There's a flaw in our election system that's frustrated thoughtful voters for a long time. It's the winner-take-all structure of our balloting: the fact that you find yourself having to worry about the "horse race" level of the election to feel that you're making your vote count, and the danger that a spoiler can steal votes from a more qualified candidate.
There is a different way to run a voting system; it's called "instant runoff," "ranked choice" or "preferential" voting. It's used in several other countries, in some American cities, and by educational and other institutions—most famously by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Instant runoff allows you to vote, not just for one person, but for a list that shows your second and third choices (or more) as well as your first. Under this system, if one candidate doesn't receive more than 50 percent of the vote, the one with the fewest votes is removed from the ballot and a new tally (or more than one, if necessary) yields a majority winner.
Here's why that would yield a result that's truer to voters' wishes than current results: suppose it's 2000 and you want to vote for Ralph Nader. You believe he's the most enlightened candidate. But you know he won't win, and if you vote for him, you'll take a vote away from the best realpolitik candidate, Al Gore.
Under the instant runoff system, you could vote for Nader but name Gore as your second choice. Then, when Nader was eliminated, your vote wouldn't go into a black hole but would resurface as a vote for Gore (and Nader, the third party candidate, wouldn't be pilloried for exercising his right to run).
It would be the same if you wanted to vote in a Republican primary with a list of candidates including big names like Mitt Romney and lesser known but promising party regulars like Tim Pawlenty. Even if Pawlenty didn't get the numbers to stay in the race, your second vote would go to help the best person with a genuine chance of winning, but in the meantime you'd have helped Pawlenty build a constituency.
Instant runoff means that your vote for your values counts more and the influence of media predictions counts less. It means that spoiler exploitation—tactics like Republicans supporting Nader in order to draw votes away from Gore—are less effective.
Instant runoff voting (IRV for short) has been endorsed in the past by both Barack Obama and John McCain. It's garnered much support from the League of Women Voters and the Green Party. Proponents say it improves turnout by giving voters more choice; it certainly puts them under less pressure to choose the candidate they see as the lesser of two evils.
In Massachusetts, a movement to get a question about instant runoff on the state ballot in 2010 is going strong. Between now and November 18, Citizens for Voter Choice and allied groups are holding a petition drive to get the necessary 100,000 signatures. The goal is to have instant runoff used in state elections and, in the longer term, to let state elections demonstrate its feasibility for national contests. For more information or to volunteer to collect signatures, check www.voterchoicema.org.
