Frequent national blogosphere usual suspect, Next Hurrah front pager and GMD regular Kagro X has attained the lefty blogosphere holy-of-holies, as he has just been named by Kos to be one of the Daily Kos frontpagers for 2007.

Congratulations on the lofty perch, the groupies, the fame, fortune and derision-to-come from the wingers. Ah, it seems like only yesterday that Kags was considering being one of GMD’s original, startup front pagers before he decided a Vermont conflict of interest made that dicey (perhaps a tale you’ll regale us with someday, KX…)

So, we’ll all be watching, but we fully expect you to continue participating here at li’l bitty GMD (and we know you’ll keep coming back, as Vermont is about to become once again ground zero for your cause of the year – State-initiated Presidential impeachment, what with the soon-to-be-launched vtimpeach.com within a few days).

So don’t forget to write. Or to link to us from the front page of dKos…

[UPDATE: It’s being pointed out on other parts of the blogosphere that the snarky celebration of this news could be seen as insulting or demeaning to people with mental illness. I hear that, as I’ve been close to the issue, and frankly didn’t even come at the story from that direction. I was just laughing at the idea of support for Bush being a pathology. Hope I didn’t offend. By all means, rip me a new one if I did. That’s only fair.]

Not a joke. Not from “The Onion.” Not a product of a leftwing blog (although thanks to Hunter at dKos for drawing my attention to it). From The New Haven Advocate:

Lohse, a social work master’s student at Southern Connecticut State University, says he has proven what many progressives have probably suspected for years: a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush.

Lohse says his study is no joke. The thesis draws on a survey of 69 psychiatric outpatients in three Connecticut locations during the 2004 presidential election. Lohse’s study, backed by SCSU Psychology professor Jaak Rakfeldt and statistician Misty Ginacola, found a correlation between the severity of a person’s psychosis and their preferences for president: The more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush.

I will say nothing. Not a word. Not a peep. Not an “I told you so” or a single “neener neener.”

“Bush supporters had significantly less knowledge about current issues, government and politics than those who supported Kerry,” the study says.

Lohse says the trend isn’t unique to Bush: A 1977 study by Frumkin & Ibrahim found psychiatric patients preferred Nixon over McGovern in the 1972 election.

Rakfeldt says the study was legitimate, though not intended to show what it did.

“Yes it was a legitimate study but these data were mined after the fact,”

Well, now we understand why Bush and the GOP have been so anti-science, eh? There are things they don’t want us to find out…(D’oh! I wasn’t going to say anything…)

Remember when it came out that the Military was being used (including State National Guards – and of those confirmed, neighboring New York was on the list) to spy on Quakers and other domestic peace organizations involved in benign, peaceful protests? Well, Senator Leahy hasn’t forgotten, even though the Military claims to have cleaned up its act. From MSNBC:

At universities across the country, an antiwar group called Veterans for Peace has staged protests by setting up crosses for soldiers killed in Iraq. In New Mexico last year, the local paper described the event as a display of honor.

But a previously secret Pentagon intelligence report labeled that same event a “threat to military installations.” The report lists the group’s upcoming events and warns that while it’s a “peaceful organization,” there is potential that “future protest could become violent.”

The latest complication, of course, is that the Republican Congress recently and quietly gutted the Posse Comitatus Act – the law which disallows actions by the military (including federalized state troops) against the citizenry it serves. In the flood of high profile attempts in the waning months before years end to retroactively innoculate President Bush from the numerous illegalities of his administration, this one slipped by public and minority scrutiny.

But the current question concerns the Department of Homeland Security, and even if there isn’t outright illegality, this investigation could prompt corrective legislation.

“What’s clear is that there’s a proliferation of surveillance and targeting of Americans who have done nothing wrong, other than disagree with the government,” Anthony Romero says. The documents also suggest for the first time that agents of the Department of Homeland Security played a role in monitoring antiwar activities.

Leahy:

“I fully intend to ask what’s in those databanks, because many of them go way beyond any legitimate needs for our security,”

Without question, Leahy is going to make Judiciary the committee to watch.

