem to add up.
The SoS claims approximately 600 new Ranked-Choice Voting votes have appeared for Jared Golden, stating they were gained from newly found ballots cast by people using a special machine only for voters with disabilities in six towns.
We now have the list of towns these ballots were from:
Monroe, Blue Hill, Otis, Van Buren, Mars Hill and part of Brewer.
Using the Bangor Daily News election results, we can see at most that there were only 562 votes cast for Tiffany Bond and Will Hoar in those municipalities if you include ALL of Brewer’s votes, not just part.
Monroe
Bond: 35
Hoar: 8
Blue Hill
Bond: 70
Hoar: 35
Otis:
Bond: 14
Hoar: 10
Van Buren
Bond: 42
Hoar: 18
Mars Hill
Bond: 31
Hoar: 9
Brewer (Entire City totals, not just the “part” that Sec. of State is dealing with)
Bond: 199
Hoar: 91
Forget about the fact that we already witnessed a ranked-choice retabulation that showed us that about 35% of Bond and Hoar voters didn’t rank Golden or Poliquin at all.
Forget about the fact that we already witnessed a ranked-choice re-tabulation that showed Congressman Bruce Poliquin picking up some votes from Bond and Hoar voters.
Forget all that and ask yourself, how could 562 Bond and Hoar “First Choice” ballots turn into 604 votes for Golden?
This process is broken. We still do not have the full story.
Assuming the same rates we saw in the official, publicly transparent RCV retabulation, one could estimate that about 2,400 new ballots would be required to see Jared Golden gain 600 more votes.
And now we are told that some number of ballots less than 562 have given Jared Golden 604 more votes.
Nov 13 2018

The Maine Way

 

Bruce Poliquin has won reelection to Congress to represent CD 2 by 2,000 votes. In the realms of sanity and fairness, that would be the headline, but once again, forces from outside CD 2 have conspired to work against the wishes of the voters in this District. The cycle of southern liberal arrogance continues.

Ranked Choice Voting was created to insure that Republicans would never be elected again. Southern liberals have been constantly frustrated with the conservative vote in Northern Maine. The voting block leans right so, in the minds of the political elites, rural Maine doesn’t vote the “right” way. So, how do overcome the obvious intellectual deficits of northern hicks, those lovable, quaint, and post card worthy but not vote worthy backwoods Mainers?

So convinced of their intellectual superiority, liberals have simply awarded themselves extra votes. If the Democrats can’t win the first time, it just wasn’t fair, so they will add in the votes of their stealth democrat candidates, a.k.a. Independents. Extra votes, do-over votes, everybody-gets-a-win-as-long-as their not Republican votes, and Democrats can now say not only do they have 3 campaign dollars to every one Republican dollar, but also, 3 votes per Democrat voter to every one vote per Republican.

The voters of CD 2 voted against RCV by 20,000 votes but it narrowly passed because of its support in CD 1. So which District supports Ranked Choice voting? Certainly, not the Second Congressional District!

But the majority will of the voters for the First Congressional District (RCV)will now be used to circumvent the majority will of the voters of the Second Congressional District, who have given Bruce Poliquin the victory to represent them in Washington. The voters in CD 2 voted against do-over, twosies, and threesies votes, but CD 1 has overruled rural Maine and demanded we vote and vote again until we get it “right”. In other words, voting the Southern Maine Way is all we have Left.

-Andy Torbett