Via Ed Still comes this post by Sandy Levinson on the role that third party candidates in affecting the vote outcome in Virginia and Montana. Sandy thinks this might be a good time for a bipartisan push for Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). (For more on the third party candidate in Virginia possibly being a spoiler, see this Wall Street Journal article.)
I’ve been struggling in my writings with how to deal with the potential “spoiler” effect of third party candidacies (see my piece here), and I am beginning to think more seriously about IRV as an alternative (I had always viewed it as more of a fringe idea for those who really want PR in the US). Sandy makes a good case that this is an issue that should be considered by a “bipartisan coalition.”