Will Halloween include Nov. 2nd?

Of the 50 states, 48 use a grossly unfair "winner-take-all" system of assigning electoral votes for U.S. President. But states are free to adopt reform systems which are more fair.
Two states have already reformed, and a third may do so on November 2nd (effective immediately).

California won't reform its system this year.

So all of California's many electoral votes will go to one party, even if that party only gets a plurality (less than 50%) of popular votes. Experts predict that Cal's electoral votes will go to the Democratic ticket, by a substantial margin.

So individual California voters can cast a "protest vote" for a minor candidate, without much chance of affecting the presidency.
Moderate and conservative queers, especially queer Republicans, may choose to vote for the Libertarian Party candidate.

On the left, the California ballot offers two socialist (or social-democratic) parties:
the Peace and Freedom Party, running imprisoned Native American activist Leonard Peltier,
versus the Green Party, running David Cobb.

Presumably one could write-in the name of a presidential candidate who's NOT on the official printed ballot, such as John Parker or Ralph Nader?

However, writing-in a candidate is difficult, because you must spell the name correctly (Nader, not Nadir); and you must follow instructions exactly. In a recent San Francisco case, involving Terry Baum, many write-in votes were ignored because of technicalities, even tho the intent of each pro-Baum voter was quite clear.

For a debate among representatives of various left-wing parties and candidates,
you could attend a panel discussion tonight
( 7:30pm, Saturday, 18 September 2004)
at Socialist Action Bookstore, 298 Valencia Street (near 14th St.), in The City.

Speakers will represent Peace and Freedom Party (Peltier), Workers World Party (Parker), Green Party (Cobb), the Nader campaign (supported in some states by Republicans and the Reform Party); plus the Socialist Workers Party.

Travel by Muni bus on Mission or Valencia.
The "bridge and tunnel crowd" can take BART to 16th Street station.

Unfortunately, Socialist Action is charging admission to this meeting ($5 general, $3 students and seniors). In my queer opinion, it should be free. Since I don't wish to subsidize SA or SWP,
I won't be attending.


IF YOU ATTEND tonight,
please take notes;
and post a report on IndyBay.org
(either as comments appended to this article; or as a new article).



Freedom until death!
Tortuga Bi Liberty,
independent left-libertarian,
San Francisco, CA 94142-6937

Saturday morning, 18 September 2004

http://pages.prodigy.net/seniornude
........

PS 1: Could some reader also post URLs for the websites
of the various parties and candidates?
......

PS 2:
As for the real contest,
the oligarchic major parties
expect chaos.....
AGAIN.

(Like Halloween may be extended to include Election Day,
or the remainder of 2004, or ........?)

See John Wildermuth in SF Chronicle, Sept. 18:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/18/MNGN78R6PT1.DTL

........
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