Hampshire Gazette

Carefully choosing his votes
By Mary Carey
October 22, 2002

George Markham, a longtime political activist and a Northampton Democrat of the Year in 1996, plans to put four political signs on his Ridgewood Terrace yard - for Shannon O'Brien, Clean Elections, Michael Aleo and Peter Kocot.

What's unusual about Markham's selections is that Kocot, the Democratic state representative from Northampton, and Aleo, a Green Party member, are running against each other for the 1st Hampshire District seat. O'Brien is the Democratic nominee for governor and Clean Elections is the embattled public campaign finance law approved in 1998 which voters will revisit this year as Question 3 on the statewide ballot.

"This is a case where I think I should leave it up to the people if they want to look at my lawn and decide how to vote," Markham quipped.

For his own part, Markham said he has personally told Kocot he thinks he is doing a wonderful job as state representative - but that he plans to vote for Aleo.

"I've felt for a long time that the Democrats would be greatly strengthened if there were a progressive third party," Markham said. He has felt this way since reading that the reason a single-payer health-care system was adopted in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan is that there was a strong third party nudging the mainstream party.

Markham is a fervent advocate of a single-payer health system, and it is one of the reasons he supported Warren Tolman in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Only Tolman and Green Party gubernatorial candidate Jill Stein said they would make establishing such a system a priority.

In the general election, however, Markham is supporting O'Brien over Stein, largely because of the specter of Republican nominee Mitt Romney winning the race if Stein siphons off votes O'Brien.

"I would vote for Stein if the picture were Stein and O'Brien," Markham said. "But it is not."

Markham and others believe the solution to the dilemma posed to Stein supporters who fear a vote for their candidate will help Romney is electoral reform, namely, instant runoff voting.

Voters in both Kocot's district and in the 3rd Hampshire District represented by Ellen Story, D-Amherst, will have a chance on Nov. 5 to vote on a non-binding ballot question asking them whether they support instituting instant runoff voting in statewide races.

Under that system, voters list candidates in a multi-candidate race in order of their preference. If nobody wins more than 50 percent of votes in the first tally, the votes are recounted with the lowest vote-getter eliminated and that candidate's supporters' votes going to their second choice until someone wins by a majority.

If instant runoff voting were in place, Stein supporters could comfortably vote for her while indicating that they want their vote to go to O'Brien should Stein be eliminated, Markham said.

Aleo, Kocot and Story have all lent their support to instant runoff voting, and Story already has introduced legislation that would allow Massachusetts to adopt it.

Green Party members like Aleo have also made instant runoff voting a priority in their campaigns. Among Greens, Aleo said, there is much discussion about the dynamics of the gubernatorial election.

"I don't want to see Mitt Romney as governor," Aleo said. "The difference between him and O'Brien would be apparent if he were elected."

"But it's not as if the reason we can't pass progressive legislation in the state is because we've had a Republican governor," Aleo hastened to add. "It's because the House is dominated by conservative Democrats. We already should have instant runoff voting. We shouldn't be talking about whether people can vote for the people they want."