Ballot Access - Socialist Alternative entered a candidate in the November 7, 2017 elections for Minneapolis city council, ward 3. That candidate, Ginger Jentzen, placed first among the first choice ballots. Minneapolis uses ranked-choice voting. Jentzen did not win a majority when the first place votes were counted, so the city then counted the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place ballots. When those votes were counted, Jentzen had lost to a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, but even in the final tally she had over 40% of the vote.
There was no one in the race with the label “Republican”; there were two candidates with the label “Democratic-Farmer-Labor.”
3 comments:
Pity. I'm sorry the registered Socialist did not win. The poisoning of American beliefs brought to us by the anti-Socialism and anti-Communism campaigns of the 20's was very effective. Having lived in the Democratic Socialist country of Germany for 6 years, and the Communist country of China for 2, I have nothing bad to say about either of those countries. The US, on the other hand, touting is greatest because of its great Democracy, I find reprehensible....as evidenced by purging of legal voters off voter list, voting machines that flip votes, gerrymandering, phony postcards telling voters their polling station is at a different address, reducing the number of polling stations in high population areas, voter id laws in the name of reducing fraud when there is little evidence of significant fraud.
The hypocrisy of the US is huge, and not just in this category.
Certainly the misnamed-PRC doesn't need to purge its voter lists ...since the top layer of government is self-selected. I don't really think that's an improvement, though.
Oh, and the PRC isn't even slightly communist. It's straight, laissez-faire Capitalist.
As an example, I always point to the case of poor Yao Defen, who had a pituitary tumor that caused giantism, making her the tallest woman in the world after Sandy Allen's early death from the same cause. She tried to get the tumor removed, but no surgeon would operate when she was in her teens because her family was poor and couldn't come up with the ¥400 to pay for it. So she died of complications from the disorder at age 40. (She did eventually find a surgeon humane enough to operate without fee, but by then the tumor was big enough that he couldn't get it all out)
(Zeng Jinlian died at 17, having reached 8'1" because she, too, couldn't pay for treatment. Plenty Chinese Capitalist exploiters lined up to make money from her, but none to treat her as more than a )
Had Defen or Jinlian lived in Cuba or the USSR, they'd have received treatment as soon as the diagnosis was clear, and would probably still be living, in Defen's case no more than an unknown village shopkeeper somewhat taller than average and a bit deformed, but otherwise healthy and happy.
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