From the American Freedom Party website:
The American Freedom Party’s Board of Directors commissioned activists in Oregon to campaign for Proportion Representation (“PR”), also known as “ranked choice voting”, by getting it on the ballot this November through the initiative process. AFP will then have candidates run for office under a more accountable, expanded St. Helens City Council using PR in 2016.
The purpose of AFP’s “Initiative” (process allowing voters to enact laws independently of their legislators, permitted in half the States) is to facilitate a fairer electoral process generally, and to progressively have our own Party members elected to local office. PR is the electoral system used in almost all European countries, as well as for the EU; over the oppressive winner-take-all system for obtaining office maintained by the Republican-Democrat duopoly.
AFP’s Oregon chapter has spent an enormous amount of time and tireless energy campaigning for signatures door to door, in the downtown, and at local businesses using a registered voter list from the city. Fortunately, we are close to reaching the requisite 10% of registered voter signatures for submission and approval by the City of St. Helens and State of Oregon.
Petitioners are approaching each registered resident with our City Guide to Voting using Proportion Representation (hyperlinked) which is adapted from the Cambridge, Massachusetts model; the only municipal council in the United States which currently is elected through PR voting. St. Helens is the county seat of Columbia County (pop. 13,000), 90% European descent, and located in a spectacularly scenic area of the Pacific Northwest.
Residents would therefore to be able to vote for any number of the eight city council seats up for election every other year by ranking their choice of candidates. Our initiative would also permit voters to simultaneously increase the city council from four to eight members, a particularly well received proposal in this rapidly growing area, and have them each elected for two year terms (currently at four) at even year biannual elections.
AFP has posted a general explanation of Proportional Representation on our homepage (hyperlink) as a primer on the subject, and will begin posting a series of articles on the status of PR worldwide shortly. The American Freedom Party leadership encourages members and supporters to vigorously assist us with this revolutionary program of bringing PR to the United States so that our people will finally begin getting elected to public office throughout the country.
St. Helen’s Voting Guide Brochure
Pledge your support for PR in the U.S. and Donate Here.
I looked it up. Various historical accounts differ on whether or not proprtional representation slowed or accelerated the nazi rise to power. Given the exponential rise in unemployment around that time in Germany and the concurrent rise of the Communists, they probably would have gone through some catastrophic times regardless of electoral system and either the communists or nazis could have come to power in any number of ways, legal or otherwise. The Weimar system of democracy was certainly losing public confidence with mass unemployment spreading to something like a third of the labor force and growing fast.
>> If Hitler hadn’t come to power, Germany would have continued to suffer under the burden of crippling sanctions and would have never achieved its two subsequent periods of ascendance. <<
Considering the millions of Germans who died or were maimed in World War 2 (even if one discounts the millions of non-Germans), plus the territory they lost, plus decades of Communist rule for East Germans … I don't think most Germans would agree that the price of Hitler was worth the benefit of Germany's current strong economy.
“Wake Up” is Vernon aka Nazi Troll.
Wake Up, are you Lesiak?
Cambridge PR is not like anyone else’s PR. It is an excellent system, once you understand it, and with computers to calculate (note I did not say *count*) the votes it is even reasonable to evaluate.
Germany’s use of proportional representation stalled Hitler’s rise to power. In 1932 the Nazi Party was the biggest party but it didn’t get a majority. Under the system used in the US, Britain, and Canada, it would have won a majority of the seats even though it didn’t get a majority of the vote. But under Germany’s proportional representation, the Nazi Party was foiled in its attempt to get a majority. When Hitler finally won power, that is because the Center Party (a party representing mostly Catholics) decided to vote for Hitler.
That outcome was not known in 1933. Germany rose from the ashes when Hitler came to power and became great once again. At the end of the war it was reduced back to a state very similar to what it had been in 1932-33, but has since once again risen to be the leading power of a united Europe, which was Hitler’s idea to begin with. Many lasting achievements of German industrial deveopment, such as the Autobahn, date from the period of the Third Reich. If Hitler hadn’t come to power, Germany would have continued to suffer under the burden of crippling sanctions and would have never achieved its two subsequent periods of ascendance.
Geez… given the outcome of World War II how could it have been in the best interest of the German people?
Adolf Hitler.
Are you assuming that this wasn’t in the best interests of the German people?
You know who else got elected through proportional representation?