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to even get onto gerrymandering which is totally immoral but not illegal.

http://www.fairvote.org/e_college/me_ne.htm

The public is already familiar with runoff elections and the need for majority (rather than plurality) rule. An IRV election follows the same "rules" but without the intervening month or two of campaigning (which some people see as a good thing and others may not). The "spoiler problem" in plurality elections clearly exists under real-world conditions, and needs to be fixed by something the public will understand and be willing to trust.

Electionmethods.org does a good job of pointing out mathematical problems with IRV, but don't give any evidence that these flaws would actually change the outcome in real-world elections. In other words, current public opinion is at exactly the right point to expose the flaws of our current system. If the flaws in IRV would only be exposed in some hypothetical situation where most Republicans prefer Nader to Bush or Greens prefer Kerry to Cobb, then we never have to worry about them (like a program where the only bugs are in procedures that rarely or never get called).

Don't understimate the difficulty of "selling" a new election system to the public. There's always suspicion that you're just changing things to your own advantage. This is especially problematic with something like Condorcet which is hard to explain to the public: would they believe "trust us, we're mathemeticians?" IRV is easier to sell because it's analogous to something (runoff elections) most people are already familiar with and see as a good idea.

A more pro-IRV site that describes more of its advantages is fairvote.org.

fairvote is the organization fighting for IRV and PR in America.

Californians, check out Californians for Electoral Reform

Despite the lack of IRV and PR; please vote this November!

For those who were hoping that the first link would explain what instant runoff voting was, here.

It is not his fault if the US electoral system is completely and utterly broken.

Very true. Unfortunately the chance of it ever changing seems extremely slim. Its my observation that electoral reform is something most americans have never thought about and are really not interested. There is plenty of stuff on the net like FairVote.org, ElectionMethods.org but they don't seem to be having much success in bringing it into public debate.

As a foreigner in the US, my few attempts at discussing this with people who I know are intelligent and politically aware has been a dismal failure. The suggestion that they don't have the best system in the world is just not something they are willing to consider.

What about IRV's too?

http://www.fairvote.org/irv/

http://www.fairvote.org/turnout/preturn.htm
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html
http://www.fec.gov/pages/htmlto5.htm
http://www.multied.com/elections/

Look at some of the figures on that last link. The last time the turnout went above even 70% was 1900 - and that was a 2 party election. Hell the turnout 1896 was almost 80%, and that was a 2 party election too. So I'm legitimately curious about this, guys - if what I'm saying is a bunch of crap then why in the last century have voter turnouts held around the 50%-60% range? Are we waiting for something? The right issue, or set of issues? The right guy? The right scandal? I'd honestly like to know.

This is called Instant Runoff Voting and it's supported by John McCain and Howard Dean.

I'd like to see a system where the candidate gets each elector based on which congressional districts they win the popular vote for.

What we need is some sort of instant runoff or proportional voting system. Instant runoff is easy to understand. You cast your first vote for who you really want and your second vote for whom you would settle for. A true proportional system would be even better. The sad reality is that the US is one of the few nations that uses the simple plurality system that doesn't even require a majority. Canada happens to be another.

One way to combat this is, of course, by negative feedback: let the party who does *not* control the legislature control the redistricting. One problem leaps to mind: to what degree is there a Constitutional limit on *whom* may do redistricting?

This site: www.fairvote.org/redistricting lays out some possiblities. Taking a cue from their 2nd point:

"Take the redistricting process out of the hands of the incumbents and their parties by either instituting clear criteria that mapmakers must follow or by establishing independent, nonpartisan commissions. Iowa and Arizona use such approaches."

I call for "open source" approaches to redistricting. For example, truly fair redistricting would take into account *only* population and *not* perceived party bias of the locality. This element alone would make more districts fair by including individuals of all political persuasions.

Perhaps physics can help us. If each individual is considered a point mass, it should be possible to divide up each state so that *the sum of the net distances of each point mass from the center of the mass of each district* is at a minimum. If there are 2 possible maps which meet this criterion, impose the additional requirement that *the sum of all boundries of all districts in a state shall also be at a minimum* as well (this encourages more "rounded" districts).

We are in desperate need major voting reform in the US.

This is a prime example that two major political parties have way to much control on the whole election and legislative system.

I feel that Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) can truly help to give the power back to the voters.

