You've heard by now about the Electoral College and the perennial complaints about its indirectness and imprecision. But there is a deeper issue at stake: regardless of what the courts say[said] about Florida's recount, and even if the ancient college is somehow abandoned, neither Al Gore nor George W. Bush can claim a majority of the actual votes. But lack of a clear majority is nothing new in American presidential politics. President Clinton has never had one. Governor John Rowland was elected in 1994 with just 36 percent of the vote. There is a better way. It's called "preferential voting," or, more commonly, "Instant Runoff Voting" (IRV). A movement to put it in place is gathering steam in Vermont, New Mexico and Alaska, as well as several smaller jurisdictions in other states. In an Instant Runoff election, each voter ranks the candidates according to preference. In the past presidential election, for example, a left-leaning Advocate staffer might have put Ralph Nader number 1, Gore second, followed by Bush. If no candidate won 50 percent of the state's voters, the lowest vote-getter would be dropped, and the second choice on his ballots distributed to the others. The process would repeat until a candidate got 50 percent plus one vote. IRV partisans say the system erases the spoiler effect in which, for example, Nader voters agonize about their culpability in electing Bush. Under IRV, a Naderite puts his man first, and Gore second, says Eric Olson, deputy director of The Center for Voting and Democracy, a non-profit group advocating for the IRV system: "people aren't throwing away their vote. Why is it in the US you can vote for your favorite person and end up helping the person you like the least?" As a side benefit, candidates competing under IRV have less incentive to attack one another, because driving votes away from one opponent does not necessarily bring them to the attacker's camp. Increased civility in elections, along with the prospect of voting for one's favorite candidates instead of merely against those one detests, could increase voter turnout, strengthening the democratic system generally. And best of all, say proponents, IRV does not directly threaten either major political party. "It might pass this year," says Terry Bouricius, 10-year Vermont legislator and member of the left-of-center Progressive Party who, with six Democrats and Republicans, has sponsored the bill for the past two legislative sessions. "It's not a shoo-in..., but it has a very decent chance." A legislative commission packed with representatives from government groups like the League of Women Voters recommended last year that the system be implemented, in part because the Vermont constitution requires a majority vote for the governor. Thus, in a three-way race, the election is typically thrown to the state legislature. That has happened 21 times in the state's history, according to Bouricius. "There is a lot of dissatisfaction with this indirect election system," he says. The state's current governor, Democrat Howard Dean, supports IRV, as does his erstwhile opponent, Republican Ruth Dwyer. "They wrote the constitution before instant runoff had been invented," says Bouricius. "The legislature was as close to 'the people' as they could get." IRV was conceived in 1870 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor W.R. Ware. Its first known use in a governmental election was in 1893 in Australia, which in 1918 adopted IRV for national elections. Ireland elects its president this way, and in May, Londoners elected their first ever city mayor, Ken Livingstone, using a modified version of the instant runoff system. Livingstone, a long-time Labour Party MP, was denied his party's nomination for the post through the machinations of Prime Minister Tony Blair. Running as an independent Livingstone--known to the masses as "Red Ken"--won 58 percent of the vote in the instant runoff. The most recent use of IRV for a governmental election in the United States was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1975. The system produced a majority winner in a three-way race where no candidate won a majority of first choices. But the candidate who would have won under plurality rules spearheaded a repeal campaign. IRV lost in a low-turnout special election that focused on problems with counting ballots by hand. The instant runoff idea has been revived this decade by the non-profit Center for Voting and Democracy, chaired by 1980 Independent Presidential Candidate John Anderson and funded by grants from the Ford Foundation and financier George Soros' Open Society Foundation. The presidential election results of November 7 have quickened interest in the system, says Olson, the center's deputy director. "It's probably the busiest time we've had [in the past year and a half]," he says, "in terms of getting press calls." Unsurprisingly, the reform movement has been manned by Democrats and Republicans who have seen their party's efforts in solid districts foiled by "spoilers" from third parties. The New Mexico State Senate, for example, passed an IRV bill "because there were two special elections in which the Greens were spoilers," Olson says. The bill was bottled up in the House but may emerge this year, he says. Meanwhile Alaska, despite its conservative population, hasn't elected a Republican governor in more than 20 years. The reason? Right-wing splinter groups like the Alaskan Independence Party (generally secessionist) have split the Republican base. The push for IRV there is led by Republicans. "It works both ways," notes Olson. "It's a neutral system." Computers easily solve any objections raised by opponents of complicated hand-counting, says Olson, and any trouble that can be introduced through computer software [Scoop, "An Evil Election?" 11/16] can as easily be stopped under an IRV system as under the present system. As local jurisdictions take on the unglamorous work of modernizing antiquated voting systems, advocates for IRV see their opening to make sure new equipment will accommodate an IRV-style system. For example, Santa Clara County, California's voters passed enabling legislation two years ago that allows IRV as soon as technically feasible. San Leandro County passed a similar ballot measure this year, as did the city of Oakland. Vancouver, Washington, passed a ballot measure enabling instant runoffs. And in Texas, the Austin City Council empanelled a charter commission which recommend instant runoff voting. "You can think of this as a reform movement that's going on all over the country," says Caleb Kleppner, the director of what the Center for Voting and Democracy calls its Majority Rule Project. Kleppner parachutes into political jurisdictions considering a change in their election process, to advocate for IRV. He helped San Leandro and Oakland open the door to the system. "In both of those cases there was no opposition," he says. Connecticut Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz says one of her priorities in the near future will be to replace Connecticut's quaint, antique voting machines with a modern, computerized alternative, possibly involving "touch screen" technology as seen on Automatic Teller Machines. "The machines we use are not even manufactured anymore," she says. "When towns want to buy new machines, they have to find remanufactured models." Bysiewicz says any new technology will be able to accommodate IRV, and she recalls a time, several years ago, when the voting system was debated in a legislative committee. "I was chair of Government Administration and Elections Committee from 1994 to 1998," she says. "The committee at least looked at it--particularly in light of the election in 1994 in which ... nobody got a majority of the vote." The discussions went nowhere at the time, she says, because other priorities took precedence. But, she adds, "it's something to look at for the future--particularly with the proliferation of third parties." The enemy is complacency, says Bouricius of Vermont. Although there is no organized opposition to the IRV system, "The most powerful lobbyist in the world is the status quo," he says. "They say if it ain't broke [don't fix it]. But the notion that it ain't broke is like someone with a leaky roof arguing that everything is fine because it isn't raining."