Easy come, easy go. The Vermont Journal just got sold and will be ceasing publication. There goes my short-lived column that gave me the opportunity to talk directly to more than 20,000 Vermonters in swing areas. Ah well… I promise to go out with a bang (check back Wednesday)

It’s the least snowy November on record, as reported by VPR today (and barring a last minute freak blizzard). Wonder why?

The closest State House recount is over. Democrat John Moran (Windham-Bennington 1) was leading by 7 votes, and picked up 10 in the recount. Maybe that’s an omen for the Auditor recount?

Speaking of the Auditor recount, volunteers are needed across the state to manually recount ballots. Unfortunately, the 9-to-5 weekday hours of the recount process (over two weeks) make it very hard for working people to participate in (and the $30 payout doesn’t exactly offset things). If you have flexibility, or are a retiree with free time, contact your local Dem County Committee. I’m told the last statewide recount in the 80’s, while not changing the result, did flip more than enough votes than would be needed to shift this one from Brock over to Democrat Tom Salmon Jr. This one’s not over yet.

Allen Watch update: GMD’s number one fan at the VT Press Bureau had a fantastic column yesterday promoting gay marriage by noting that South Africa (formerly of Apartheid fame) is recognizing same-sex unions, while the US is still mired in discrimination. On to next week, where I’ll be hoping Mr. Allen will prove me wrong about his writing patterns…

Great White North. We may have lost our title of whitest state to Maine for a couple years, but Vermont has roared back into a tie for first. Does anybody else find this embarrassing?

Our Washington delegation may have one full head of hair between them, but, as discussed in this Freeps article from Sunday, they may well deliver our tiny state more clout in the new Congress than all the biggest, hairiest states out there. Go team!

Frequent visitors will recall that I have written in favor of Instant Runoff Voting, as have Jack and mataliandy. They will also probably recall that I am not wildly enthusiastic about it. To an extent, it’s because I am cautious about any policy proposal that has become an “article of faith” as IRV has (IMO). Articles of Faith are not to be questioned – and often that includes honest assessments. Articles of Faith bring out a sort of “you’re with us or you’re against us” polarity among the true believers which I find both distasteful, dangerous, and antithetical to the democratic process. They also have the tendency to suck up those who agree with them in principle – just not as a matter of dogma – into accompanying true believer rhetoric that they may or may not agree with. IRV, for example, is often trumpeted as a means to the end of allowing third parties to rise into their imagined rightful place of political dominance.

This is not a view I share, as my support of IRV is simply the support of an enhanced democratic process for its own sake. I’m not inclined to predicate that support on my opinion of where that will or won’t lead us. But because I have an almost knee jerk aversion to anything that strikes me as political dogma, political Articles of Faith creep me out, as I am concerned that they may be enacted (or rejected) without sufficient consideration or scrutiny. What are the disadvantages of IRV? Is IRV the only game in town, or are there other alternate voting systems that might be superior?

Given that the topic will come up during the upcoming legislative session – and out of concern that IRV’s more dogmatic supporters may frown upon, or even actively disparage, any such analysis – I’m offering a snapshot of voting systems, as well as the potential pitfalls of voting reform, below the fold. Please chime in with opinions or corrections as I don’t pretend to be an expert on this stuff.

Nobody likes the fact that a candidate can win an election with less than 50% of the electorate supporting them. Nobody likes the idea that a vote for one’s preferred candidate, who may have no real chance of winning, could prove to help throw the election to the candidate you most abhor.

UVM Prof Tony Gierzynski’s terrific study of IRV’s implementation is a must-read, and lays out the pros and cons well. While the upside – that is, theoretically bringing a result that is a more accurate picture of the preferences of the voting public – is hard to refute, in this world nothing is perfect. In his piece shortly after the Burlington mayoral election, Philip at VDB reviews the study and gives a bulleted list of some of the drawbacks.

* In 1974, Ann Arbor adopted IRV, only to reject it two years later after a mayoral candidate took 49% on the first round, but lost subsequently by 121 votes.

