Runoff Needed in Presidential Election

Ralph Nader has announced that he will run for president again. And people are already saying that he might take enough votes from the Democrat nominee to swing the election to the Republican nominee. Some believe that he kept Al Gore from becoming president in 2000. If they are correct, thank you Ralph Nader. But seriously, this problem needs to be fixed.

The problem is not that third party or independent candidates get into the race and act as spoilers for one of the two major parties. The problem is that the present system discourages good third party or independent candidates from running. That is, the major parties apply a lot of pressure to keep a candidate from running who might siphon off some of their votes.

What we need is a runoff system for the general election. We could hold the first election on the first Tuesday in October. Then the two candidates receiving the highest number of votes would advance to a runoff election on the first Tuesday in November.* With this process it would take a serious third party or independent candidate to keep the two major party candidates from reaching the November election where they will compete only against one another. But it would allow a candidate to challenge the major party candidates without becoming a spoiler.

Of course someone could argue that with this runoff process a fourth candidate could still spoil the chances of a more serious third candidate, but a two election runoff process is a lot better than what we have now.

A runoff process like I've described is the best way to nurture the emergence of a third party capable of challenging the two existing major parties. This is why we aren't likely to ever have a runoff election. The two existing major parties aren't going to approve it.
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*Most state and local elections that hold runoffs don't require a candidate who receives a clear majority of the votes to compete in the runoff. In this case the runoff is unnecessary since the candidate has already received more votes than all the other candidates in the same race combined. In the race for president though the top two candidates would advance to a runoff even when one of them receives a clear majority of the popular vote. This is because presidents are selected by the Electoral College, not by the overall popular vote.

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