Chicago's sham mayoral election - a letter sent to the Chicago newspapers

Chicago is going to have a runoff between two candidates when more than 4 out of 5 voters didn’t even vote for them.  Does nobody see a problem here?  How can this in any way reflect the will of the people?

I am thankful that Chicago dumped the party system for its mayoral election.  It gave voters more choices which is a good thing.  It also requires somebody to get over 50% of the vote to win.  That’s a good thing too and essential in a democracy, but apparently not essential for most elections.  Both Raoul and Pritzker won primaries without getting a majority of the votes.

But this runoff problem negates all the other benefits.  This election will not show the will of the people.  If you want to have more than the usual two candidates, then you need to do other things differently as well.

With more than two candidates, the odds of someone winning on the first ballot are slim.  So you need to know what people’s second and third choices are

The fairest and most accurate way to do this is to have as many runoffs as there are candidates, eliminating the lowest one in each round.  Or.  Voters can rank their choices on one ballot, called a weighted ballot. 

I don’t know who decides these things, but I hope they fix this before April.  I’m hoping the media can give this issue some attention, because I’m not hopeful the political system can fix itself without outside nudging.

addressing gun violence at the local level: a letter to the village board

Re: gun safety laws

Greetings!

I hope you are all doing well.

Gun violence is certainly something that everyone is concerned about.  As a result, government bodies are spending a lot of time and energy thinking of what can be done to minimize or prevent it.

Often I feel like the need to do something, anything, results in laws that make the lawmakers feel better for having done something rather than nothing, but the laws have little effect on the problem overall.  They may even have serious unintended consequences.

I didn’t readily find anything on the village website on this issue, but the newspaper did provide some information as to steps the village might take in the future.

One step concerns the forbidding of concealed carry in liquor establishments.  I’m guessing that would include the owner of the business as well. 

But this proposal is not being brought forward because there is a problem in our country with people who drink too much and then end up killing people or robbing liquor stores.  The mass shootings that have stirred up the country were planned and carried out by people who had every intention of doing it.  They were not spontaneous acts facilitated by alcohol.

Worse, every mass shooting that I am aware of has taken place in a place where there was no one who could confront the shooter.  If guns are illegal in liquor establishments, those places will become more likely to experience gun violence than before.  They will be more likely of being robbed.  They will be more likely to have a mass shooting, not less.

People who do mass shootings have not been intoxicated.  And they certainly are not going to be thwarted in their mission by a sign at the door saying that guns are forbidden beyond that point.  That is actually a source of great comfort to them. 

Don’t look to Northbrook for guidance here.  Go somewhere where they actually have a gun violence problem and see if forbidding concealed weapons in certain places is really a help or an encouragement to violence.

If you want the answer to gun violence, I can give it to you.  Let me know.  It’s not something that should be summarized in a short sound bite.  If I say what it is, I would need to explain why it is.

Thank you

Larry Craig

improving elections

Two letters appeared in the Tribune (February 14) today that urged Chicago to use weighted ballots in the upcoming mayoral election.  While both letters were excellent, they failed to note the most important reason for using a weighted ballot here.

First of all, Chicago is to be commended for having an open election as they do.  We need more choices than the two political parties give us.

Chicago is also to be commended for not giving the election to a candidate who garners less than 50% of the vote, unlike almost every other election in our country, particularly primary elections.

But they do make one mistake here.  They limit the runoff to the two leading candidates.  In a race with as little as 4 candidates, a person could be in the lead with as little as 26% of the vote.  That means that 74% of the voters did not vote for that candidate, 3 out of 4.

 

By the same token, any candidate who gets less than 50% of the vote will have more people who voted against them than for them.  So the fairest way to get the candidate the voters really want is to eliminate one candidate per round of runoffs until one candidate is left. 

Or you can use a weighted ballot and save the time and money.

Government Employees Should Not Be Paid by Private Citizens

Phil Radner is right (February 13).  I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t identify it, so I didn’t think more about it.

The biggest problem in politics is probably the money.  You work for the one who gives you the money, whether it is a campaign donor or your boss. 

By Pritzker paying enormous amounts of money to the people working closest with him, he’s dividing their loyalties between We the People and the Governor. 

If he can’t get enough good people on the salary that is offered, then he needs to look harder. 

The Real Reason Why Our Nation’s Infrastructure is Crumbling - a letter to a newspaper

A Sun-Times reader (February 13) made a call for our elected officials to immediately address the issue of our nation’s crumbling infrastructure.  The letter was titled “Why Lake Shore Drive is Crumbling,” but I don’t think the letter actually explained why apart from suggesting negligence on the part of our politicians.

I would like to suggest a deeper reason. 

Our country has made a huge shift over the last few generations.  We have erased God from our public life, government, schools, and consciousness. 

Our country was founded on the concept that God gave unalienable rights to human beings.  Since we can’t talk about God in our schools and public life, we don’t talk about unalienable rights anymore.  So rights have morphed into what are essentially government-given rights, which are very different.

Government-given rights increase in number with every election cycle, and they are enormously expensive.  Since our nation has made this shift, government spending has always outpaced government revenues.  And we are now $22 trillion in debt just at the federal level. 

Our politicians haven’t neglected our infrastructure.  They just have too much other spending to do first, and there’s only so much new debt they can add at any point.