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I had some difficulty understanding the website's explanations. I don't see how runoffs would be worse than what we have now.
This is the way I see it... let's use this year's election as an example.
I'm a Democrat, but let's just say for a moment that I liked Green Party Candidate Cobb better than John Kerry. Ralph Nader would be my third choice.
GIOVANNI'S VOTING PREFERENCE #1 Cobb #2 Kerry #3 Nader
Now, my Republican grandmother would probably have a different take on it. She'd probably vote for Bush first, then maybe some of the third-party conservative parties. So her ticket would look like this.
GRANDMA'S VOTING PREFERENCE #1 Bush #2 Moore #3 Peroutka
Now, my more moderate father might have a ticket like this.
DAD'S VOTING PREFERENCE #1 Kerry #2 Cobb #3 Badnarik
Now, say that in one state that Cobb gets 7% of the vote, Kerry gets 40% of the vote, Nader gets 8% and Bush gets 45%.
I realize that's pretty unrealistic, but bear with me.
Now, under our current system, Bush wins. However, the voter intent is pretty obvious... they want someone to the left of center. Therefore, Bush doesn't represent the people of that particular state, yet he'll take all of the state's electoral votes. If it's a traditionally left-leaning state, especially with a lot of electoral votes, that could be disasterous and could secure a Bush win nationwide.
But if there were some kind of runoff system, then the contest would come down to just Bush and Kerry, and since Kerry will probably be an alternate choice of the Nader & Cobb voters (and Bush likely would not), he would likely take most of their combined 15% of the vote and beat Bush by something like 55-45% or 54-46%, winning the state.
This will allow more people to be able to vote third-party without automatically handing the election to Bush. It allows the intent of the voters to be heard. And in the event that Nader or Cobb finishes ahead of Kerry and goes to a, say, Nader vs. Bush race, Nader is probably more likely to be an alternate choice for Kerry voters than is Bush, allowing Nader to win as well.
I realize that this also gives the same advantage to right-leaning third parties, but I'm all for more choices, whatever the ideology is.
Does this make sense or am I barking up the wrong tree here?
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