Take a look at these sites:

IRV Info
IRV Flash Demo

If you are a Green, or other third party, supporter please help to get the the following, or similar message out.

"If Kerry supports IRV, Greens will support Kerry"

There are IRV initiatives going in most of the states now. Please investigate IRV and if you agree that is could help bring about positive changes please support the local action in your area and help spread the word.

We have to take the power back - RATM

Also the resistance to IRV, Instant Run-Off Voting:

http://www.fairvote.org/irv/

Both parties will oppose it, so it will never really happen. It's the only thing that can really break the two-party system.

Also, it's a little more complicated, so some people will dislike it because they don't understand how it works. However, it's still just as simple to vote.

Of the 45 countries considered real democracies, only the United States, Mongolia, Canada, and the United Kingdom use plurality, or first past the post, as their primary system for legislative elections.

In the 37 countries where proportional, or parallel proportional, voting systems are used it is not possible to change the outcome of elections by tampering with just a few thousands votes in strategic places. To influence the outcome of the election in a significant way a massive fraud involving most districts in the country would be required. Small-scale fraud is irrelevant.

That is why dictators pretending to be elected prefer first past the post.

Ah, but what is he lying about? I think you've been listening to the propaganda too long if you think Kerry is the 'ultimate traitor'; he has differeing views to be sure, but that hardly makes him a traitor. Can you point out why you think he's a traitor?

IMNSHO you guys need to tone down the rhetoric down there. You end up with right-wing liars and left-wing liars, and for some reason you think you have to swear allegiance to one of them...

Which is, of course, why you should go with Instant Runoff Voting. Have more than two REAL candidates! Never waste another vote! Wanna vote for Buchanan but would rather get Bush then Kerry? You can EXPRESS THAT!

Disclosure: I don't like Kerry, but I think Bush is a well-meaning but incompetent president, controlled by a group of vile sons of bitches. So feel free to call me a pinko commie Liberal and all that if you like, but there's no need to post it.

Anyway, I'm sure I've sown enough seeds of sedition here...

Simply voting third party is not going to have any effect, other than preventing your vote from having any effect on the 2004 outcome. What's needed is changes to the system itself -- we need to adopt an electoral system that can support more than two parties, without significant "spoiler effects" or other perversities.

Presumably you better stop waiting ...

... since, as you know, this is not the only case.

CC.

Actually, there have been many occasions where electors didn't vote for who they were expected to. A quick googling turned up this link.

Of course, the ironic thing about a system which permitted multiple parties reaching Congress is that it would work far better in the United States than in India: the Legislature is independent from the Executive branch, and does not choose the president or vice-president (unless the Electoral College cannot decide, then Congress does); the executive branch would remain under a single party's control for a term or two, while Congress could have twenty different parties, preventing a single agenda from being forced down our throats; thus, this would reduce the number of laws which represent the narrow interests of a single party, causing the laws which are passed to represent a broad cross-section of voting Americans, and causing less laws to be passed in the first place.

By the way, I believe the system they use in India is called Proportional Representation.

This behavior can't be changed simply by increasing voter turnout (which is itself not a trivial undertaking). The only way to fix it is with electoral reforms, such as instant runoff voting (IRV).

Elegant my ass - it's a junky hack that should be replaced with a system of real elegance. The electoral college exists because the technological problems of the time prevented the timely and accurate counting of every vote. We may not have improved on the accuracy (cough-Florida-cough) but we can certainly do it in a timely manner now.

What we need is a truly elegant system - instant runoff voting.

E-voting in Ireland has caused much controversy in the last 6 months or so. The main objection to the system proposed for use in the European and local elections are that there is no paper trail for validation. The Irish Labour Party Published a report at the end of 2003 about the proposed system to be used in Ireland and the flaws in that system. All of the Irish political parties are for e-voting in principal; the main advantage from their point of view is that the long wait through numerous rounds of counts would be eliminated during the counting process. The long manual counting procedure is due the proportional representation voting system used in Ireland.

However there's nothing to stop you from voting for the lesser of two evils at that level and going whichever way you want to at lower levels.

Sure there is: my own conscience.

"Anybody but Bush" is a very, very dangerous path to tread. I'll vote for Kerry if I think I wouldn't mind him as president, but if he pisses me off the way Gore did, a minor party will be getting my vote again.

