FERGUSON

[Heywood]

Our system is set up so that voters like me don't vote for who they want to see in office. They vote against the person they most want to not see in office.

Sounds remarkably similar to our system, but what we don't get over here so much is the rabid "them and us" mentality you seem to have, it's almost akin to some of the sectarian troubles we've had over here.

The effect is called strategic voting and it is something that is an unavoidable artifact of democratic systems. Instant run-off(also called Alternative voting) elections would help as they would result in the person being elected being the most agreeable to the electorate. If we had instant runoff elections, we would have never had a President Clinton as most of the Perot votes would have made Bush their second choice.