The Feb. 24 editorial attacking Ralph Nader was misdirected. A solution to the "throwing the election" problem, usually called instant runoff voting, has been in use for decades in Ireland, Australia and some U.S. cities.

Voters simply list candidates in order of preference. The candidate with a majority of the first preferences is elected. However, if no candidate has a majority, the ballots of the candidate with the fewest first preferences are redistributed according to second preference. If that doesn't result in a majority of votes for a single candidate, the process continues with the next candidate with the fewest number of first preferences.

That transfer of ballots guarantees that whoever is elected has the support of the majority of the voters, and isn't that what elections are supposed to accomplish?

It also eliminates the need for a runoff election, thus saving taxpayer dollars. And candidates have much stronger incentives to refrain from negative campaigning, since voters may list another candidate as their second preference.

Thus, the "throwing the election" problem is political, not technical. If the Democrats and Republicans wanted, they could solve the problem quickly, but it's not in their political interests to do so, as they both depend on the balance of terror to keep their supporters in line.