Tag: ranked-preference voting

U.S. Transhumanist Party 2023 Electronic Primary Results – Tom Ross Endorsed as Candidate for President of the United States, Daniel Twedt Selected as Candidate for Vice-President

U.S. Transhumanist Party 2023 Electronic Primary Results – Tom Ross Endorsed as Candidate for President of the United States, Daniel Twedt Selected as Candidate for Vice-President

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May 23, 2023 – The U.S. Transhumanist Party (USTP) hereby announces the results of its 2023 Electronic Primary for the USTP’s endorsement of a candidate to run for the office of President of the United States. Detailed results have been tabulated here.

Between 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time on May 14, 2023, and 3:00 a.m. on May 22, 2023, 129 members of the USTP cast their ballots in the 2023 Electronic Primary. Consistent with the USTP’s commitment to ranked-preference voting, members were able to rank-order the two candidates, Tom Ross and Daniel Twedt, as well as the “None of the Above” option. The anonymized individual ballots (ordered by randomly assigned Voter IDs to protect individual voters’ privacy), have been documented in this spreadsheet.

 Total Valid Ballots Cast: 129

Summary of Voter Rankings by Candidate

  Thomas Ernest Ross, Jr. (Tom Ross)

 Daniel Emerson Twedt (Daniel Twedt)

 None of the Above
  Number Percentage Number Percentage Number Percentage
1st CHOICES 80 62.02% 35 27.13% 14 10.85%
2nd CHOICES 34 28.57% 70 58.82% 15 12.61%
3rd (Last) CHOICES 13 15.48% 14 16.67% 57 67.86%

Round 1: Tally of First Choices

Tom Ross: 80 votes – 62.02%
Daniel Twedt: 35 votes – 27.13%
None of the Above: 14 votes – 10.85%

In Round 1, Tom Ross receives an absolute majority and therefore wins the election.

Accordingly, Tom Ross receives the U.S. Transhumanist Party’s endorsement as candidate for President of the United States in 2024.

All votes cast during the election process were manually validated to ensure that they originated from genuine USTP members. Detailed monitoring of the votes cast did not detect any voter fraud, sock-puppet accounts, or mass attempts by non-members to vote. USTP leadership is thus confident that election security was appropriately preserved. Only four ballots were discarded: one blank ballot, one ballot where the member subsequently re-voted and had the re-vote counted, and two ballots from name/e-mail address combinations that were not found on the USTP’s membership list.

In accordance with the preferences of the USTP membership, on March 23, 2023, USTP Chairman Gennady Stolyarov II declared pursuant to his authority in Article III of the USTP Constitution that the United States Transhumanist Party hereby endorses Tom Ross for President of the United States in the 2024 general election.

As the endorsed Presidential candidate, Tom Ross had the option to select his Vice-Presidential running mate, and he has decided that Daniel Twedt shall be running on the U.S. Transhumanist Party ticket for Vice-President of the United States. Accordingly, this is truly a Transhumanist unity ticket, as these two candidates earned a total of 89.15% of the first-choice votes cast during the 2023 Electronic Primary.

The Ross-Twedt 2024 campaign will provide the U.S. Transhumanist Party and the broader transhumanist movement with numerous opportunities for raising public awareness about the importance of emerging technologies and how the Platform and  Values of the USTP can enable humankind to realize a brighter future where both length and quality of life are dramatically improved. The USTP encourages all of its members, and all transhumanists generally, to support the Ross-Twedt 2024 campaign and unite as a movement in advocating for the ideas of transhumanism to the general public. As we move into the general-election campaign, we welcome your help and participation in this next stage of our endeavors – and we welcome other members of the USTP pursuing political offices at the federal, state, and local levels.

 

U.S. Transhumanist Party and Nevada Transhumanist Party Positions on 2022 Nevada Ballot Questions

U.S. Transhumanist Party and Nevada Transhumanist Party Positions on 2022 Nevada Ballot Questions

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Gennady Stolyarov II

The United States Transhumanist Party and Nevada Transhumanist Party offer the following brief statements of position on the ballot questions currently before Nevada voters in the 2022 General Election.

Summary
Nevada State Question 1 – Equality of Rights Amendment: Support
Nevada State Question 2 – Minimum Wage Amendment: Neutral
Nevada State Question 3 – Top-Five Ranked-Choice Voting Initiative: Strongly Support

Nevada State Ballot Question 1 – Equality of Rights Amendment:

Wording of Question: “Shall the Nevada Constitution be amended by adding a specific guarantee that equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by this State or any of its cities, counties, or other political subdivisions on account of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry, or national origin?” (More information on BallotPedia.)

