The Strategy of Strategic Election Reform.

I'm glad this a Third Party and Independent Daily, because Third Parties in the US are often sadly pretentious and not as effective as they could be due to how we tend to get over-focused on the "important" elections at the top. I believe Strategic Election Reform(SER) entails elevating the public perception of "less important" elections and the status of state legislators. But this seems to go against the grain of how most of us think in the US.

It's also hard sometimes to communicate about electoral reforms with most folks in the US. I've been posting and interacting quite a bit recently over at Daily Kos as SElectionR. My most recent post has been "What is Strategic Election Reform and Why Should Kos-Folk Care?" I got a comment that I wanted to share with you all.
JRooth wrote,

I admit I'm one of those ...
who reacted somewhat sarcastically in your previous diaries. But I've tipped and recced this one for clarity and quality of presentation even though I'm not convinced this change is worth the effort of fighting for.

What I mean by that is that you're facing both entrenched interests in the two major parties, as well as a very big job changing the people's concept of what elections should be. The question in my mind is whether the existing system is really so hopeless that it's worth it to expend our efforts in that difficult process.

You're absolutely right, I think, to suggest doing this bottom-up. I can see some localities being willing to try it and if their results are good the idea would spread, first laterally and then even perhaps vertically.

I replied,

"Nothing worthwhile is easy!
thankyou, could you please help me draw some more attention to this better post?

My proposed use of 3-seated PR for local elections doesn't change most of how we do elections in the US.
The specific elections are chronically non-competitive. My proposed reform makes them competitive. It's solving a long-standing problem.
Is the system hopeless? It just tilts too easily to effective single party rule, which isn't as bad if it's the more progressive party ruling and intermediaries are influencing the parties through a variety of relatively selfless forms of activism. But that's been harder to do well lately due to the cultural wars and the extent of inequality in the US. As such, I believe that my proposal would take our system to the next level and that it would end up being the next civil rights movement.

JRooth's comment gave me hope, which sometimes falters for me due to how hard it is to communicate my ideas sometimes...
dlw