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Actual Final Third Party Debate Tonight
Separate from the debate moderated by Ralph Nader last night, Free and Equal is hosting a final third party debate tonight at 9:00 p.m. EST (pre-debate coverage began at 8:00 p.m. EST). As a follow up to the October 23rd debate, only Jill Stein (Green) and Gary Johnson (Libertarian) will be facing each other for ninety minutes of questions primarily focusing on foreign policy. It appears that this one isn't being picked up by C-SPAN, but it is being broadcast on RT America on a few cable networks as well as on YouTube (which should work if you have an HTML5 browser, or via the XBMC YouTube plugin). Discuss.
No, we need "instant runoffs". You pick your choices in order and the winner is selected on points.
Hell, at least there is a semblance of a decision by the electorate in that setup. Right now we've got empty fields in Montana having as much of a say in who becomes president as a small city in the Southeast.
But any change would require an Amendment to the Constitution, or (my choice) a Constitutional Convention, which would be so heavily lobbied that we'd end up with a system where the president was chosen by the CEOs of the Fortune 500.
Maybe we have to face the fact that elections just aren't going to get us where we need to go. It's only going to happen by us becoming better citizen/consumers. The answer may not be in our political system at all.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't think an amendment to the Constitution would be necessary. All the Constitution says is that states choose Electors, and the Electors vote on the President. It's up to the states how they pick Electors. In practice, they all have a first-past-the-post popular vote, but an individual state could choose to employ IRV or any other system.
Ideally, one would want a lot of states to get together and agree to all implement IRV together. Already, several states have signed pacts to all assign their electors to the winner of the national popular vote (see here). There's no reason we couldn't use the same approach to pass IRV. It's much easier to pass voting reform this way than it is through a Constitutional amendment.
Of course, the two major parties don't want it, so even with the lower bar it's unlikely to happen.