5 ms·

Despite the claim that this isn't political, it's very difficult not to see this in light of the fact that Seattle's city council has the only elected Marxist i

Despite the claim that this isn't political, it's very difficult not to see this in light of the fact that Seattle's city council has the only elected Marxist in the U.S. Kshama Sawant fought for the $15 minimum wage, the Amazon tax, numerous renters' rights protections, a ban on police use of chemical weapons against protestors, and is now continuing the fight for rent control. She's currently facing a right-wing recall campaign because big business was unable to defeat her in the 2019 election, despite Amazon dumping $1.5 million into various races for citywide office. A few here have remarked that approval voting tends to select more "moderate" candidates over "extremes." This isn't a neutral preference, it's obviously ideological, and targeted at one specific legislator in Seattle. Voters should reject this measure as a transparent attack on the most effective and sincere fighter for working people in the country. Full disclosure, Kshama and I are both members of Socialist Alternative. I may be limited in my ability to respond today, as I'm rushing right after work to a volunteer shift to make sure she stays in office. I'll try my best to check in occasionally!

deleted 5y ago
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TulliusCicero 5y ago
This seems like a bit of a hot take. Are the people behind this initiative connected to conservative or anti-Sawant organizations?
- abeyer 5y ago
  Sawant and her supporters have had a pretty loose relationship with the truth in general, so I wouldn't put too much stock in that. It seems far more likely that if it's specifically in response to recent events that it's actually the fact that "conservative" (by Seattle standards, where we just elected the first republican in 30 years to a city office) candidates did quite well in the Nov elections where they were running against far left candidates and had squeezed out any more moderate voices in the primaries.
  - pagibson 5y ago
    That's a reasonable point, Ann Davison's victory could definitely be a factor as well. And I don't know much about the background of the petitioners here; I think it's likely they're sincere in their belief in the same way that the original recall petitioner probably is. That doesn't change the fact that big business in Seattle would love to see Kshama out of office, and if she survives her recall and this initiative gains traction, I'm confident they'd throw their resources behind it to get another bite at the apple. With the exception of Sawant, they have a city government that works for them, and I think they'd prefer the middle path to rocking the boat in either direction.
    - TulliusCicero 5y ago
      We shouldn't reject an otherwise-good improvement to the voting system just because one current politician might be negatively impacted.
  - troydavis 5y ago
    > It seems far more likely that if it's specifically in response to recent events I can answer this conclusively: it's not a response to any single election or event. We've been working on this for almost 2 years. Here's a tweet from June 2020: https://twitter.com/SeattleApproves/status/1277699381756452864 https://twitter.com/SeattleApproves/status/12776993817564528... As we all say, correlation is not causality, but more practically, it's impossible to announce an initiative that addresses a real problem without it seeming related to something recent :-) Until the prior election is done, no one cares, and yet signature-gathering deadlines basically require starting as soon as that election ends. (AMA about running an initiative, particularly one that doesn't have an enemy - that is, we're not trying to "Move the goalposts" towards or against any viewpoint. That's incredibly valuable (IMO!) and quite rare, but also means the typical you're-with-us-or-against-us fundraising and voter pitches don't apply. "You're with us if you support representative democracy" requires a different campaign plan targeted at people and organizations who support systems and incentives, not only candidates and positions, and who put their own preferences second to the will of the voters.)
plandis 5y ago
> most effective and sincere Those are not adjectives that I think the majority of people would ascribe to Sawant.
godelski 5y ago
> $15 minimum wage, the Amazon tax, numerous renters' rights protections, a ban on police use of chemical weapons against protestors, and is now continuing the fight for rent control. As a moderate, are these extremist ideals now?
troydavis 5y ago
Sorry for the late response. I wasn't on HN yesterday. Regarding: > This isn't a neutral preference, it's obviously ideological, and targeted at one specific legislator in Seattle. Voters should reject this measure as a transparent attack on the most effective and sincere fighter for working people in the country. This isn't ideological in any way, and it's not targeted at anyone. When I said it was non-partisan and candidate-neutral, it's really that simple. It's non-partisan and candidate-neutral. Consistent with HN guidelines, I'd ask first for an assumption of good faith. Beyond that, I can give some practical comments: 1. Our group of volunteers includes a huge range of political beliefs. There is no "one" opinion that the group could try to target even if we wanted to. The shared belief is that leaders reflect public opinion as accurately as possible. 2. This doesn't help or harm anyone. Rather, think of the current system like a grocery store where, each time you walk in, the prices on every item have doubled or halved. No one wins today: one entity (sellers/candidates) has no idea what their real support is and the other entity (buyers/voters) has to cobble together ingredients for dinner. That wouldn't be good for the dairy people and bad for the fish people, it's bad for all sellers/candidates and all buyers/voters. Our flawed system doesn't help anyone. Imagine a system where every voter could express their whole opinion, without feeling like they were throwing away their vote. Every election becomes a simple measure of how many voters approve of each candidate. 3. Just practically, no one's job - politician or otherwise - is worth a year or two of my life. It violates the "The sun doesn't revolve around any of us" theorem :-) Heck, even if I got to personally pick every Seattle legislator, I wouldn't put in this much effort. I don't care anywhere near enough. The thing I care about, and the only thing that's worth this much effort, is a system that delivers whatever voters want. PS: I would welcome your help making this happen! That's how much I mean it when I say this is candidate-neutral and we welcome everyone. As volunteers, our political preferences vary widely. Our commitment is to elect winners which best reflect voters' opinions (democracy), whether or not they match any of ours.
- pagibson 5y ago
  Hey Troy, I appreciate the response! I buy that you aren't motivated by this one city council position in particular. But we can't escape the fact that every policy decision exists in our particular reality and has material effects. There's no such thing as an ideologically-neutral electoral system, of all things, because a change in system will select different candidates from the actual pool of existing candidates or types of candidates. Wealthy elites don't care what policy choices are optimal in terms of some abstract desiderata[1], they push for the policies that will be best for them materially. Working people need to understand that and behave the same way. To take a different example: Republicans in the U.S. push for voter ID laws because they favor Republican election outcomes. This is pretty well understood. A voter ID law appears on its face ideologically neutral. It still is meant to bring about a certain outcome, and should be fought on the basis of that outcome. It doesn't even matter if somebody pushing the legislation has a different intention, even a noble one! --- [1] Incidentally, I'm not really sure how well AV even meets those desiderata. For example, does a non-Condorcet system really reflect voters' preferences most accurately? Later-no-harm is another criteria that comes to mind. I'm skeptical of the claim that AV is really "more reflective" in some objective sense than FPTP.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

