Krist Novoselic is 6’7″ and played bass for the band Nirvana. As any child of the 80’s or 90’s can tell you, Nirvana pretty much changed the music industry for the better. We’re happy to report that a fellow giant was part of that.
After Nirvana’s untimely demise, Novoselic returned to his home town of Seattle. He did a bit of music here and there with bands he formed as well as a punk band here and there. But more than music, Novoselic got involved in politics.
He is a part of the Democratic Party and is involved in their efforts in Seattle. He has even run for office locally. But his most important contribution in our opinion is something called FairVote.
FairVote has been around since 1992, but Novoselic joined the board in 2005 and has been the chair since 2008. We appreciate his efforts, especially this rough election season. The aim of his organization is to install Ranked Choice Voting for elections. What does that mean?
It means instead of voting for one candidate, you get to rank the candidates from first preference to second and so on. How is that useful? It gives us a more representative election. For example, if you have no candidate get a majority of first preference votes, then you take the candidate who came in last away. Now everyone who had that candidate as their number one gets their number two vote counted. If no one has a majority, take out the next lowest candidate. Those who placed them at number one get their number two vote counted. You keep going down until you have a candidate who gets a majority of support.
This works great because people can vote their conscience without feeling like they are wasting their vote. Maybe a guy like Gary Johnson has 15% of the country behind him right now, but only 5% will vote for him for fear of their vote being wasted. This allows them to vote the person they want at number one and their secondary choice will still get counted in the end.
For his efforts in promoting FairVote and encouraging people to be involved politically, as well as his revolutionary music, Krist Novoselic is inducted into our Tall Of Fame.