Position of the U.S. Transhumanist Party and Nevada Transhumanist Party: The U.S. Transhumanist Party and Nevada Transhumanist Party consider it necessary to support Ballot Question 1 because of the broader commitment to universal rights expressed in the Transhumanist Bill of Rights – Version 3.0. Article I of the Transhumanist Bill of Rights reads, in part, that “All sentient entities are entitled, to the extent of their individual decisions, to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, gender, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, social, or planetary origin, property, birth (including manner of birth), biological or non-biological origins, or other status.” The text of Nevada State Ballot Question 1 recognizes equality of rights for a subset of the above-listed sentient entities and is therefore a step in the correct direction. In the prohibition on governmental entities denying or abridging rights on the basis of the attributes mentioned, Ballot Question 1 expresses the essential principle that individuals should be treated as individuals, not members of larger, mostly circumstantial identity groups. This is affirmed in Article X of the Transhumanist Bill of Rights, which states, in part, that “Morphological freedom entails the duty to treat all sapients as individuals instead of categorizing them into arbitrary subgroups or demographics, including as yet undefined subcategorizations that may arise as sapience evolves.” The rights of an individual should therefore not be abridged, especially by governments, simply because the individual happens to belong to a broader category whose definition is many times outside the scope of that individual’s personal choices.

Nevada State Ballot Question 2 – Minimum Wage Amendment:

Wording of Question: “Shall the Nevada Constitution be amended, effective July 1, 2024, to: (1) establish the State’s minimum wage that employers must pay to certain employees at a rate of $12 per hour worked, subject to any applicable increases above that $12 rate provided by federal law or enacted by the Nevada Legislature; (2) remove the existing provisions setting different rates for the minimum wage based on whether the employer offers certain health benefits to such employees; and (3) remove the existing provisions for adjusting the minimum wage based on applicable increases in the cost of living?” (More information on BallotPedia.)

Position of the U.S. Transhumanist Party and Nevada Transhumanist Party: The U.S. Transhumanist Party and Nevada Transhumanist Party are neutral on Ballot Question 2, as both of our parties’ Platforms are silent on the issue of the minimum wage, whether it should exist at all, whether higher or lower amounts of the minimum wage are preferable, and whether or not the presence of any health benefits should be able to count toward satisfying a portion of any minimum-wage requirement. Accordingly, our members in Nevada are encouraged to vote their conscience on this ballot question by consulting their own individual understandings of the relevant matters.

Nevada State Ballot Question 3 – Top-Five Ranked-Choice Voting Initiative:

Wording of Question: “Shall the Nevada Constitution be amended, effective July 1, 2024, to: (1) establish the State’s minimum wage that employers must pay to certain employees at a rate of $12 per hour worked, subject to any applicable increases above that $12 rate provided by federal law or enacted by the Nevada Legislature; (2) remove the existing provisions setting different rates for the minimum wage based on whether the employer offers certain health benefits to such employees; and (3) remove the existing provisions for adjusting the minimum wage based on applicable increases in the cost of living?” (More information on BallotPedia.)

Position of the U.S. Transhumanist Party and Nevada Transhumanist Party: In the view of the U.S. Transhumanist Party and Nevada Transhumanist Party, this is the single most important ballot measure in Nevada political history, as it has the potential to break the stranglehold of the duopoly on Nevada politics. The plurality of Nevada voters are independent of the major political parties, and yet they are currently unable to meaningfully influence many local races where a major-party primary determines that party’s nominee, who then receives no meaningful competition at the ballot box in the general election. Moreover, Nevada, as a “battleground” electoral state, often features great pressure applied on voters to support the “lesser evil”, despite many Nevada voters being rightly disillusioned with both the Republican and the Democratic “options” provided to them. Ranked-preference voting eliminates the incentive to vote strategically or for a “lesser evil” to the exclusion of one’s genuinely preferred candidate, since one can provide a complete rank-ordering of one’s preferences rather than limit oneself to one choice.

Section XXX of the U.S. Transhumanist Party Platform states that “The United States Transhumanist Party supports replacing the current ‘winner-take-all’ electoral system with proportional representation, ranked preference voting, and other devices to minimize the temptations by voters to favor a perceived ‘lesser evil’ rather than the candidates closest to those voters’ own preferences.” Thus, support for ranked-choice voting is directly embedded in our Platform. Furthermore, Section XIX of the USTP Platform reads, in part, “The United States Transhumanist Party supports an end to the two-party political system in the United States and a substantially greater inclusion of ‘third parties’ in the political process through mechanisms such as proportional representation and the elimination of stringent ballot-access requirements.” Allowing open access to primaries and enabling ranked-preference voting in the general election would certainly lower the barriers to entry to candidates who do not belong to either of the duopoly parties.

The U.S. Transhumanist Party has successfully implemented ranked-preference voting in multiple of its internal votes. There is every reason to expect that ranked-preference voting could be implemented with similar success for the much simpler top-five ballots in Nevada general elections that would be developed if Question 3 were to be approved by the voters (twice, the first time this year). The U.S. Transhumanist Party and Nevada Transhumanist Party strongly encourage every Nevada voter to support Ballot Question 3.

For an extensive discussion of how ranked-choice voting works, the USTP encourages everyone to view our Virtual Enlightenment Salon with Kit Muehlman and FairVote Washington, as well as a subsequent, in-depth presentation by FairVote Washington on the technical workings of proportional ranked-choice voting.