Then again, I'm in California, so it's not like I'm going to lose the election for the Democrats (latest poll shows Bush's chances in California approaching those of Frosty the Snowman in Malibu). Still, it's the whole idea of voting against instead of voting for that leaves us with no good choices.

Now, if we could just get a decent voting system in place, that would be wonderful. Something like Instant Runoff Voting for example. Then there wouldn't be any of this fear about "throwing away your vote" and the whole peer-pressure thing. You could vote for who you *really* want as your first choice, and then choose your backup options if that guy doesn't make it.

Basicly the same thing as Gerrymander voting.

1. The electoral collage needs to be abolished . At one time it may have made sense, but in today's world it's just another problem in the system. Now, some analysts have stated that the electoral college system is good because it encourages the canidates to visit less populous states. The reason, which is a bit convoluted, is that the vote of a person in those states basically counts more than a vote of a person of a "larger" state. Well that's just bull**it. Everyone's vote should count the same. I don't care if you live in a luxury apartment on fifth ave in New York or in a tent on a mountian near Missoula, MT. What happened to the "truths that we hold self-evident" like the fact that "all are created equal".
2. Any elected official should be elected by a majority, not a simple plurality. In the past three presidential elections no canidate has taken more than 50% of the popular vote. So, for the past 12 years, we have had a president in which most people did NOT vote for. Am I the only that has a problem with that? I think it's time for instant runoff voting. Now, initially I was apprehensive about IRV, not knowing the mechanics, but after I read more about IRV this is the way to go. It fixes the "problem" of spoiler candidates, like the Gore vs. Nader in 2000. It's actually quite simple, and if you look at the process, it is still possible to vote the "traditional" way. Thus, persons who don't fully utilize IRV while voting would not be at any less of a disadvantage than if they voted in a simple plurality. On top of that we are guarenteed that our officials must capture a majority of the electorate, while we only have to visit the polls once.

A better method of doing that is Instant Runoff Voting (page looks bad in konqueror). There is no need for strategy with instant run-off, as only one of the votes counts in the end, so you vote in the order you would prefer.

"I can only write in one candidate for county commissioner, but there are eight slots."

The county commissioner entry is there mainly to show that OVC can support a rankings-based voting (like Instant Runoff Voting) as well as traditional "winner take all" elections. You make a good point that in a real election like that you should be able to have lots of writeins.

"I love the ballot choices" Yeah, they're fun.

It seems most (all?) election schemes are "choose at most N from this list". But what about support for "Instant Runoff Voting"? By that meaning, this is my first choice, this is my sencond choice, etc. And you tabulate the votes multiple times (using each voters' most viable candidate, eliminating candidates who fare poorly each time) until you get a clear winner.

It helps to avoid the problem of the third party spoiler.

e.g. you have 3 candidates say: bush, kerry, nader.

bush gets 45% of the vote
kerry gets 45% of the vote
nader gets 10% of the vote

no clear winner yet. Eliminate nader
of the people who voted for him as their first choice... 4% voted for bush as their 2nd choice. and 6% voted for kerry. retabulate

bush 49%, kerry 51%

(of course, then you send it to the electoral college, and they hand it to bush... but that's another reform)

I can't find out on the Debian site how the votes will be tallied, but I certainly hope that they've got the good sense to use instant runoff voting. Mathematically speaking, it's the best method of tallying votes. Practically speaking, it's the best method of ensuring that the person elected is the most widely-desired candidate.

-Waldo Jaquith

The current system allows for lesser known, poorly funded outsiders to make their case in smaller states that they have a chance of contesting.

All that said, I also agree that the way the whole thing is covered by the media is fairly inane. In fact it's the media that makes the whole elections-held-weeks-apart thing a problem. The issue is that the results of the early elections influence the results of the later elections. If the media didn't report the results, people wouldn't be influenced by it. Well, that's not really going to change; we can't and shouldn't muzzle the media (even if they are all slowly being absorbed by Rupert Murdoch), and the alternative is to change the voting system. (Or somehow convince all the voters to avoid seeing news reports about the elections until everyone's voted.)

Or we get Instant Runoff Voting - and lobbyists lose the stranglehold they have on government (which only exists due our 'lesser of two evils' voting).

With IRV you could vote for an independent without being concerned that you might 'spoil' an election, or 'throw your vote away'.

