Ralph Nader should invest his time and money better

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shouldnt ralph spend his time running around lobbying for electiral reform instead of running for offices he'll ever own? he'd get farther.

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The electoral college makes it possible for a third party candidate to run a 'safe state' strategy. If the Democrats had their way the electoral college would be replaced with a popular vote. This would make it impossible for a third party candidate to run a 'safe state' strategy.
Ironically, it would strengthen the all ready gigantic advantage that the two parties have.

I agree that simply replacing the electoral college isn't going to do it. But what could it is Instant runoff voting. instant runoff voting would allow people to vote for 3rd parties without throwing away thier votes. For those of you who don't know what instant runoff voting is, the idea is basically that you rank all the people running in order of how much you want them to win.(Note: you could possibly not put a # behind a certain at all if you don't want your vote having any chance of going for that candidate.) When the all the '#1' votes are counted up, if no-one has a majority, they would eliminate the candidate with the lowest amount of votes. Every ballot that had that person as #1, they would then go to their 2nd choices and add those on to the current tallys. This would continue until somebody had a majority of the votes.

EXAMPLE: The totals in a random schoolboard member race:

          Joe Johnson: 50 votes    36%
              Mary Doe: 45 votes    32%
         Jim Robinson: 43 votes    31%

        With no majorty, Robinson would be eliminated. When they look at everyone's ballots who voted for Robinson, 23 of them had Mary 2nd, 15 of them had Joe 2nd, and 4 had no-one 2nd. That means you would add 24 to Mary's total, 18 to Joe's total, and 4 votes would not go to anyone.

               After Jim's elimination:

               Mary Doe: 68 votes   51%
          Joe Johnson: 66 votes   49%

       With 51% of the vote, Mary Doe would be elected. Notice that without this system, Joe Johnson would have been elected with less than a majority, plus everyone who voted for Jim Robinson would have had no say in whether they would have wanted Joe or Mary if their candidate dodn't win.

I really love this system. a good website to go to if you want more examples or if you want to participate in or make some fake Instant runoff elections, go to http://www.demochoice.org/

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electing people without a majority is ludicris. Besides, if I voted for Robinson, but I didn't like Johnson, I should be able to also cast a vote against him. That is what this system basically lets you do. You're just afraid because you know that a majority of 3rd party voters would vote democrat, so instead of constantly lose, you prefer to silence the opinions of others. Thats the way the  top republican officials have worked, thats the way they'll continue to work.

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No, the system should be one vote for one person, not one vote for Jim, but if he loses one vote for Tim, but if he loses one vote for Arnold.  And actually, third party votes in 2004 split almost evenly right down the middle between Republican leaners (LP, Constitution) and Democrat leaners (P&F, Grn, Nader, and the various socialist parties). In no state would third party votes tip the balance one way or another unless all LP, Grn, and Nader voters went for Kerry in NM.  In 2000, only Florida would switch hands if 3rd party votes were distributed to each major party. Plus, a IRV system would mean a Bush 41 win in 1992.  So, obviously, you don't know what you're talking about to claim that a majority of third party voters would vote Democrat. Only in 2000 has this been the case, 1980, 1988, 1992, 1996 are all years where more third party voters would've voted Republican instead of Democrat.

First fo all, im not so sure that youre completely correct on that, but in any case, the IRV system is about fairness for all parties, not political gain for one or the other

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IRV would be a token gesture by the major parties to keep 3rd parties from ever growing large enough to challenge them. It effectively prevents any third party from winning a state, much less an election.

Actually, Perot could have won Maine in 92' with IRV.

exactly, thats what the system is all about

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it may have made the 2000 election election even MORE interesting

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Why should the people who voted for Jim Robinson have another choice. They chose a candidate, he lost, get over it.

Alternatively, if there is a system with no winner over 50%, shouldn't the public have the time to scrutinize the two front-runners? That means a real run off, not an IRV. Sometimes we're too hung up on getting a winner right away. A wiser path is to educate those who didn't pick one of the two front runners on their relative merits.

That is a very good idea. You should try to get somewhere with that.

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i agree with you on that. The problem with coming up with a new sstem is that a lot of people are so used to the old system that its going to take a really good system to convince people to take up a new system.

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When I was in school, I thought uniforms were bad. Now that I am older and out of school, I do see the good points of them. However, this issue should be decided by each individual school / school board including parents, teachers, students, and administrators.

I personally oppose uniforms for schools, but i agree with your proposition to have it chosen school by school.

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When I saw the title of this thread I thought it was about a campaign strategy for Ralph Nader to increase him share of the vote.  But thank god that LiberalPA doesn't want Nader to run again. 

In the past 5 years, Nader has gone from having a positive effect on the world to now having a negative effect.

Well, the nonstop attacks from the major parties (notably The Democratic Party) hasnt helped the 3rd party cause, either.

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EXAMPLE: The totals in a random schoolboard member race:

          Joe Johnson: 50 votes    36%
              Mary Doe: 45 votes    32%
         Jim Robinson: 43 votes    31%

Why wouldn't it be be to Doe's and Robinson's advantage to run an Anyone But Joe campaign?

I suppose they could, but that is thier choice as a candidate.