Coming Monday: FairVote RI's Ballot Bash with Hertzberg


By Ian Donnis
Published December 12th 2008 in The Providence Phoenix
Matt Sledge recently posted about this event elsewhere in blogland:

There will be plenty more information to come in the coming weeks, but I wanted to give everyone on RI Future the first look at a big event FairVote Rhode Islandhas planned: New Yorker senior editor and former Jimmy Carter speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg is coming to Providence (and he's in the blogosphere too).

Details on time and location: Monday, December 15th, at the Hi-Hat in Providence, from 6-8:30. Suggested donation for guests is $50.

Hertzberg will be joining FairVote's national executive director, Rob Richie, to talk about this year's presidential election, the national popular vote movement, and election reform in general.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Hertzberg's work (you should be--check his latest, on Obama) . . .
Hendrik Hertzberg is a senior editor and staff writer at The New Yorker, where he frequently writes the opening Comment in The Talk of the Town.

Hertzberg originally joined The New Yorker in 1969, after serving as an officer in the U.S. Navy. He left after the 1976 Presidential election to serve as President Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter from 1979 until 1981. From 1981 until 1992 he was associated with The New Republic and served two terms as its editor. During his second stint as editor, between 1988 and 1992, The New Republic won three National Magazine Awards, including back-to-back awards for General Excellence. In 1992, he returned to The New Yorker.

Hertzberg has also been a fellow of two institutes at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government: the Institute of Politics and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. He is the author of “Politics: Observations & Arguments” (2004). In 2006, his Comment essays won a National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary.
IRV Soars in Twin Cities, FairVote Corrects the Pundits on Meaning of Election Night '09
Election Day '09 was a roller-coaster for election reformers.  Instant runoff voting had a great night in Minnesota, where St. Paul voters chose to implement IRV for its city elections, and Minneapolis voters used IRV for the first time—with local media touting it as a big success. As the Star-Tribune noted in endorsing IRV for St. Paul, Tuesday’s elections give the Twin Cities a chance to show the whole state of Minnesota the benefits of adopting IRV. There were disappointments in Lowell and Pierce County too, but high-profile multi-candidate races in New Jersey and New York keep policymakers focused on ways to reform elections;  the Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald were among many newspapers publishing commentary from FairVote board member and former presidential candidate John Anderson on how IRV can mitigate the problems of plurality elections.

And as pundits try to make hay out of the national implications of Tuesday’s gubernatorial elections, Rob Richie in the Huffington Post concludes that the gubernatorial elections have little bearing on federal elections.

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