In a recent article on salon.com, IRV is mentioned as an issue where Dems and Greens can collaborate: Dems don't have to worry about spoilers, Greens don't have to worry about the "wasted vote syndrome." Below is my reply. It's a bit long, but Salon often prints long letters. Hopefully they'll print it.
Editor- Michelle Goldberg argues, quite correctly, that Democrats and Greens should promote alternative voting methods to end the "spoiler problem." She errs, however, in recommending Instant Runoff Voting. This method allows voters to rank the candidates and uses the rankings submitted to hold a runoff election if no candidate has a majority, rather than holding a second election. Sadly, Instant Runoff is still plagued by the spoiler problem. If the Green candidate has no chance against the Republican, but the Democrat does, dividing liberal voters between two candidates could send the doomed Green into the second round rather than the conquering Democrat. Something akin to this happened in France's recent Presidential election. Indeed, a treacherous front-runner could exploit this, sending some of his supporters to vote for the extremist whom he can beat. The moderate will be eliminated, and the conniver will win. A better solution is Approval Voting: Simply indicate yes or no for each candidate on the ballot, and the most approved candidate wins. The winner is guaranteed to be the candidate with the broadest coalition of core supporters, swing voters, and cross-over voters who also support other candidates. Approval Voting is also quite robust against spoilers and treacherous manipulations. Finally, Approval Voting requires NO NEW EQUIPMENT, unlike Instant Runoff. If you want a voting system that allows more parties to compete while keeping matters simple and transparent, there's no better choice than Approval Voting. Alex Small ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em