* “The Thwarted- Majorities Paradox, in which a candidate who can beat every other candidate in direct-comparison may lose the election; the Multiple-Districts Paradox, in which a candidate wins every district individually but manages to lose the general election when the districts are combined.”

* And finally, yes, the IRV result That Dare Not Speak Its Name: the “Perverse Outcome,” in which increased votes for a candidate lead to that candidate’s defeat.

More disturbing are the studies from San Francisco’s experience with IRV, which suggests that non-whites, working class citizens, and the less educated were less likely to use their full voting ability at the ballot (meaning they were less likely to fully rank all the candidates and more likely simply to vote for their first preference). In a relative – but very real – sense, the more white, affluent and educated a population was, the more vote they got for their ballots. It’s an ugly reality, but it does seem to be just that – a reality. It’s hard to feel too thrilled about that result, and it clearly places a burden on supporters to simultaneously endorse a comprehensive voter education program if they are successful. The Burlington demographic spread in the study is less clear, but the following:

…suggests the same dynamics are in play.

This stuff matters, and it’s not for the white, educated, affluent crowd to just blow it off as irrelevant (as they often do with inconveniences outside their demographic).

The other potential problem with implementation is (surprise, surprise), the Republicans. Consider the following:

Making such a profound change to the mechanics of Democracy should really have buy in from a majority in each party. Proponents should make it a priority to try to squeeze that Republican number up to at least 50% plus one (a bit ironic, that).

But what other options are there? If the IRV debate does come before the legislature again this session, should the debate on improving our elections system begin and end with IRV?

At the very least, folks should know that there are other models.

The Condorcet Method avoids some of the problems of IRV by selecting the candidate that wins against every other candidate in one-on-one pairings, instead of the way IRV goes to a second choice. From a voter’s perspective it works like IRV as voters just rank their choices as 1, 2, 3, etc (both IRV and Condorcet are considered forms of “preferencial voting”). This pairing system makes the behind-the-scenes calculations mathematical, and by making it more arcane, could further exacerbate the understanding gap across demographic groups and limit voter confidence. Still, here’s an example of a fascinating election where the  Condorcet results were compared against what the result would have been if IRV had been in play – they are different, and in this case, common sense suggests (at a glance) that the Condorcet result was more democratic, highlighting the comparitively crude nature of IRV’s elimination methodology.

Fusion Voting: The following comes from a great diary written by dcsohl, posted earlier this year at a GMD sister blog, the Blue Mass Group:

Fusion voting is an extension of FPTP that relies on parties. Parties are not essential to FPTP [“first past the post” – the current system -odum], but they inevitably creep in, and fusion takes advantage of this. In classical FPTP at a general election, each party nominates a candidate, and the winner is he with the most votes.

Fusion voting allows two parties to share the same candidate. So if the Green Party decides that they are splitting votes off of the Democrats (and enabling Republicans to win), they ordinarily have one alternative: Don’t run.

With Fusion voting, they can nominate the Democratic candidate as their own. Now voters can “send a message” and vote for Gore on the Green ticket. If Gore gets 60% of the votes and half of them are Green-based, he can see that environmental issues are very important to a third of the country.

Advantages: “Sending a message”

Fusion is intriguing, but to those who see IRV as the shortcut to radical change through 3rd party ascendency, it probably won’t be too appealing.

The most feel-good voting system has got to be Approval Voting. In this system, everybody can vote for as many candidates as they like. The totals are tallied and the most votes wins, but there is no voting “against” anyone, and as such it limits the problem in any system – but particularly in preferencial systems (like IRV) – of so-called tactical voting.

