Green Strategy: Replace Electoral College with National Instant Runoff

[Nathan Newman]

If Nader and the Greens want to permanently institutionalize themselves,
they should immediately jump into the whole debate on the electoral college
debacle and advocate replacing the electoral college with ranked voting and
an instant runoff.

They can point out that if such existed now, there would be no crisis
whatsoever since most Nader voters (about half from exit polls) would have
ranked Gore second, giving him a full majority of the national popular vote.

Such a strategy would build bridges with progressive Dems (since it would
highlight why Gore should become President) while also pushing a system that
would allow the Greens to garner far more than 5% in the next Presidential
debate.  Essentially, there is potential for the Greens to cut a deal with
the Dems to support Gore for President in exchange for radically opening the
political system to third party voting.

This is a unique political moment- unique not in the rhetorical sense but
the truly once in history sense - which Nader and the Greens could use to
push to radically reshape the political terrain.

-- Nathan Newman