TulliusCicero 5y ago

This seems like a bit of a hot take. Are the people behind this initiative connected to conservative or anti-Sawant organizations?

abeyer 5y ago
Sawant and her supporters have had a pretty loose relationship with the truth in general, so I wouldn't put too much stock in that. It seems far more likely that if it's specifically in response to recent events that it's actually the fact that "conservative" (by Seattle standards, where we just elected the first republican in 30 years to a city office) candidates did quite well in the Nov elections where they were running against far left candidates and had squeezed out any more moderate voices in the primaries.
- pagibson 5y ago
  That's a reasonable point, Ann Davison's victory could definitely be a factor as well. And I don't know much about the background of the petitioners here; I think it's likely they're sincere in their belief in the same way that the original recall petitioner probably is. That doesn't change the fact that big business in Seattle would love to see Kshama out of office, and if she survives her recall and this initiative gains traction, I'm confident they'd throw their resources behind it to get another bite at the apple. With the exception of Sawant, they have a city government that works for them, and I think they'd prefer the middle path to rocking the boat in either direction.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    We shouldn't reject an otherwise-good improvement to the voting system just because one current politician might be negatively impacted.
- troydavis 5y ago
  > It seems far more likely that if it's specifically in response to recent events I can answer this conclusively: it's not a response to any single election or event. We've been working on this for almost 2 years. Here's a tweet from June 2020: https://twitter.com/SeattleApproves/status/1277699381756452864 https://twitter.com/SeattleApproves/status/12776993817564528... As we all say, correlation is not causality, but more practically, it's impossible to announce an initiative that addresses a real problem without it seeming related to something recent :-) Until the prior election is done, no one cares, and yet signature-gathering deadlines basically require starting as soon as that election ends. (AMA about running an initiative, particularly one that doesn't have an enemy - that is, we're not trying to "Move the goalposts" towards or against any viewpoint. That's incredibly valuable (IMO!) and quite rare, but also means the typical you're-with-us-or-against-us fundraising and voter pitches don't apply. "You're with us if you support representative democracy" requires a different campaign plan targeted at people and organizations who support systems and incentives, not only candidates and positions, and who put their own preferences second to the will of the voters.)

