Daniel Melick, a 2008 graduate of the University of Massachusetts, is running as an Independent in the Third Hampshire District of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Currently, the district is represented by Democrat Ellen Story. She has been in office since 1992, according to the general court’s website and was previously a member of the Amherst Town Meeting. Dan Sandell, a Republican from Amherst, is also running.

“I’m advocating for greater transparency in government,” Melick said. “I think that, in order for government to really work, people need to know what’s going on. I think that our state legislature has taken some steps in the right direction, for instance in this past session, they passed a bill posting the state budget online and made that information available to the public.”

He added that he believes that the bill tracking system the state legislature uses needs to be improved.
“It’s very hard to find out exactly what’s going on. For example, when I was researching this transparency bill, it was very hard to find accurate information.”

Melick said he believes personal transparency is important for members of the legislature, suggesting that it is difficult to find information on Story’s political positions. One position where the two have similar stances is support of instant runoff voting. In that method, if there are three candidates, A, B and C, then the voters rank them preferentially on the ballot. If no candidate receives a majority of votes then the one who received the fewest votes, candidate C, for example, has lost the election. Then the votes of the people who voted for C are transferred to their second choices.

“Instant runoff voting would be good because it would help break up the two-party system, which I think does a lot of damage to the country,” Melick said. “A lot of people don’t vote for Independents or third party candidates because they want to vote for a winner, and I think that instant runoff voting will allow people to vote for a candidate they actually believe in without the fear that if that candidate turns out to be non-viable, their vote won’t be going to someone that’s even worse. The example I like to use is of people who voted for Nader in the 2000 election in Florida: people who voted for Nader were essentially voting for Bush. I believe that while Nader was their first choice, they would have preferred Gore to Bush. Instant runoff voting would have made that more feasible.”

Melick is a strong supporter of drug law reform.

“I want to continue to work on ending drug prohibition in this state,” he said. “I think that all drugs should be legalized, but keep in mind that a, this doesn’t count as advocacy for drug use and b, not all legalizations are going to look alike. While marijuana could perhaps be similar to alcohol, other ‘hard drugs’ could have other restrictions on them. Ultimately I think that drug prohibition has been one of the biggest failures in policy going on in the world. It creates crime that ranges from inner-city gangs to the insurgency in Afghanistan.”

He said he supports health care reform and thinks Massachusetts should move to a single-payer system or public option available to everyone, but he’s unsure what form it should take. Melick is interested in helping municipalities fund renovations to school kitchens in order to provide healthier food to schoolchildren. He also opposes casinos.

“Education needs to be better funded,” Melick said. “However, considering we are facing a huge deficit I cannot promise that we will be able to fund the University as much as we’d like.”

Melick will face nine-term incumbent Ellen Story and Republican Dan Sandell in the general election November 2.

Matthew M. Robare can be reached at [email protected].