... follows another Page 1 Times story a few weeks ago on the Republicans doing this same tactic in Arizona. And of course we also see the major parties sometimes devoting great energy to keeping legitimate third party and independent party candidates off the ballot and out of debates.

Both of these problematic actions are tied directly to the fact that we generally rely on first-past-the-post, plurality voting that easily can go haywire when voters have more than two choices. The rest of the world has largely figured out to handle this problem by using a majority system, either through traditional runoff elections or through instant runoff voting / ranked choice voting. Most presidential elections must win in runoffs, as in Brazil's current elections, and some use instant runoffs -- and the UK will vote on it next year to replace plurality for the House of Commons.

The US has a good experience with runoffs, including in a number of early congressional elections and today in Washington State, in several states for primaries and many cities for mayor. We're also seeing more interesting uses of instant runoff voting, with a lot of interesting coverage of the first use of IRV for mayor in Oakland this fall and for a statewide judicial office in North Carolina Below are links to a Newsweek story about instant runoff voting, and two important "transpartisan" op-eds in favor if it this weekend in Minneapolis and St. Paul -- Minneapolis used it in city elections last fall, St. Paul adopted in a ballot measure and the state has an entrenched multi-party reality that regularly denies majority wins to statewide elections winners.

Also, we regularly cover this issue at www.twitter.com/fairvote. You can see a series of blogs about how lack of majority voting is playing out this fall at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-richie/upholding-majority-rule-w_b_771892.html

- Rob Richie, FairVote

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http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/24/north-carolina-tries-instant-runoff-voting.html

An Electoral Experiment in North Carolina
Newsweek, October 24, 2010

The logic of general elections is simple: winner takes all. This, of course, can encourage nasty campaigning—and at the end of a race with more than two candidates, the victor often wins with only a plurality (not a majority) of support. ...[ see rest at link]

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http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/105442218.html?elr=KArksc8P:Pc:U0ckkD:aEyKUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr

As easy as 1,2,3 (and better than 'one or the other')
By George Pillsbury, Nate Garvis and Tim Penny
Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 23, 2010

The usual "spoiler" accusations being leveled at gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner and his supporters -- by both Republican and DFL camps -- illustrate why, more than ever, Minnesota needs ranked-choice voting...[see rest at link]

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http://www.twincities.com/ci_16400194?IADID=

Latimer, Stringer, Penny: Minnesota needs a 'ranked choice' voting system
By George Latimer, Tim Penny and Ed Stringer
October 22, 2010

When we began talking about Ranked Choice Voting (or Instant Runoff Voting) a few years ago, there were a lot of questions about whether and how it could work. Those have been answered by Minneapolis' highly successful rollout last year - with just one spoiled ballot and 95 percent of voters reporting it was easy to use - and we're confident RCV's debut in St. Paul next year will be just as smooth and well-recieived... [see rest at lnk]