Tactical voting is when voters use their votes or preferencial rankings not to indicate their genuine preferences, but to try and strategically avoid distasteful outcomes. Under the current system, the manifestation of tactical voting is obvious. In preferencial systems, it becomes possible to marginalize potential rivals to one’s first choice by voting for non-preferred candidates as a second choice. There were charges of this sort of tactical voting in the Burlington mayor’s race, as GOP candidate Kevin Curley was reported to have actively encouraged some supporters to indicate Progressive Mayor Bob Kiss as their second choice in order to skew the runoff results for Democrat Hinda Miller (this despite the fact that Kiss would have been the honest, ideological second choice of few Republicans). There’s no evidence that this ocurred on a scale to effect the election, but the potential for such sleaziness is there, and IRV proponents do themselves (and the democratic process) no favors by pretending it isn’t.

Approval Voting makes this sort of mischief ineffective, but is opposed by IRV proponents such as the Center for Voting and Democracy because it leads to the most “feel-good” candidate who bugs the fewest people coming out on top, and therefore potentially squeezes out dynamic or challenging candidates.

In any event, it seems clear to me that the buzz in Vermont is entirely too binary; either the current system or IRV – and that the debate over IRV is too binary as well; you’re either for it (and for more representational democracy) or against it. For my part, I support IRV (as I’ve said many times), but I also support a healthy, honest debate on the matter and recognize the unfortunate truth handed down by Arrow’s theorem. From Science News:

Is there a best voting procedure? In 1952, Kenneth Arrow, a professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., proved that no voting system is completely free from counterintuitive outcomes. Arrow looked at voting systems that satisfy two harmless-sounding properties. First, if everyone prefers candidate A to candidate B, then A should be ranked higher than B. Second, voters’ opinions about candidate C shouldn’t affect whether A beats B-after all, if you prefer coffee to tea, finding out that hot chocolate is available shouldn’t suddenly make you prefer tea to coffee. These sound like reasonable restrictions, yet Arrow proved that the only voting system that always satisfies them is a dictatorship, where a single person’s preferences determine the outcome.

The paradoxical behavior Arrow studied crops up all the time.

Or perhaps we’re just faced with another social manifestation of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Perhaps if you look too closely at any human institution, process or component, the results get a little… fuzzy.

All the more reason to move forward with deliberation and without dogmatic preconceptions or preconceived outcomes – but as always, to keep moving forward nonetheless.

For more (and there is much more), check out the Proportional Representation Library, and by all means come back and post on your favorite.

[Originally published in the Vermont Journal, with slightly different editing…]

The Democrats are coming back into power nationally – and into increased power locally – in a brave new world. More citizens are engaged as voter turnout is way up, and those voters are communicating with each other via the Internet. Political blogs and citizen journalism sites are changing the way information is gathered, processed and transmitted, in extraordinary ways. Only those deeply in denial would still argue that this “new media” isn’t having a profound effect on electioneering.

But there is another key thing about this new, energized, engaged (and educated) electorate that has changed in the brave new world.

Our expectations.

If there was another loser besides the Republican Party this last election, it was (to an extent) cynicism. Over the decades, voter cynicism has enabled our elected officials to so often perform in their public appearances as bad actors. It’s not that they’ve actually been fooling very many people (although I suspect many of them think they have), it’s that we don’t expect anything more from them, so we let them slide by.

After all, if they’re all a bunch of crooks and liars and our vote doesn’t matter, why should we be surprised if a professional politician sounds laughably insincere at every opportunity? It’s been going on so long, it’s not simply a bad habit; cheeseball phoniness is practically the unspoken modus operandi of the professional politician. The artificial and inappropriate ear-to-ear grin the second the camera is on, the punctuated unnatural cadence to the spoken word, and the saccharine inflections in the tone are all meant to demonstrate how deeply a politician is feeling our pain.

The recent internal battle over the number two post among US House Democrats in Washington was an unwelcome reminder. After a testy contest between Rep. Steny Hoyer and Rep. Jack Murtha, the new leadership team did their obligatory press conference. There was the briefest of moments while the door to the press room was opening that you caught a glimpse of newly anointed Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s true expression and demeanor. In barely a split second, she threw her political switch and the giant smile turned on as easily as a light switch. It was one of those smiles that is wide and broad, but doesn’t really turn upwards at the corners the way a genuine expression of joy would be expected to. It looked almost painful – as did all the similar “smiles” of her leadership team.

