The Green Party NY candidates Howie Hawkins for Governor and Gloria Mattera for Lt. Governor urged the NYC Charter Commission to include preferential voting – also known as Instant Runoff Voting – for all single member elections.

The Greens also urged the Charter Commission to adopt proportional representation for City Council elections. Proposal representation, the election system used by almost all of the world’s democracies, allocates seats in legislative bodies based on the percentage of votes that each party represents. The Greens said proportional representation would be far more democratic than Bloomberg’s push for non-partisan elections. While the Greens would benefit from non-partisan elections, since the Greens win about a third of the non-partisan elections they enter nationwide, they also said that in NYC it would greatly benefit rich, self-financed candidates like Bloomberg. The three current Green Party Mayors in New York were elected in nonpartisan village elections.

“Despite what we are taught in school, our present system of winner-take-all (plurality) elections actually makes the US once of the least democratic democracies in the world,” said Gloria Mattera, a Park Slope resident who is the Green Party candidate for Lt. Governor.

Continue reading Greens Call for IRV, Proportional Representation Voting for NYC at Howie Hawkins for Governor.

Disgruntled California voters have blown up their election system by approving Proposition 14, which tosses out the current political party-based primary system in all but presidential races.

With 48 percent of precincts statewide reported, the measure was ahead with 57 percent of voters in favor of it and 43 percent against.

Although results were not official, California’s main and minor political parties were already talking about a strategy to file a lawsuit against Proposition 14, Cres Velluci, Green Party state press secretary, said late Tuesday night.

Backed strongly by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Proposition 14 calls for a new “open” primary, in which all candidates for an office – except those in presidential primaries – appear on a ballot given to voters regardless of party registration.

Under the system — which Washington state has already adopted — the top-two vote getters who emerge from a primary square off in a general election, even if they are from the same political party.

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