Voter Muscle was founded for the purpose of expanding the electability of populist candidates, in response to the abandoning of President Trump by the GOP establishment. Our hope was to pave the way for independent candidates by establishing Range Voting as the election system in a growing number of municipalities and counties.
Research of the last four months has shown that Approval Voting, a simplified form of Range Voting, is a better tool for our purposes. Here are the factors that makes approval voting the more feasible tool: 1) many people are suspicious of the more complicated forms of voting currently being proposed in various parts of the country. People suspect these schemes are being pushed by unscrupulous politicians, for nefarious purposes. These suspicions make election reform a hard sell. 2)approval voting is a simple system that can be done on the same ballots and voting machines currently in use. 3)the approval voting system can be easily explained, and understood by anyone.
So, approval voting has important advantages over range voting. And, it retains all of the desirable attributes of range voting; most importantly allowing people to vote for a third party, guilt-free, without siphoning votes from or weakening either major-party candidate.
The form of approval voting we will adopt is “approval voting with runoff between top two”. This system is recommended by political scientists, and results in highly transparent elections with maximum voter satisfaction.
Below is the link to an excellent analysis of the advantages of approval voting. Skip to the last section of the article, “Breaking the Duopoly”. https://www.utahcer.org/breaking_the_duopoly
When researching voting systems, bear in mind that almost without exception, promoters of various voting systems are progressives who have the ultimate goal of degrading the link between conservative districts and their ‘radical’ representatives. Progressives prefer a system where representatives are more responsive to Washington than to their constituents. Whatever system they currently promote, it is seen by them as merely a stepping-stone to their ultimate goal: large ‘multi-representative districts’, where each representative has no precisely defined zone….and no town hall where he goes to face the constituents.
This is not to say that us ‘right-wing radicals’ cannot also use these fresh, newly-minted voting concepts to our advantage. The current fad of multi-choice voting may or may not be an enduring one; in either case, it behooves us conservatives to boldly leap into the fray and experiment with the most palatable voting system. This will not be easy. It appears that Republican rank-and-file are getting over their anger at Trump’s abandonment by the GOP elite; they are once again pinning their hopes on a ‘takeover’ of the party in 2022; approval voting will be a hard sell when the rank-and-file are assuming that a 2022 victory is already in the bag.
Nevertheless, the enabling of a third party is necessary, even if only as a back-up plan. And the project must be begun now.
Bear this in mind: for 55 years, the leadership of both major parties has been to the left of their rank-and-file. For six decades we have watched Christianity kicked out of schools and out of the public sector; the Black family destroyed by government policies; the steady decline of the fabric of society; misuse of the treasury and destruction of the dollar….to name just a few….and all the while, our government officials have spouted feel-good all-American phrases, as if they were totally in tune with their constituents. This situation will not change, in the long run….regardless of what happens in 2022. Without third parties to the right of the major parties, the party leadership will nearly always be to the left of their constituents….because of pressure from the major institutions: Hollywood, the media, banks, the intelligentsia, and the corporations.
So, when confronted with a seemingly insurmountable task, and when possessing only limited tools with which to work, it is important to look for the weak link. Changing the makeup or philosophy of the major institutions? Not going to happen. Reducing or eliminating the influence of the major institutions on our leaders in Washington? Another non-starter.
The weak link is the ability of Washington to micromanage, to pass edicts down to communities governing all aspects of their behavior. Break this link, and all the moralizing and policy recommendations of the media and the intelligentsia will not amount to a hill of beans….if the recommendations can’t be acted upon by the government. This is why we need a right-wing party, one with a philosophy of voluntaryism….local government, family, community. The proper election reforms, instigated in a handful of communities, could start the process.