[Micah]

I was for Nader in 2000, and man, did I learn that lesson. As much as the "they're all the same" rhetoric sounds nice, and even has a lot of truth to it, there's a pretty big difference between the parties, since I don't recall 8 years of wanting to flee the country before Bush was elected.

Voting for a third party is a wasted vote on a national election (though locally they can and do win, which is awesome). If you really want to get some change started and make 3rd parties a viable reality instant-runoff voting seems like a pretty damn good place to start, not shooting for the white house. If people can't even organize enough to get what's a pretty common-sense approach to voting to be enacted I can't imagine actually getting a nuanced 3rd party candidate choice voted into office.

That being said, I think a proportional representation system would be even better, but let's start small, shall we?