Nathan's suggestion of ranked voting and instant run-off may seem pie in the sky at first glance. But the path to it is remarkably plausible, it seems to me. I mean, nobody would deny that there has to be some serious momentum coming out of this for chucking the electoral college. People always said we'd chuck if something like this happened. But it seems to me that as soon you touch that, you start to shake everything. Because the real problem is not the electoral college, it's the state-based first-past-the-post system. The electoral college is just a system for giving states weights approximating their population. But no matter how exactly and up-to-datedly you apportion those weights, you can still have exactly this same crazy outcome so long as states vote as states. And if states ceased to vote as states, that would change the entire structure of American national politics. We'd have national campaigns with national rather than local issues. In that context, the idea that the campaign could be conducted in two months would seem much more plausible. And if people start to think of it as a single national campaign, it should seem obvious that new parties should only have to get on one ballot. And once there are new parties and people who want to vote for them, the idea of ranked voting won't seem so otherworldly. It's only the most democratic way of doing things.
None of this will happen by itself, of course. But any change to the electoral college will make further changes more likely, because as soon as we touch the voting system, we destroy its sanctity.
And if in the end we had national campaigns and multiple parties and ranked voting, we might actually have some political debate in this country, something which would have to be welcomed by all of us who have chafed under the constraints of the eternal grand coalition
So I think Nathan's completely right. The silver lining here is a golden opportunity to unhinge the political machinery. And the first job is to get an amendment introduced and organize debate.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com
"I'm an optimist because it's intellectually more challenging" __________________________________________________________________________