plandis 5y ago

> most effective and sincere Those are not adjectives that I think the majority of people would ascribe to Sawant.

godelski 5y ago

> $15 minimum wage, the Amazon tax, numerous renters' rights protections, a ban on police use of chemical weapons against protestors, and is now continuing the fight for rent control. As a moderate, are these extremist ideals now?

troydavis 5y ago

Sorry for the late response. I wasn't on HN yesterday. Regarding: > This isn't a neutral preference, it's obviously ideological, and targeted at one specific legislator in Seattle. Voters should reject this measure as a transparent attack on the most effective and sincere fighter for working people in the country. This isn't ideological in any way, and it's not targeted at anyone. When I said it was non-partisan and candidate-neutral, it's really that simple. It's non-partisan and candidate-neutral. Consistent with HN guidelines, I'd ask first for an assumption of good faith. Beyond that, I can give some practical comments: 1. Our group of volunteers includes a huge range of political beliefs. There is no "one" opinion that the group could try to target even if we wanted to. The shared belief is that leaders reflect public opinion as accurately as possible. 2. This doesn't help or harm anyone. Rather, think of the current system like a grocery store where, each time you walk in, the prices on every item have doubled or halved. No one wins today: one entity (sellers/candidates) has no idea what their real support is and the other entity (buyers/voters) has to cobble together ingredients for dinner. That wouldn't be good for the dairy people and bad for the fish people, it's bad for all sellers/candidates and all buyers/voters. Our flawed system doesn't help anyone. Imagine a system where every voter could express their whole opinion, without feeling like they were throwing away their vote. Every election becomes a simple measure of how many voters approve of each candidate. 3. Just practically, no one's job - politician or otherwise - is worth a year or two of my life. It violates the "The sun doesn't revolve around any of us" theorem :-) Heck, even if I got to personally pick every Seattle legislator, I wouldn't put in this much effort. I don't care anywhere near enough. The thing I care about, and the only thing that's worth this much effort, is a system that delivers whatever voters want. PS: I would welcome your help making this happen! That's how much I mean it when I say this is candidate-neutral and we welcome everyone. As volunteers, our political preferences vary widely. Our commitment is to elect winners which best reflect voters' opinions (democracy), whether or not they match any of ours.

pagibson 5y ago
Hey Troy, I appreciate the response! I buy that you aren't motivated by this one city council position in particular. But we can't escape the fact that every policy decision exists in our particular reality and has material effects. There's no such thing as an ideologically-neutral electoral system, of all things, because a change in system will select different candidates from the actual pool of existing candidates or types of candidates. Wealthy elites don't care what policy choices are optimal in terms of some abstract desiderata[1], they push for the policies that will be best for them materially. Working people need to understand that and behave the same way. To take a different example: Republicans in the U.S. push for voter ID laws because they favor Republican election outcomes. This is pretty well understood. A voter ID law appears on its face ideologically neutral. It still is meant to bring about a certain outcome, and should be fought on the basis of that outcome. It doesn't even matter if somebody pushing the legislation has a different intention, even a noble one! --- [1] Incidentally, I'm not really sure how well AV even meets those desiderata. For example, does a non-Condorcet system really reflect voters' preferences most accurately? Later-no-harm is another criteria that comes to mind. I'm skeptical of the claim that AV is really "more reflective" in some objective sense than FPTP.