Laura and I both completed our absentee ballots, to be mailed off tomorrow. So if the election were held today, Kerry would win by a landslide, at least in Minnesota. I really didn’t enjoy voting for Kerry (he’s supposed to be liberal? pfft!), but I’ve temporarily succumbed to the “a vote for {Nader, Cobb, R?ger Calero, Insert Leftist Candidate Name Here} is a vote for Bush” logic. That logic is flawed in so many ways, but so is our electoral system, so that’s what you get. Two-party systems can’t represent the views of most people, because political philosophy is not an either-or question, despite all of the Republicans’ “for us or agin’ us” rhetoric. I’d like to think there would be room for several major parties all over the political spectrum, but that would involve some kind of change in the way votes are tallied, in order to make sure that every voter can vote their conscience without feeling like they’re going to end up with a) a candidate who wins an election with far less than a majority of the popular vote (e.g. Jesse Ventura in 1998) or b) the candidate who you would least prefer getting into office (Nader voters in 2000 who ended up with you-know-who as president).

At any rate, the Instant Runoff style of voting seems to be making at least some headway in this country: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting, and I was just taking a look online at another style of voting called Condorcet http://electionmethods.org/Condorcet.htm. You can read up on the specifics on those sites– the practical upshot is that a voter ranks candidates in order of preference– and if one candidate is not the first choice of a majority of voters, then the second choices of those voters kicks in to help decide who should win (and so on until one candidate has an absolute majority). So I could have voted for David Cobb as my first choice, and then John Kerry, and nobody (not even that nagging little voice inside my head) could have called my vote a “spoiler”.

It’s definitely time for something different in the way we elect our leaders; I don’t think I’m the only one unhappy with the choices we’re presented. Life is full of tough decisions, but we have control over this one!