More importantly, you could vote for different independent, if the previous independent turned out to not represent your views, or the values he advocated at election.

Imagine being able to support Perot without risking Clinton, or voting Nader without risking Bush.

Imagine being able to vote McCain 2k4 because Bush isn't nearly as conservative as you'd like.

Or being able to say 'screw Kerry, I'll support Kucinich even if he doesn't get the nomination' - and not having to worry about your vote giving power to Bush.

(indeed party nominations only exist to tone down the chances of 2 similar candidates spoiling the race and handing it to a 3rd party.)

Get IRV and lobbying won't work because a single vote will be enough to keep you from re-election - and lobbyists can't buy everyone.

Basically, it works like this: You rank the candidates in order and your first choice gets your first vote. All the votes are counted and the candidate with the least votes is eliminated. If the candidate eliminated is your first choice, then your vote goes to the second candidate on your list. This process continues until only one candidate is left, and they are then elected. (See the link above for a better explanation...)

If this sounds like something you'd like instituted, contact your senators and representatives!

Furthermore, support candidates such as Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich who have declared their support for IRV. As he says in his platform:

I also support "Instant Runoff Voting." IRV offers a cost-effective way of insuring that the winning candidate is preferred by a majority of voters; it encourages voters to vote their wishes and not their fears; it promotes greater voter turnout and positive campaigning.

Peace.

There are other ways to influence the process. You can join a political party and advocate changes in electoral rules. You can contribute to a political action group. Some good folks working to change our current U.S. system can be found here. Their arguments for moving to a system of proportional representation are well worth reading.

U.S. politics is in large part a rigged game. Many people see this and either opt out, or opt to vote their conscience in protest, and I respect that choice. But it is important to see that it is the rules of the game which are the problem. Once you enter the voting booth you are subject to the rules of the game, much as you would be if you walked up to a roulette wheel. The two parties (like the house in Vegas) are in charge of the game, and your vote can only work within the parameters of the rules. If you play, you lose. But if you don't play, you lose more. So worry less about who wins the game, and more about changing the rules.

The next time you go to vote, I respectfully suggest that you see your vote for what it is in the context of the political process - only one small part of the duty of a citizen. And one which may be most wisely used to reduce the harm caused by the winner of the election :)

There are two states who divide up electors that way. If I may so express it:

"Nebraska and Maine
Are the only two states
Where electors divide
In proportional rates
With more weight to large shares
And less weight to small.
The forty-eight others
Are winner-takes-all."

Both states give two electors to the party who go the most votes, and then divide the others according to the shares they won in the election. Neither state is really big enough for this to make a difference, though. Here's some more information about it.

Most federal judges will grant the FBI warrants over the phone within minutes. This just clarifies what the FBI can go after on finacial investigations. If the FBI wants to investigate someone they will, warrants or not. Dont kid yourself, not everything every police agency does is above board. But the majority of FBI agents are hard working, family people who worry about personal rights also.

The only thing that pisses me off, is they include this as a rider to another bill so it gets passed. A few things I'd like to change are.

1. No riders.
2. No fancey names like Patriot Act. (Protect the Children Act, etc..)
3. Daily updates on bills that are voted on, educate the people.
4. Stats on which way your congress critter is voting on issues.
5. Balanced Budget Act.

I work a 60 hour week, and with my personal life, I barely have time to see what my elected officals are doing. I'd also like to change the way we vote. Instant Runoff voting.(IRV) This would make it easier for 3rd/4th parties to run and take office. And you dont have to worry about wasting a vote.

As it turns out, there are two-party people who support IRV

Not all politicians are motivated solely by party power politics....

So long as our voting method favors groups that band together to put up a single candidate, and penalizes those that support several fairly similar candidates, the 2 party system will prevail.

that's why the more moderate republicans can't tell the thumpers to take their religious righteousness and go home. the bible belt is a mathematically necessary evil to ensure that the broader conservative ideology can compete with the broader liberal ideology.

1992 with Perot's party splitting the conservatives in just that way demonstrates my point. Conservatives fractionalized, Liberals won with an overall minority vote. Similarly, even the slight fractionalization of liberals into traditional democratic support and green party support allowed a minority-supported conservative to take the presidential election.

