I kind of wrote this tongue in cheek.
Us independents or Greens are always told to give up on our candidates. Now Dems have a feel for how absurd it can sound for someone to ask their candidate to step out of a race.
Is getting some attention on parts of the blogosphere and thru lefty blogs. Having supported third party candidates in the past and probably will again in the future, I saw the humor and the irony in what Andrew wrote. Others did not. This post isn't about that though, it's about something written in the comments by Josh Krekeler who states in part:
Instant Runoff Voting is the answer to this conundrum. Voters get to rank their choices, candidates without enough support to get elected are eliminated during virtual “runoff” rounds of counting - thus negating potential spoilers - and the candidate with a majority of voters’ support wins.
That's what I would like to see discussed and get more attention. If you visit instantrunoff.com there is more information. There is also a flash presentation.
If you then visit fairvote.org you'll find more information as well as where IRV is being talked about and being implemented.
According to Fair Vote, Barack Obama, Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinch, and John McCain have endorsed/supported the concept of IVR as well as many others.
Wikipedia also has quite a bit of information on this, including where it is used presently:
Instant-runoff voting (IRV) (also known as the Alternative Vote and by several other names) is an electoral system used for single winner elections in which voters rank candidates in order of preference. In an IRV election, if no candidate receives an overall majority of first preferences the candidates with fewest votes are eliminated one by one, and their votes transferred according to their second and third preferences (and so on), until one candidate achieves a majority. The term 'instant-runoff voting' is used because this process resembles a series of run-off elections. At a national level IRV is used to elect the Australian House of Representatives, the President of Ireland and the Fijian House of Representatives.
I find the idea of this very appealing but what are your thoughts on this for Ohio or for your state?
(This post was written for the Carnival of Ohio Politics, brought to you by Paul Miller of Northwest Ohio.Net, stop by and visit him tomorrow to find out what some of Ohio's best bloggers are writing about.)
