1. Our voting system is broken, and needs fixing.

Is our current system prone to problems? If so, have these problems been frequent? Have they been serious when they did occur? Are they likely to become more frequent or more serious?

The fundamental problem with plurality election rules is that they allow a candidate that is the least preferred choice of a majority of the voters to be declared the winner. While it is probably true in most cases that the plurality winner is indeed also the candidate most preferred by the majority (in Australia, the initial plurality candidate ends up winning the majority with transfers typically 70-80% of the time), there is no way of knowing if this is true in any particular case without something like IRV. No one really argues over the fact that plurality rules allow for very undemocratic outcomes, violating the principle of majority rule. The question that remains is "Is it worth doing anything about it?"

The problem of plurality election rules has gone relatively unnoticed in modern time, by the dominance of just two major parties. That reality, however, appears to be changing. Recent presidential and state elections, with Perot-style and other independents, have already returned us to the days of plurality rather than majority outcomes. In 1992 Clinton only won a majority of the vote in a single state, his home state of Arkansas.