(remember, in '92 Bill Clinton received a lower percentage of popular vote than George W Bush did in 2k. it isn't a problem consigned to just the left or right.)

only something like Instant Runoff Voting can truly open up american politics and let it out of the caricaturized left/right politicking we currently have.

The point that most americans lie in the middle is important. It shows that most americans are more interested in moderate compromise than extreme ideological quibbling. Yet, they are not served by their own party. And if they were, it would merely force one or the other party to be absorbed into it.

America has always had a 2 party dominated system (over time, during reorganizational periods there have been more, but they don't stay for long).
And IRV is a simple, proven way to do that.

It also conveniently frees up political parties and voters to actually deal with rotten incumbents. You don't have to worry about splitting support between a rotten incumbent partymember, and a new one and that allowing an opponent to slide into office with minority support.

Our democracy could really use a change like that.

So long as our voting method favors groups that band together to put up a single candidate, and penalizes those that support several fairly similar candidates, the 2 party system will prevail.

that's why the more moderate republicans can't tell the thumpers to take their religious righteousness and go home. the bible belt is a mathematically necessary evil to ensure that the broader conservative ideology can compete with the broader liberal ideology.

1992 with Perot's party splitting the conservatives in just that way demonstrates my point. Conservatives fractionalized, Liberals won with an overall minority vote. Similarly, even the slight fractionalization of liberals into traditional democratic support and green party support allowed a minority-supported conservative to take the presidential election.

(remember, in '92 Bill Clinton received a lower percentage of popular vote than George W Bush did in 2k. it isn't a problem consigned to just the left or right.)

only something like Instant Runoff Voting can truly open up american politics and let it out of the caricaturized left/right politicking we currently have.

The point that most americans lie in the middle is important. It shows that most americans are more interested in moderate compromise than extreme ideological quibbling. Yet, they are not served by their own party. And if they were, it would merely force one or the other party to be absorbed into it.

America has always had a 2 party dominated system (over time, during reorganizational periods there have been more, but they don't stay for long).
And IRV is a simple, proven way to do that.

It also conveniently frees up political parties and voters to actually deal with rotten incumbents. You don't have to worry about splitting support between a rotten incumbent partymember, and a new one and that allowing an opponent to slide into office with minority support.

Our democracy could really use a change like that.

The main problem in the USA isn't how we gather votes, although there are problems in some states (Florida). There is a more fundamental problem in that we aren't using the right voting mechanism. In the US, we use plurality voting -- a.k.a "first across the line" -- to determine who wins an election. This means that a candidate for whom only 30% of the people voted can win an election simply because there was no other single candidate with more votes.

This has a number of problems, but they can all be summed up by saying that plurality is one of the least fair, if not the least fair, way of determining the winner of a democratic election that you can get. Consider:

• Say 40% of the people vote for candidate A
• 35% of the people want candidate B
• 25% want candidate C

This situation encourages strategic voting; that is to say, voters for C have to decide whether they want to vote honestly, for C, or whether they should vote for B just to make that they don't get their least favorite candidate, A.

This is why we only have two parties in the US, and why -- despite the large number of Greens and Libertarians, neither party has a chance of winning. We don't even know what percentage of the US population is Green or Libertarian (or anything else, for that matter) because they aren't voting honestly. They're voting for the lesser of two evils. This system practically guarantees alienation of the largest number of people -- the majority ends up with a candidate they don't want, unless they lie when voting and vote for the candidate that they dislike the least who also has the best chance of winning.

There are voting mechanisms which allow people to vote their true opinion without being alienated. The most popular are Condorcet -- complex, but the most fair; Approval Voting -- not as fair as Condorcet, but much simpler, and can be implemented with existing voting technology; and Instant Runoff -- less fair than approval, no more simple -- but better than plurality.

Many democratic countries do not use plurality voting, although plurality is the most common. For example, Australia, Northern Ireland, and the Irish Republic (among others) use single transferable vote[1]. In fact, 68 countries (~2b ppl) use plurality, 31 countries (~400m ppl) use single transferable vote, and two countries (~18m ppl) use IRV (instant runoff) -- this is according to International IDEA Handbook.

