{"id":42560,"date":"2025-07-08T09:05:26","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T14:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=42560"},"modified":"2025-07-08T09:05:26","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T14:05:26","slug":"power-power-thy-attraction-is-supreme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2025\/07\/08\/power-power-thy-attraction-is-supreme\/","title":{"rendered":"Power, Power, Thy Attraction Is Supreme"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was quite disappointed, if perhaps not surprised, to run across this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Democrats talk a big game about making the U.S. electoral system fairer. But, so far, they are failing to live up to that commitment in D.C.<\/p>\n

Last November, D.C. voters overwhelmingly passed<\/a> Initiative 83 to establish ranked-choice voting [RCV<\/strong>] in the District and allow voters unregistered with a party to participate in partisan primaries. These reforms would dramatically improve democracy in the city. Ranked-choice voting, also known as instant-runoff voting, would ensure that government officials could not be elected with just a sliver of a split vote. And semi-open primaries would give independent voters, who have long been shut out of the primary process, a voice in the city\u2019s most important races.<\/p>\n

But many of D.C.\u2019s elected officials \u2014 who might face some real competition under this new system \u2014 are stalling the reforms.<\/p>\n

That begins with Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who opposed the initiative<\/a>\u00a0and criticized ranked-choice voting ahead of last year\u2019s election as \u201ca very complicated election system.\u201d Even though a large majority of voters \u2014 including most members of her own party \u2014 disagreed, she refused to include any funding in her\u00a0proposed 2026 budget<\/a>\u00a0for the reforms, which are supposed to be in place for next year\u2019s primary elections. [WaPo<\/strong>]<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To review<\/a>, RCV<\/strong> tends to favor moderate candidates, people who are less committed to ideology and more to compromise and governance. This is anathema to ideologues, of course; but ideologues, who are sometimes simply faking their positions, do tend to be the problem these days. Committed to victory at all costs, those costs include … ourselves.<\/p>\n

Consider this a call for the D.C. officials to implement RCV<\/strong> post-haste, dispensing with the self-centered collection of power.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was quite disappointed, if perhaps not surprised, to run across this: Democrats talk a big game about making the U.S. electoral system fairer. But, so far, they are failing to live up to that commitment in D.C. Last November, D.C. voters overwhelmingly passed Initiative 83 to establish ranked-choice voting \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42561,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42560\/revisions\/42561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}