Support ranked-choice voting
In Maine, we declare the candidate getting the most votes the winner. If more than two candidates are running, it’s quite possible to win an election without majority support.
Suppose five candidates are running for governor. One candidate argues for eliminating deer hunting. One fourth of the voters agree. The anti-hunting candidate is likely to get 25 percent of the vote. The other four candidates each get 19 percent. The anti-hunting candidate wins though he or she is opposed by three quarters of the voters.
To gain advantage, a candidate should stake out positions not held by other candidates, even if those positions are opposed by most voters. All that’s necessary is that those views are held by a larger proportion of the candidates than voters.
Pre-election testing of voter sentiment is likely to dissuade people with unpopular views from running for office. Conversely, people with views shared by most voters are relatively likely to run. This selection bias tends to divide the vote and shift the probabilities in favor of the single candidate with an undivided block of supporters.
Ranked-choice voting achieves just what the name implies. Voters list the candidates in ranked order of preference. The first choice votes are counted. If no candidate has a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. People who voted for that candidate get their second choice votes distributed among the remaining candidates. The process continues until a candidate accumulates more than half of the votes.
Mainers who support majority rule will support ranked-choice voting.
Wayne Myers
Waldoboro
Paradis for Belfast mayor
Samantha Paradis has my vote for mayor of Belfast. I have worked and socialized with her, and she is an exceptional person, an able leader and an effective advocate. As a nurse, she has demonstrated experience working for beneficial change in community health care. She founded Aging Well in Waldo County, a vigorous organization that has undertaken a survey of people over age 50 throughout Waldo County establishing needs and problems. The group is now discussing actions to make the needed and desired changes throughout our county.
She is an effective leader of meetings, and her approach is always based on inclusiveness and on listening to all who wish to be heard. She keeps meetings on track and completes the agenda without shutting anyone out. She can share complex information and make her points understandable in a clear, calm manner. At her meetings I have attended, everyone feels included and heard; she gives voice to all.
Paradis is our future, she is Maine born and bred, and she is ready and more than able to assume the duties of mayor of Belfast.
Nan Borton
Belfast
Anthem protest
A Google search reveals that the act of kneeling is a sign of deep respect, reverence, subservience. Examples abound: genuflecting before the altar, offering a wedding proposal, being dubbed a knight. From this perspective, those who have equated kneeling during NFL pregame festivities as an unpatriotic gesture have missed the boat.
Rather than condemn that display as disrespectful, the demonstrators should be applauded for their action. If they truly wanted to present an irreverent attitude, they should turn their back on the flag or spit in its direction. Celebrating the flag and the national anthem as tributes to our military, especially those who have died in defense of the country is somewhat disingenuous. Most, if not all, countries have a flag and a national anthem, but have no military.
The original 13 states had a flag, but no anthem and no military. Flags and anthems are unique and symbolize and give identity to the country. We witness this at the Olympics when the flag and an anthem honors the winner of the gold medal. The “Star Spangled Banner” was written to memorialize the battle at Fort McHenry, not to honor a military force or pay tribute to the then existing United States.
NFL kneelers were led astray by a disgruntled mediocre, militant 49er’s quarterback who chose an unpolitically correct venue to display his angst. Regretfully, they opted to follow his inflammatory method of protest and in the process bought antagonism rather than adulation from their fans and fellow citizens.
Ron Goldstone
Hampden
Expand Medicaid
Raise your hand if you’ve never been sick. My parents were born in the 1920s and each contracted common childhood illnesses, such as ear infection and strep throat. Since antibiotics were not yet available, the result was deafness for my dad from a punctured ear drum and rheumatic fever for my mom.
Today, no lack of medical technologies and medicines threaten health; it’s lack of regular access to health care that can turn common illnesses into lifelong chronic health conditions. More than 100,000 Mainers had no health insurance in 2016. Insured or not, people get sick and need health services.
Since health care is expensive and most of the uninsured have limited financial resources, many cannot pay their medical bills. We shouldn’t continue to let thousands of Mainers rely on hospital emergency rooms for their primary care. The Maine Hospital Association reports that Maine hospitals incur costs of more than $100 million in charity care each year. The bulk of these uncompensated costs are shifted to taxpayers and to private insurance premiums. In contrast, the estimated cost to Maine’s general fund in the first year of Medicaid expansion is estimated at $13.5 million, rising to about $55 million in 2021 when the federal share becomes a steady 90 percent.
If dollars for health care concern you the most, please note that taxpayers can see better health outcomes and save money by saying yes to Medicaid expansion.
Carole Boothroyd
Dover-Foxcroft
A silent spring
Ray Clemons of Hermon wrote in an Oct. 10 BDN letter to the editor asking where all the birds have gone. Here in Caribou, I have experienced the same phenomenon. For more than four weeks, I have had no birds at my feeders. Usually, I refill the feeders with sunflower seeds every two days for an abundance of finches, nuthatches and chickadees year round. Now I have a pair of mourning doves, one blue jay and a sparrow feeding on ground wild seed mix.
I have lived here 35 years and have never seen this happen before. Does this predict a Rachel Carson “Silent Spring”?
Dale J. Gordon
Caribou