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["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

 On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 12:05 PM, EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net> wrote:

>  Perhaps the next Libertarian candidate will be someone of real
> substance...I haven't seen that yet, but eventually the odds are in
> their favor.

Actually they aren't as long as we have winner-take-all elections
where to not vote for a major candidate essentially throws your vote
away (unless the race is so close that your vote combined with a
sizeable minority who vote the way you do takes substantial numbers of
votes away from one of the major candidates).

Adopting instant run-off voting (aka preferential voting) would be a
big step forward in that a candidate who won with a minority of the
total vote (such as Bill Clinton in his first election) wouldn't
automatically win. Wikipedia has a clear explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting. Unless we have a
grass roots movement for IRV, it won't happen because you can bet that
Democrats and Republicans would fight it to the death.

Marie