"A victory for Bernie Sanders is a win for Democrats," Dean said in a telephone interview Monday.
Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., announced last month he would not seek re-election, clearing the way for what's expected to be a crowded race in fall 2006.
Under a fair, equitable, and democratic system of voting, Al Gore would have been elected president in 2000, and George W. Bush would still be whacking weeds in Crawford. In 2004, even though Bush won the popular vote by some 3 million ballots, the election was still tarnished. Florida replayed its 2000 debacle with attempts to purge African-American voters from the rolls, and voters who requested absentee ballots but never received them were barred from voting in person.
There were hundreds of complaints of voting irregularities in Ohio, with voters in some black precincts waiting in lines at polling places for seven hours because of voting-machine shortages. Some voters were required to show identification, even though the demand was illegal. Approximately 92,000 ballots failed to record a vote for president, most of them on the same type of discredited punch-card systems that malfunctioned in Florida in 2000. Ohio election officials may have improperly disqualified thousands of the 155,000 provisional ballots cast. Bush won the state — and thus the presidency — by 118,000 votes.
When elections are unfair, the environment loses. While polls show that large majorities of the American public favor strong environmental protections, those aspirations are routinely frustrated by a flawed voting system. In San Diego last November, environmental write-in candidate Donna Frye won the most votes for mayor, but lost on a technicality when the clear intent of some 5,000 write-in voters was ignored. (The decision is being appealed; see "Profile,")
In Washington State, after Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi claimed victory, it took a hand recount to find that more than 700 absentee votes had been ignored. When all the votes were counted, Sierra ClubĂendorsed Democrat Christine Gregoire was declared the victor by 129 votes. And as long as the winner-take-all system remains intact, the Green Party is doomed to retain the role of spoiler instead of electoral leader for environmental issues.
We don't have to quietly accept the status quo. Here are ten ways we could dramatically improve our electoral system. None is officially endorsed by the Sierra Club, but all are worthy of bipartisan consideration. Some could be implemented at county or state levels, and some are more readily achievable than others. All have the same end: to expand the franchise, and make sure that every vote is counted.
Conservatives have long warned us that someday the commissars of political correctness are going to take over in Washington and impose their opinions on us with our own tax dollars. What they didn’t tell us is that they would become those commissars, and that their politically correct orthodoxy would be the Republican Party line—as they are now proving at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
With all the subtlety of an old-style Soviet bureaucrat, C.P.B. chairman Kenneth Tomlinson is extending partisan political control over public television. As a former Reader’s Digest editor and Republican appointee, Mr. Tomlinson clearly understands what he was appointed to do.
