I'd say you lobby for preferential voting like we have here as the first step. You write numbers in boxes for your 1st choice, 2nd choice, etc until you're done.
They put all the ballots in piles by everyone's first choice. The smallest pile (e.g. least voted for candidate) then loses, and their ballots get sorted onto their second choices. Repeat until you have a candidate with a clear majority, and you have a winner.
This allows people to say, "I want Rubio, but if not, then Cruz, and if not then Jeb" etc. I suspect if this system were in play in both parties now, we'd have different nominees, and they'd be the candidates that the majority can live with instead of being the candidates that most excite the extremes. And the people on the extremes can see that their candidate lost even with people being able to vote for them without 'wasting' their vote.
Yes, in our senate this gets a bit crazy with tablecloth sized ballots (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Victoria...), and the first time I voted here I allocated every single preference down to about 160 something with pride. You don't have to obviously, but I chose to.
They put all the ballots in piles by everyone's first choice. The smallest pile (e.g. least voted for candidate) then loses, and their ballots get sorted onto their second choices. Repeat until you have a candidate with a clear majority, and you have a winner.
This allows people to say, "I want Rubio, but if not, then Cruz, and if not then Jeb" etc. I suspect if this system were in play in both parties now, we'd have different nominees, and they'd be the candidates that the majority can live with instead of being the candidates that most excite the extremes. And the people on the extremes can see that their candidate lost even with people being able to vote for them without 'wasting' their vote.
Yes, in our senate this gets a bit crazy with tablecloth sized ballots (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Victoria...), and the first time I voted here I allocated every single preference down to about 160 something with pride. You don't have to obviously, but I chose to.