This is it: the final days before Illinois's presidential primary. I worked alongside other volunteers last year to collect signatures for Green presidential candidates, and four are on the ballot: Cynthia McKinney, Jared Ball, Kent Mesplay, and Howie Hawkins. Thank you to everyone who signed a petition and helped us put together the first Green primary in Illinois.

I'm supporting Cynthia McKinney. McKinney is an experienced and committed advocate for the values the Green party is based on: grassroots democracy, social and environmental justice, and nonviolence. Her voting record in congress shows leadership on voters' rights, human rights, and environmental and economic policy. And like me, she knows that we need a political party that doesn't just talk about change, but delivers it.

In Urbana, we love our parks. I grew up just two blocks away from Carle Park, and it's been my neighborhood park ever since. I learned to swim in the original Crystal Lake pool. Recently I joined with other dog owners to propose and support the wonderful Dog Park.

While we all enjoy the parks, many of us don't know that funding for the Urbana Park District has been failing to keep up with costs as a result of property tax caps. I opposed those tax caps because as costs rise they effectively cut needed programs. Parks aren't free, and without increases the Park District will eventually not have the funds needed for basic maintenance, never mind capital improvements such as the Park District's comprehensive vision for improving Crystal Lake Park.

Our two-party system is badly broken, often forcing voters to choose between "the lesser of two evils" or vote for their second or third choice to avoid "spoiling" an election. Fortunately, there's something voters can do about it--change the way votes are cast and counted. Instead of the vote-for-one, winner-takes-all system we currently use, in which a candidate can win with merely a plurality of the vote, runoff-based systems of the type used in many parts of the world and in many parts of the U.S. ensure that the winning candidate in a contest has received over 50% of the vote. This is accomplished with runoff voting. Traditionally this works in the following way: if no candidate receives over 50% of the vote, the candidate who comes in last is removed from the field and a runoff election is held with the remaining candidates. This process is repeated until a candidate receives over 50% of the vote.

This can be expensive and time-consuming, so instant runoff voting, or IRV, has been developed. In this method, each voter ranks all the candidates, and the runoff process takes place all at once in a single tally.

I'm back. With global problems becoming ever more serious, we need local leaders with a long-term vision of a sustainable and renewable Champaign County.

I thank everyone who supported me in 2006 and promise to work even harder, with your help and the help of other concerned citizens, to become the first Green to serve on the Chamapaign County Board.