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RE: Are you satisfied with our two party system?
Hey Joel, nice post and it's an important issue that I think most Americans agree need to change but hardly ever talk about. I'm curious, what changes need to be made to implement the "instant run-off" system, would it take an amendment to the constitution or could it be done with a lesser bill from congress?
By the way, for those interested in some good explanations of the voting systems, CGP Grey has some great videos on them below. I believe the "instant run-off" system mentioned in the article is the same as the alternative vote explained in the video, but please correct me if I'm wrong:
I looked into this after the election of 2000. An amendment to the Constitution is not needed for anything but the Presidential race, and even there it's probably not needed.
For every election other than the Presidential elections, it looks like changes to State law are all that is needed. It's likely there would be challenges to such a State law in Federal court, but it's quite likely the State law would be upheld with no changes needed to Federal law.
The Presidential election is more complicated. I don't see any reason a State couldn't implement instant runoff voting for its own electors. But here, a court challenge that it gives some voters more of a voice than others would be more likely to prevail. If that succeeds, you would need a Federal law to either allow or require instant runoff voting. In either case, there would likely be more court challenges. In the former case, where the law merely allows it, the same kind of "some people's vote counts more" argument might work. In the latter case, the argument might be made that the Federal government cannot compel the States to run their own elections in specific ways.
In the case, unlikely I think, where those kinds of arguments win, then a Constitutional amendment would be needed. But even in that worse case scenario, we could still accomplish a lot by implementing instant runoff voting for races other than President.