How To (Legally) Cast Two Votes for President

The briefer version of my previous post.

However much you might like the positions or message of a third party candidate like Bob Barr or Ralph Nader, most people at least have some opinion as to which of the two "mainstream" candidates would be worse.  Truth be told, I think that a lot of us fit into this broad category:  We really wish that we had more choices and that we could voice our opinions with a little more expressiveness than we currently have.  

The Dream

Actually several countries already have a voting system which allows precisely this kind of expressiveness and many have been advocating the adoption of such a system here.  The general idea goes something like this:  Each candidate is listed with a series of numbers next to their name allowing voters to express how much they like or dislike them.  Assuming that a candidate passes a viability margin (for example, so many percent of voters need to at least express an opinion about the candidate), the scores are totaled up and divided by the total votes cast for them.  The candidate with the highest score wins. I would encourage people to read more about the variations, this is an excellent source: http://rangevoting.org/.  

The Reality

Personally - I think that it's a great idea, but we live and breathe in reality.  In the land of reality, even if a massive movement for this were started, it would likely take a generation to replace our current system.  Ironically, however, you can already cast a semi-preferential vote in our existing system, but no one does.  Here's how you can do it:

1. Figure out which of the major party candidates would make you less likely to want to move to Canada if elected.
2. Find someone whose selection is the opposite of yours.
3. Both of you request absentee ballots and arrange to meet up just before the deadline
4. Both fill out the ballots in one another's presence and walk them to the polling place, the recorder's office or mailbox together.

What's more, after I had this idea and blogged it once, I came across this, check it out:  http://www.votepact.org