San Jose Mercury News
Letters to the Editor
April 27, 2001
James Stauffer, California IRV Coalition, www.calirv.org

HOW tedious, artificial and identical are these continuing tirades from the Democrat Whiners Caucus (Martin Schram, Opinion, April 25). Yeah, right, Ralph Nader was the primary factor in George W. Bush's Florida "victory." It wasn't the disenfranchisement of thousands of African-Americans, it wasn't the butterfly ballot, it wasn't the partisanship of the Supreme Court, it wasn't the 100,000-plus Florida Democrats who voted for Bush, it wasn't the 50 percent of Democrats who didn't vote at all, it wasn't the lackluster Democrat candidate who didn't even carry his home state, it wasn't the Electoral College ... it was Ralph Nader.

The Green Party isn't going away; in fact, our numbers have increased. And we are "unrepentant" in exercising our right to run candidates.

This last election showed the gross inequities in our voting system. Most of the world's democracies have progressed to using ranked ballot voting systems, which eliminate the spoiler effect by minor-party candidates and allow people to vote their conscience rather than picking the lesser of two evils. But we don't hear Schram and his fellow whiners issuing opinions about that.