Don't Fear Nader (3/4/04)
by Dean Hartwell
Ralph Nader recently announced he will run for President as an independent this year. How will his candidacy affect the Democrats?
In 2000, Ralph Nader, running as a Green Party candidate, took approximately 2.7% of the vote. In many states, like Florida, Nader’s votes outnumbered the margin of victory between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. Many Democrats believe that Nader cost Gore the election.
Nader claims to be against President Bush and that he wants to highlight issues he thinks the two main parties have ignored, such as: universal health care, rising poverty and environmental concerns. Yet the record shows Democrats have addressed these issues.
For example, presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry has unveiled a plan to provide health insurance for everyone in the United States (http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2003_1214.html). Kerry has suggested ideas to keep people out of poverty (http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/children/children_security.html). He has also proposed policies that Nader has favored like increasing fuel efficiency in automobiles (http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/energy/).
Even so, Nader still figures to draw votes from Kerry. But it doesn’t make sense for candidates who share similar values to harm one another. If anything, their votes should be added together to compare to the votes of candidates with different views.
Fortunately, there is a way the voters can demand that no one spoil the election and ensure that the most popular candidate wins. It is called Instant Runoff Voting (IRV).
What is IRV?
IRV allows voters choose from the candidates in order of preference. The great 1980 independent candidate John Anderson recently called it a way that voters “could vote their hopes, not their fears” since they could vote their true preference first and use a second vote for a candidate with a better chance of winning.
The first choice votes are counted first, with a candidate receiving a majority of them declared the winner. If no one receives a majority of the first choice votes (as would have been the case in several states in 2000, such as Florida), the candidate with the fewest number of first choice votes gets eliminated.
The second choice votes are then counted, with these votes going to the candidates still in the race. More rounds of voting continue as needed until one candidate gets a majority.
For example, let’s say the state of Florida has three candidates on its ballot: George W. Bush, John Kerry and Ralph Nader. Bush receives 46 percent of the first choices, while Kerry gets 44 percent and Nader 10 percent.
Nader gets eliminated from the race. Then the ballots that showed him first get checked to see who the voters wanted second. If Kerry can get more than sixty percent of these votes, he will have a majority of the vote and thus be declared the winner.
Instant Runoff Voting shows us we don’t have to feel trapped into voting defensively. We should tell our legislators that we want IRV today so that it will be ready for the presidential election.