Things have been a bit quiet on the Libertarian Reform Caucus web site since the 2006 LP National Convention. Many of us were exhausted after the convention, and others are active in various campaigns. Nonetheless, membership has grown…to 825. A hefty chunk of those new members have come in through a mention we received from Neal Boortz (finally!).
About those Elections
Election Day is a week from now—last chance to make any donations. The Libertarian Party has created a very interesting new tool to assist those donors who believe in concentrating resources on a few winnable campaigns:
Candidate Tracker. Sean Haugh has compiled data on a large number of races and assigned scores using
this formula based on objectively measurable parameters.
Whether or not high Candidate Tracker scores translate into high vote totals/victory remains to be seen. The formula used this year may need adjustment. I personally think the formula under-weights the importance being in a two-way vs. three-way race. In a study I published in the May 2001 Liberty, I found that Libertarians in statehouse races got four times as many votes on average when faced with only one major-party candidate.
But the good news is that the formula will be tweaked after the elections, based on the results. Headquarters is doing science! Methinks that Candidate Tracker is the most important strategic innovation to come out of Libertarian headquarters in many years.
Check it out!
By the way, quite a few Caucus members are running campaigns that score high on Candidate Tracker. Nick Wilson has cross referenced our membership list with those who scored above 20 on Candidate Tracker list and come up with these candidates (in descending order of CT score):
Hardy Machia - Running for State House, Grand Isle-Chittenden-1-1 in Vermont.
Wilbur "Bill" Wood - Running for U.S. House District 10 in Virginia.
T. Lee Horne - Running for Governor in Louisiana
Rex Bell - Running for State House District 54 in Indiana.
Rock Howard - Running for State Senate District 14 in Texas.
Jason Peck - Running for State House District 24 in Kansas.
Gary Shumway - Running for State House District 53 in Utah.
Kris Overstreet - Running for State House District 18 in Texas.
Besides these campaigns, there are other high-scoring campaigns with whom Caucus members are actively involved, such as Kevin Tunstall with the top-rated Bob Smither for Congress campaign.
Mike Sylvester reports that Rex Bell is polling neck-and-neck with the front-runner. According to a poll commissioned by the Indiana LP:
Saunders (R) (I): 35.4%
Bell (L): 33.1%
Sadler (D): 31.3%
Historically, high-polling LP candidates tend to do worse on Election Day for several reasons: the “lesser of two evils” dilemma, insufficient Get Out the Vote efforts, and last-minute sabotage by the Demopublicans using quotes from the LP Platform. Due in large part to our efforts, the LP Platform no longer provides high-powered weapons for the Demopublicans to use on our candidates. And due to publicity of these polling numbers on
Hammer of Truth and elsewhere, Bell is receiving some last-minute contributions. Will this be enough to put him over the top?
Stay tuned.
(None of the above news items should be construed as official Caucus endorsement of any campaign. Donate or not to the campaigns of your choice as you see fit.)
Voting Systems
Devin Ray Freeman has written another essay on voting systems:
A Glitch in Approval. Yesterday, Daniel Ong sent me a letter making the case for Range Voting, including a link to a very interesting web site
RangeVoting.org.
This is an important subject, not only for making third parties more viable, but also for doing an effective job of determining the sentiments of the Caucus membership. That is, do we continue using Approval Voting for platform planks or do we move on to a new system. Now is the time to make such a decision, before starting our second round of platform design.
