The Freedom Bulletin

Paul Loscocco, the running mate of independent Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill, dropped out of the race today and endorsed Republican Charlie Baker. In a somewhat sad series of events, Cahill’s campaign manager and senior advisor also quit last week, but Cahill declares that he will stay in the race.

In addition to being sad, this turn in the gubernatorial race illustrates why our electoral system, plurality voting, is simply bad. Plurality voting, which is used in almost all elections in the USA and in most of the world, means that in each race, you vote for one candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins.

Although this is probably the simplest voting method, it’s far from the best. A result of this system is that independent and third party candidates are maligned for “taking away” votes from the major party candidate who is the most similar to them.

I support Baker in the governor’s race, but I’m not happy that so many of my fellow Baker supporters constantly bash Cahill, almost more harshly than they criticize Baker’s chief opponent, Democrat (and incumbent) Deval Patrick. Of course, it makes sense for Baker and his supporters to wish Cahill wasn’t running, since if his ideas and image are indeed more like Baker’s than Patrick’s, then his presence in the race hurts Baker.

But the only reason this makes sense is because of the stupid voting system that is in use. Adopting a better system, such as Borda count, range voting, or my personal favorite, instant runoff voting, would get rid of this problem by allowing people to express their true preferences without inadvertently helping their least favorite candidate.

I want Baker to win but I also admire Cahill’s decision to run as an independent, and I wish there was a Libertarian in the race, so that these views would get more exposure, even if he or she had no chance of winning. In the Massachusetts Senate special election, I liked independent/libertarian Joe Kennedy the best based on platform alone, but I recognized that he had no chance of winning, so I supported Scott Brown, whom I like, too. I wish that I could have these opinions without feeling torn between two camps (Republican and libertarian), and without the members of the two camps angrily insulting each other. I wish that I, and everyone else, could vote in a way that expresses our true preferences. With a different voting system, we could.

It just keeps getting better! Not only is Virginia suing against the federal requirement to have health insurance, but a man named Michael Merlina is suing the Massachusetts Health Connector Authority, the entity in charge of implementing the state’s health insurance mandate. He was fined $2000 for failing to have insurance, and the Connector denied his appeal.

It’s awesome that someone is challenging the state’s individual mandate in the court system, but even better that three of out the four gubernatorial candidates (at least to some extent) support Merlina and criticize the individual mandate.

Republican Charlie Baker isn’t explicitly anti-mandate, but he makes a good point about Massachusetts’s long list of benefits that all insurance plans must cover:

“The whole plan was for people to have more affordable options, and Gov. Patrick eliminated them. Michael Merlina is arguing that the price of health insurance has become unaffordable, and he’s right.”

Said Independent Tim Cahill (I’m pleasantly surprised to learn that he’s against the mandate):

“He’s not asking for a handout – he just wants to be left alone. I feel for him. I hope he wins, and throws the whole insurance mandate up in the air.”

And Green-Rainbow candidate Jill Stein is surprisingly anti-mandate as well:

“All health-care nonreform did was created a windfall for insurance and pharmaceutical companies that are in bed with Beacon Hill.”

Health-care nonreform…what a great name! I might have to start using it.

A couple of years ago, the individual mandate was considered a moderate measure, supported by Democrats and Republicans alike and only opposed by the “far right.” In the early stages of the federal health-care nonreform debate, the individual mandate was considered a given and was rarely mentioned. All of the debate focused on the public option, Medicare cuts, abortion funding, and other things that, although important, are not as important as the mandate from a pro-liberty point of view. Now almost every time federal health-care nonreform is mentioned in the news, the individual mandate is mentioned, and usually called unpopular and/or controversial. How awesome that three out of four gubernatorial candidates in Massachusetts, where the individual mandate was first enacted in 2006, disapprove of the mandate to some extent. People are finally realizing what freedom truly is and how severely the individual mandate violates it.