DO THE MATH

Although imperfect, IRV improves elections

I have both a math and civics problem with the commentary on instant-runoff voting (IRV) by Andy Cilek and Matt Marchetti ("Here's a serious challenge for your math and civics skills," March 4). First, the math. It's easy to find anomalies when the vote tally is very small. Any exercise in statistics is less sound with fewer numbers. For example, reduce it down to only three votes cast. Without IRV, you could have a winner, a tie or a three-way tie. With IRV, you could have a winner, a runoff winner or a three-way tie. All that proves is that neither option is ideal when only three votes are cast and that there are problems associated with really low voter turnout.

Now for the civics question. Our state and national races are monopolized by the two-party system, which is awash in special-interest money and deceptively negative campaigning. IRV isn't going to help those who failed in the political debate, as Cilek and Marchetti suggest. Instead, it will help ensure the debate happens. For Minnesota, IRV would have certainly prevented the virtual tie (among millions of votes) in our last Senate race, which left us short a vote in the Senate for quite some time. More important, it would have encouraged other high-quality third-party candidates, more productive debate on the issues, more informed voters and a result in which the losing party wouldn't feel robbed.

ERIC LUOMA, WATERTOWN

FALSE START

'Race to the Top' failure was union-bashing ploy

So let's get this straight: One of the criteria for federal education grants in the "Race to the Top" competition was that a state's proposal be supported by its teachers. But rather than negotiate a competitive proposal to send forward to Washington, Gov. Tim Pawlenty submitted a proposal that he knew was not supported by Minnesota teachers. It sounds like the governor wanted to make sure Minnesota would lose. Then he could cynically use the state's loss as a hammer for political bludgeoning. I guess that is the routine political strategy used by Republicans these days.

MIKE GRIFFIN, ST. PAUL

DIONNE'S FLIP-FLOP

Columnist shows off his

clearly partisan stripes

I was somewhat surprised to read E.J. Dionne's column encouraging Democrats to engage the "nuclear option" to bypass the filibuster and pass health care reform on a simple majority vote ("Let's talk about reconciliation," March 5). After all, when Republicans threatened the same action during the filibuster on President George W. Bush's judicial nominees, Dionne wrote in a March 2005 column, "If the Republicans pushing against the filibuster love majority rule so much, they should propose getting rid of the Senate altogether. But doing so would mean acknowledging what's really going on here: regime change disguised as a narrow rules fight. We could choose to institute a British-style parliamentary system in which majorities get almost everything they want. But advocates of such a radical departure should be honest enough to propose amending the Constitution first." People are entitled to a change of heart, but without any acknowledgment of his previous position, Dionne's column smacks of unprincipled partisanship.

ERIK MARKSBERRY, COON RAPIDS

RIGHT TO KNOW

Public records critical for open government

Yes, it's distressing that ambulance chasers bother accident victims (Whistleblower, Feb. 27). But please remember that public records are not just an inconvenience to some but a bedrock for all for an open society and transparent democracy. Records collected by public agencies belong not just to government and individuals but to all the people. Minnesota's presumption of openness means that anyone is entitled to basic information about births, deaths, marriages, divorces, police and court cases, accidents, fires, agency budgets, voter registrations, public bids and contracts, grants, pollution problems, who gets hired (and fired) by public agencies and how much they're paid. Public records help inform us about what's going on in the community, how public agencies respond to problems, what issues we may consider in our voting decisions and whether people are treated fairly and equitably.

ROBERT FRANKLIN, MEDINA

NUCLEAR SOLUTION

A bipartisan effort to generate clean energy

Far from misleading the public, as one of your letter writers suggests, Congressmen Erik Paulsen and Tim Walz have reached across a very wide aisle and joined hands to call our attention to an increasingly important problem: future sources of energy. For this alone, they should be commended, instead of implicitly accused of being captive to corporate interests. Instead the writer suggests, without a shred of quantitative evidence, economic or technical, that nuclear energy uses more energy than it delivers. One may well wonder why countries like France are not totally bankrupt by now.

CLIFF ERICKSON, MINNETONKA