Green Strategy: Replace Electoral College with National Instant Runoff

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Wed Nov 8 06:28:18 PST 2000


I agree with Nathan here. The electoral college is an absurd relic. If Gore wins the popular vote and loses the election, do you think there will be pressure to abolish it? --jks


>From: "Nathan Newman" <nathan at newman.org>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: <lbo-Talk at lists.panix.com>
>Subject: Green Strategy: Replace Electoral College with National Instant
>Runoff
>Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 05:25:03 -0500
>
>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
>

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