teven Hill, author of "Fixing Elections: The Failure of America's Winner Take All Politics," will be in Amherst and Northampton Tuesday to talk about instant runoff voting, the electoral reform that voters in the 1st and 3rd Hampshire representative districts approved in a nonbinding ballot question in November. Hill, a nationally syndicated columnist from San Francisco, will speak at the Jones Library in Amherst at noon; at Room 162-175 of the University of Massachusetts Campus Center at 4 p.m; and at Broadside Books in Northampton at 7:30 p.m. In "Fixing Elections," Hill observes that the United States is the democracy with the lowest rate of voter participation. He used Massachusetts as an example of the broader problem. Hill argues that a root cause of growing voter disenchantment and "political depression," is the "winner take all" voting system, an 18th-century model awarding a political contest to the candidate who gets the most votes - even if that represents less than a majority in multiple-candidate races. Hill, the co-founder in 1992 of the Center for Voting and Democracy, a nonprofit organization promoting electoral reform, maintains that instant runoff voting would do more to restore voter confidence than even campaign finance reform, which has been thwarted nationally and in Massachusetts. "Our politics is increasingly becoming one of negative consent," Hill said in a telephone interview this week. "People don't vote for a candidate anymore. They vote against the other side. We're in this vicious cycle right now, and the only way to break out of it is by changing the voting system. Campaign finance reform would certainly help, but by itself, it is not adequate." The instant runoff voting system allows voters to rank multiple candidates in an election according to their preference. If after a first counting, no one candidate receives more than 50 percent of the votes, the candidate receiving the fewest votes is eliminated. The votes are then retallied - almost instantaneously, using computer technology - with the votes of those who supported the candidate who was eliminated shifting to their second choice and on down, until one candidate emerges with a majority. Supporters say Democrat Al Gore likely would be president if instant runoff voting had been in place in 2000, because supporters of Ralph Nader could have chosen a second-candidate preference for Gore or George Bush. The system has been used in Australian nation elections since 1919, and in Ireland and England, as well as in the nominating process for the Academy Awards. Hill said instant runoff voting particularly makes sense for Massachusetts now, because it eliminates the need for both a primary and a general election by combining all of the candidates on a single ballot, thereby saving money. He said San Francisco, which uses instant runoff voting for its city elections, is expected to save $4 million a year. "If one city of 800,000 people saves $4 million, in the state of Massachusetts the savings would probably be in the tens of millions," Hill said. "With a huge budget deficit, I think that would be fairly attractive."