Today history is made in Burlington, Vt. IRV is used in a mayor election. Voters rank choice their ballot: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, there is no spoiler because noone can win without a majority.
This is important, but the really important significance will be at the federal level. If this was in place in Florida 2000 there wouldn't even be the perception that Nader cost Gore the election. 2/3 of the Nader voters would have gone for Gore and Bush couldn't have stolen the election.
One would hope that 6 years later the Democrats would be leading the charge to implement this reform, but unfortunately the old guard is still in charge.
Recently, in Md the Democratic controlled senate committee voted 7-4 to kill it being used. It would have applied to presidential, congressional and senate races as well as all state offices. Now Kevin Zeese is running a strong anti-war independent campaign and will definitely take votes away from Ben Cardin or whoever is chosen in the primary.
Instead of the Md Democrats making history as Burlington is they chose to defend the status quo. Incidentally, Incidentally, Howard Dean, a supporter of IRV, will be voting today there.
The illusion that people are going to fold back into the 2 party system needs to be lifted. Many of us will never do that but we are willing to cooperate in getting IRV passed so there is no spoiler problem and we don't have to do lesser-evil voting.
As long as people like Kerry pro-war, pro-Patriot Act, etc represent the "opposition" people will be fleeing to parties that really oppose this corporatist crime family.
As allies we win; divided we lose again. Support IRV in Md and Vt.
More info at my diaries.