There is a huge amount of information about Condorcet and Approval Voting available on the web. The Citizens for Approval Voting page is a good start, if you're at all interested in improving voting in the US. If you're interested in the mechanics and mathematics of the systems, start with Condorcet -- most sites that talk about Condorcet are less about how to get it implemented politically, and are more about how it works, fairness tests, and how it compares to other systems. The Wikipedia entry for "voting system" is particularly useful.

Much fraud is pretty low tech but involves manipulating lots of people. Basically many security mechanisms come down to the word of some combination of people-if those people can be compromised, the security is compromised.

In the credit card world, it became pretty obvious that lots of license departments and law enforcement agencies were pretty much infiltrated. Stuff like voter registration cards? Well, it all comes down to paper. You might handle this to some extent by cameras in the polling places-but then there are still the mail-in ballots.

The thing is that winner take all elections tend to encourage fraud-particularlly in close elections. It is hard to very results wildly from the polls these days(say more than 5%). This is all an excellent argument for proportional representation at least in the house. Condorcet voting offers another option for races where you are electing a single guy(the idea is to pick the least bad candidate in series of 2 way races that are simulated from candidate rankings).

What folks miss: there is pretty substantial evidence that Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon all engaged in substantial fraud. Between that and corporate influence-the US political system is pretty sick.

Currently only two states allow their electors to split their votes: Maine and Nebraska. Votes are split based on congressional districts and the remaining 2 votes are given to the candidate that won the majority of the districts.

Thanks for the info... while I think Approval Voting would be an improvement over first-past-the-post, I still prefer IRV over approval. Here is a page describing why:

In the last provincial election, for example, only about 55 per cent of the Ontario voters turned out to the polls.

The article really plays up out bad voter turnout is... however, US voter turnout is also right around 50%.

I hate when an article stresses facts that are the normal to push for some radical changes. I agree that non-traditional voting will be a welcomed change. However, don't suggest that Ontario needs it because their turnout is so horrible.

Davak

this is we need Instant Runoff Voting.

kill the two party system.
kill government by the lesser of two evils.
kill the party-line campaign donations (castrate lobbying).
return to actually campaigning on the issues.

I am the webmaster for declared Green Party pre-candidate David Cobb. It's a Zope/Plone site running on BSD. i also run the site for Cynthia McKinney, but I haven't put much time into her site recently, and don't plan to until she gives a stronger indication that she's interested in us.

Cobb's site will be growing in the near future, as the web team expands.

And for those of you who want to post crap about Nader spoiling in 2000, first read this, this, and especially this, which contains a whole string of surprises.

But barring that, bring on the instant runoff voting!

At the moment, yes, we are that weak. That is not a moral failing on our part, it's simply an inevitable outcome of a winner-take-all electoral system.

Now we are so fat and lazy that only federalized health care (Democrats) or waging war on the world (Republicans) is the only way we will survive? We just sit back into our cushy sofa, watch CNN, and suck of the US Government propery milk bottle provided to each and every American each morning?

We aren't fat and lazy (well, not all of us anyway ;^)). As you observe, our two-party political system is failing us badly, and it needs to be changed. But in order to change the system, we need to get control of the system, and barring some miracle that almost certainly won't happen, third parties are not the means by which that change is going to come about. I'm a dues-paying member of the Green Party myself, and as much as I like the Greens, I'm not blind to how the system works. So that leaves us two choices -- change by ballot initiative (a possibility in California, but not nationwide), or change by means of electing change-friendly major-party candidates. Admittedly, change-friendly major party candidates are rare, almost by definition, but Howard Dean is one of them -- he's in favor of both Instant Runoff Voting and Public Campaign Financing -- two reforms that would each improve our level of Democracy drastically. He's also on the right side of many other issues, and is an intelligent, outspoken, and charismatic candidate to boot.

So if you want to bitch about how bad our political system is and play the rebel without actually changing anything, then maybe a third party candidate is the choice for you. If, on the other hand, you actually want to see some positive changes occur, Dean is your man in 2004.

Votes for "Do not recall Davis, we want to keep him": 49.9%
Votes for Larry Flynt: 30%
Flynt wins!

I agree that it seems likely that the winner will have a very small pecentage of the votes. I actually wouldn't be surprised if someone wins with <20% of the vote.

Perhaps the best thing that will come out of this recall election is that the nation will have a dramatic example of why plurality voting sucks so badly. Perhaps there will be more interest in implementing instant runoff voting.

http://www.fairvote.org/irv/approval.htm