Friday, October 28, 2005

The Latest on RON

The Bliss Institute survey on RON has sent some ripples through the pro-RON crowd. HypoSpeak has some analyitical posts here and here. The survey itself (in pdf) is here.

Yesterday the Ohio Democratic Party announced that it would not take a position on RON. Their press release hit the right notes, casting RON as a nonpartisan issue. All well and good, except. . .

Today some high-ranking D's spoke out against it. This is not surprising. For those of us who have been working on the issue, it is simply public acknowledgement of what we have been hearing privately. As I said before, it's all about power. RON proponents want elected officials to be accountable to the people. An official sitting in a district in which upwards of 60% of the residents hail from his party is too safe to be accountable. People from the party in power don't want to change the rules. People from the other party want to be able to bend the political apparatus to their advantage when the tide turns.

Not convinced? Check out Tim Tagaris's average donation size comparison.

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