8A • COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL • OCTOBER 17, 2018
STAR
from A7
In a 2007 study in the Quarterly
Journal of Political Science, Floridian
votes were examined and found that if
Nader had not been in the race, Gore
could have carried the state, thus giv-
ing him enough electoral votes to win
the presidency. In all, 97,488 Floridi-
ans voted for Nader.
Th e study estimated that 60 percent
of Nader voters would have voted for
Gore, thus giving him in the presiden-
cy. If those estimates are true, Nader
being in the race “spoiled” the election
for Gore.
Nader was a true believer in his
cause and was attempting to win the
election outright. However, some can-
didates get into a race with the express
goal of tearing down another candi-
date. It was thought that then “Nev-
er Trump” Republican Mitt Romney
would run as a spoiler in 2016, but
he felt he could not fundraise in good
conscience to play spoiler.
Some candidates even attempt to
spoil the entire system, or at least
game it beyond recognition.
Also in 2016, many hoped that
“Never Trump” Republican David
Evan McMullin would act as a spoiler
for the president. He actually ran in a
number of states, with a big showing in
Utah. Some hoped that he would win
that state and deny Trump the needed
270 Electoral College votes to win.
But McMullin had loft ier goals.
Since he wasn’t on the ballot in enough
states to win the 270 electoral votes
outright, his eyes were set on win-
ning enough votes the ensure neither
Trump nor Clinton could reach 270,
which would leave the decision up to
the House of Representatives.
McMullin failed at being a spoiler.
His highest showing was in Utah with
21.54 percent of the vote, compared to
Trump’s 45.54 percent.
It’s these kinds of tactics that STAR
voting hopes to put an end to.
“You can vote for Nader if you want,”
Roberts said of STAR. “Why should
you feel like you can’t express that on
a ballot? You should be able to express,
‘Th is is my favorite candidate, period.’
Vote honestly. And if you have a ballot
that doesn’t allow voters to vote hon-
estly, you have to ask yourself ‘Why?’
— and ‘What can we do to fi x it?’”
However, political parties and their
candidates aren’t the only ones who
can engage in gaming the voting sys-
tem. STAR voting is not completely
immune to voters taking part in tac-
tical voting.
FairVote found that there were in-
deed examples of tactical voting with-
in the system.
Tactical Voting:
One of the greatest examples of
tactical voting is in the 2000 election,
again with Nader.
In that election, even many of Na-
der’s supporters didn’t feel he had a
chance to win. Instead, their goal was
to have Nader get 5 percent of the pop-
ular vote, allowing the Green Party to
receive federal funding in the 2004
election.
But Nader supporters didn’t want
Bush to win.
To fi x this problem, Gore support-
ers in solid Republican states that had
no chance of having their candidate
win electoral votes would swap votes
with Nader supporters in swing states.
A Nader supporter in swing-state
Michigan would vote for Gore, with
the express promise from a red-state
Gore supporter in Texas would vote
for Nader. Gore would get a vote in
a swing state in a bid to win electoral
votes, and Nader would get a vote in a
red state that would give him a chance
to get the needed fi ve percent popular
vote.
People organized. Th e internet,
which was just coming into its own,
saw trading sites begin to pop up, put-
ting red-state and swing-state voters
together. According to a 2000 article
in Slate, one website got 90,000 visits
in one day.
But there were problems. In Califor-
nia, vote trading was deemed illegal
and a popular site was shut down.
Th e public wasn’t as tech savvy as it
is today, either. Th is was before Face-
book and Twitter, and people were still
learning how to navigate the world
wide web. Many had to go actively
searching for these sites or hope for an
email chain to get involved, far from
the ease of a Facebook post today that
can potentially reach 5,000 people
with the click of a button.
And time wasn’t on their side. Th ese
websites only became prevalent just
one month before the election.
Th e Nader Trader experiment end-
ed in failure, with Nader only receiv-
ing 2.74 percent of the vote, well below
the fi ve percent threshold needed to
obtain federal funding. But with more
planning and a better social media,
it’s possible a larger population could
have taken up the cause.
A First Step:
STAR wouldn’t be the end-all-be-all
to fi xing voting in America. It’s just a
fi rst step.
“I think it’s a powerful, revolution-
ary fi rst step,” Roberts said. “I don’t
think it’s a cure-all patch for every-
thing, but I think it’s abso-lutely a step
in the right direction for our voting
method. Whatever changes need to be
made to go along side of it, we can ad-
dress those one at a time.”
Even if money could be saved by not
doing primaries, how each candidate
gets their name out to the public will
still be based on campaign donations.
“Money will still be a huge compo-
nent,” Roberts said. “We do run into
people who say that the number one
problem is money in politics, and ask
why we aren’t working on that. We un-
derstand that, and we do see that as a
huge problem.
“Because it’s such an enormous task
to work on money and politics that,
rather than redirecting energy into
ending Citizens United, we believe
that this is something that is a smaller
chunk of change that we have the ca-
pacity to eff ect here locally in our area.
Rather than just being overwhelmed
by money in politics, we believe this
is an achievable goal here locally. It is
a step toward freeing people to vote
for their favorite candidates, which is
huge.”
And there are still questions about
how STAR will be implemented in the
future. Right now, it is for non-parti-
san races. What will it look like when
it gets into more heated, and fi nancial-
ly backed, races statewide?
Will people become confused in
how to use the system? It takes some
time to describe its intricacies, as evi-
denced in the length of this article.
And will they trust the mathemati-
cal algorithms used in the runoff ?
Th at’s something for the voters to
decide in November.
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