All that is, except one – Rep. Murtha, the “loser.” Despite his many shortcomings, Murtha has never been one for the mannequined delight that his comrades of both parties so readily sport. He looked at ease – natural, but most of all he looked honest. He looked real.

The contrast was striking.

The event spawned the rhetorical manifestation of the cheesy grin from others in the caucus (including our own Rep. Peter Welch) who suggested that everyone was a winner in the end.

I saw Murtha’s face. He wasn’t a winner. He lost.

Now, I don’t believe that everyone sporting (or speaking) the cheesy grin-thing is automatically a phony or a liar – not by a long shot. In fact, it’s precisely because I don’t believe that of them that I expect more from them – and I don’t want to be patronized by a mirage of faux gleefulness, especially when the stakes are actually high.

I want to see some real leadership, not a second rate Shakespeare in the Park.

The long and short is that in this brave new world of politics, the era of the phony grin is over. We all expect more. The new majority’s new watchword should be candor. Anything short of that in Washington – or in Vermont – is not going to fly anymore.

The Thanksgiving diary I really really really wanted to post is delayed for technical reasons, sadly. Hopefully I’ll post it tomorrow. In the meantime, consider the following spotted a couple blocks from my house yesterday:

Bearing in mind two points: one, that this is on beyond a gas guzzler, this vehicle is an in-your-face “fuck you” to any concerns about efficiency, environmentalism, sustainability, class, and those who hold them – and two, that the maxi-pad sticky stuff could actually cause monetary damage to the vehicle when removed.

Discuss (after you finish chuckling, I know – it is funny-lookin’)…

About, oh, fifty pounds or so ago, I was hiking for a week in Washington’s Glacier Peak Wilderness when my camping-buddy and I encountered a passing ranger who regaled us with tales of the silly questions tourists had asked him over the years. My favorite question was “at what altitude do the deer turn into elk?” It was worth a good guffaw, and these days I often think of that question when I hear discussions of Vermont’s political spectrum (there are shades of it in this PoliticsVT post). But the Vermont version is “How far to the left do Democrats go before turning into Progressives?”

If you’ll stop and think for a second, you’ll realize that this iteration of the question is no more valid than the first, and yet it has become the conventional-shorthand-wisdom in the Green Mountain state due to its casual simplicity (and the traditional media do tend to gravitate towards simplicity). I used to hang with the Washington County Progressive Coalition until I realized that they were committed as a group to the proliferating of the fledgling Progressive Party, and I’m far from alone in drawing that line. Much to the distaste of many in both camps, you don’t have to look too far before you’ll find plenty of Democrats who are every bit as left wing as any Progressive (some more so), but who simply make the considered judgment that third parties are not a viable option for meaningful social change. And yet, that convenient, shorthand characterization remains…

That convenience is the only reason (I believe) for the repeated characterization of this blog as “centrist.” I’ve heard it at least a half dozen times in the last month or so. Consider the “centrist” stances front pagers on this blog have taken since it’s inception on issues such as:

• Single-payer healthcare
• Instant Runoff Voting
• The Impeachment of George W. Bush
• Same-sex marriage
• Vermont’s immediate divestment from Sudan
• Hemp legalization

…and so on. Centrist!? Given that it’s practically the Progressive Party platform, I can only assume it’s simply that the “D” label on most of the front pagers here is shorthanding us as “centrist.” The truth is, the characterization used to bug me because it wasn’t true for one, and because it clearly served the Progs interest by creating a perception that lefties weren’t present or welcome among the Dems – which is also untrue.

But you know what? I’ve changed my tune. Everyone has their own reason for diving into the blog thing, but a big part of mine was to try to do my part to shift the political debate in a progressive direction after seeing it go so far to the right for so long. To the extent that may or may not be beginning to happen is for others to judge, but to that end I now welcome the centrist label. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still bogus, but who cares? If enough people think it, say it, and start to read it, maybe the perception will creep towards reality and will start coming true.

