First up, I don't think there's anything "naïve" about Bobert. He's been there, done that, and in the immortal words of Douglas Adams, he knows where his towel is.

There is a very hopeful sign in a story I heard on my local NPR affiliate this morning:    Ranked choice voting.

To me, this sounds like the same thing as "preferential voting" or "instant run-off voting." Although, according to the NPR story, some people find this confusing, PROBABLY because it's a bit more complicated than the system we have now—AND voters would need to be a bit more savvy about the various candidates. A GOOD thing, that!

Some cities in the U. S. already use this system, as do several countries.

The advantage of this—which the two parties undoubtedly will not like at all—is that it gives the voter a slate of viable candidates, not just a choice between REALLY bad and not QUITE so bad. It makes it possible for the voter to vote FOR the candidate he prefers, even if the word is that that particular candidate doesn't stand a chance. For example, Ralph Nader or Dennis Kucinich. If that candidate gets insufficient votes to be in the running, your vote moves up to your second choice, and so on.

This means that you can go ahead and vote for the candidate you prefer without fear of throwing your vote away, rather than having to vote for the least crooked of two crooks.

Works for me! Maybe we should start a movement!! One modus operandi:   get it started on the local level (which it seems to already have!), then when it catches on, demand that it go national.

Don Firth

P. S. I am NOT willing to just sit on my hands and whine, "Oh, woe! Oh, woe!" like some people seem to be!