Fair Elections

• Proportional Representation: Replace winner-take-all elections with proportional representation on Common Council and Board of Education. Winner-take-all elections over-represent majorities and exclude minorities. Proportional representation gives each party its fair share of representation in proportion to the vote it receives.
• Instant Runoff Voting: Replace plurality elections with instant runoff voting for single seat elections like Mayor and Auditor. Instant runoff voting elects the most preferred candidate. It requires a majority vote to be elected. Voters rank their choices in order of preference: 1, 2, 3, and so on. If no candidate wins over 50% in the first round, the last place candidate is eliminated and the second choice votes of the last place candidate are distributed and counted. This runoff voting process continues until the first candidate to receive over 50% of the vote wins.
• Public Campaign Financing: Enact a Clean Money system of full public campaign financing in Syracuse. Candidates would qualify for equal public campaign grants by raising a reasonable number of $5 contributions from voters in their district to demonstrate support. The grant would be sufficient to get the candidate's message to all voters. Candidates who opt for public money could not raise and spend private money. They could only use clean public money. Our public elections have been privatized. We have the best politicians that money can buy. The developers and other special interests seeking government favors are financing our public elections. This private campaign financing is legalized bribery. Public campaign financing would cost taxpayers of few dollars each per year to fund. That's a small price to pay for fair and clean elections.