Because those li’l policy bullets above should be centrist, and if all the sentiments on this blog truly come to be viewed as centrist ones (and public policy starts to reflect that), we’ll all be a lot better off.

Statehouse hubbub: No changes expected in the House Dem Leadership, but the hubbub is that GOP Rep. Steve Adams of Hartland will be making a move for Minority Leader, and that current Leader Peg Flory will be backing off. Interesting, if true. I like Adams a lot, actually. He’s a good guy and a free-thinker who doesn’t limit himself to partisan orthodoxy. He was, however, one of the leaders of the spectacularly ineffective revolt and repeal electoral gimmick that seemed to make up the entirety of the state GOP’s collective legislative elections strategy (along with those obnoxious last-minute postcards). Gotta feel bad for the guy, left to try to pick up the slack for Barnett’s disinterest in the local races. Whether or not the R&R schtick left a lingering bad taste in the Dem caucus’ mouth could go a long way to determining interparty cooperation this time around, especially with Adams at the helm.

On the Senate side – after the Shumlin re-ascendence, Senators Claire Ayer (Addison) and Mark MacDonald (Orange) are vying for Majority Leader, as Senator Campbell will not be looking for the position again.

Philip Baruth is Vermont’s King of All Media. The star of bloggery, literature, radio, TV and print (and people ask me if I ever sleep) has added a new one: uh… web-based-audio-political-sketch-comedy. Go listen, and comment here cuz Philip doesn’t do the comment thing.

Hit a nerve over at Hall Monitor, despite the fact that a quick survey of Darren Allen’s mentions at this site run about 5-to-1 positive. Ah well, can’t have ’em all, DA (although I probably shouldn’t purport to be the last straw for the Allenmeister, as teastiles’ surgical post made me sound like a semi-literate oaf). Gotta thicken that skin, pal.

Haven’t been doing a good job on the newslet items lately, as it’s been all exposition and essays (except for Brattlerouser, of course)…

Terri Hallenbeck has a good read today about the state of the state GOP. It’s Douglas, Dubie, and that’s about it. Who brought them to this predicament? Why, outgoing Chair/ED Jim Barnett, of course. Despite people like Freyne characterizing his move to the McCain campaign as a step up in rank, and a stepping out in glory, it is clearly a horizontal move that gets him out ahead of the daggers that were being sharpened by the GOP rank and file (and for the record – I told ya so…).

Darren Allen gets caught mid-cycle. Usually he pens an editorial that pisses off the right, and then plays good “I’m-not-the-liberal-media” columnist by publishing roughly three consecutive “balancing” pieces that engage in some sort of neener-neener-neener-ing of Dems that’s usually only halfway thought through. Today seems to have him stuck in mid-cycle, offering a neener mixed in with a self-contradictory acknowledgement of the obviously appropriate call by Thomas Salmon Jr. for a recount in the Auditors race (137 votes, folks). Not sure what this means for next week’s Allen column, given that his cycle is slightly off it’s track now.

Dean, addressing the Association of State Democratic Chairs on the recent squawking of James Carville via the NYT: “It was a great win for what I call the new Democratic Party. The old Democratic Party is back there in Washington, sometimes they still complain a little bit.” Heh.

Shumlin Mark II is all about Global Warming. Good to hear. Via Freyne.

The Progressives wrapped a post-campaign gathering discussing the first cycle in a while in which they didn’t grow in some quantifiable fashion. Although it’s unlikely the Progs have plateaued, their primary rhetoric – that there is no difference between the Dems and the GOP – likely has (given that it’s become plainly absurd on its face), which is probably the message to take away from the election. The trick will be convincing some of the die-hard “smash-all-Democrats” regulars (such as Pollina) to focus more on the proactive and visionary and less on the “smash” if they want to regain some of their momentum next time. Interesting (if flawed… more on that later this week) piece at PoliticsVT.

Oop! Gotta go. Kid’s waking up… Ths week I promise at least 3 posts that will really piss people off. Keep watchin’…