Can Dean do that in his current position? Did McAwful officially back anyone?

Dean had damn well better not back anyone.

I can't think of many things he could do more dishonorable.  Except maybe breaking his promise and running himself.

Not saying he'll do either.  I like to think he takes his office and responsibilities more seriously.

From what I've heard, Russ' divorce was remarkably amiable.

His 2000 campaign was...disappointing, to say the least.  His pick of Lieberman as VP showed a complete lack of judgement, in my mind.  Granted, his being on the ticket was probably the primary reason Florida was even in play, but that wasn't his reasoning, I don't think.

I'm also positive he's not running.  He's done with politics, and is instead concentrating on running bad TV networks.

But I'd add Clark to the list of "definitive" progressives.

He took some of the most progressive positions of any of the 04 candidates, was probably the only one willing to use the "L" word (liberal) to describe himself, and was utterly fearless in calling out Bush, Rove and DeLay by name.

Many have expressed skepticism of Clark because of their preconceptions of military officers, or because he has no voting record as an elected official.  But if you take a closer look at his military career, you'll see a documented history of defending progressive values, especially in regards to human rights, the environment, and making education and access to health care a priority of effort and funds.  The fact that he stood up for these things within the military culture, where it often made him no friends among the other brass, should tell you something.

Firstly, it is close to impossible to demonstrate by any method, "mathematical" or "heuristic," that there is any problem with "IRV" voting for the simple reason that, while there is basically only one method of casting such ballots, there seem to be an endless number of ways of counting them. (I really should say "interpreting" them.) Some of these methods of "interpretation" are far better than others, and it seems that the better ones are those that include onerous stipulations -- for example -- the stipulation that all of the information contained in every single ballot must be gathered into one final central tabulation location. Now, there are many ways of avoiding this need to have every ballot at hand at the point of the final decision, but they turn out to exist only in types of "IRV" that can be easily manipulated by organizations that have superior economic resources.

I know of no "mathematical" way of demonstrating why these things occur -- one must resort to a "war dialing exercise in multiple thought experimentation." (Evaluating "IRVs" turns out to be vastly complicated, and the serious analyst is eventually forced to the conclusion that she or he is dealing with something akin to a defective Rubik's Cube, which never gets solved.)

It would be wonderful if these flaws were only "theoretical," and would never manifest in the real world, but that is far from the case. Oddly enough, the flaws turn out to constitute readily exploitable security holes that always strongly favor organizations that have the economic power to utilize them.

So, in the real world, if you are faced with a choice of , say F.D.R., Jimmy Carter, Bob Dole, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and Adolph Hitler, you could very easily end up getting Hitler by placing votes only for (1) = F.D.R & (2) = Jimmy Carter, instead of placing votes only for (1) = Jimmy Carter & (2) = F.D.R. (Choosing the second of these options could create a situation in which Hitler eventually trumps Carter.)

Yes, this is all very, very complicated, and requires advanced knowledge of information science to grasp.

My suggestion of using sequential runoffs in combination with approval voting (in which you are not required to rank any on canditate as "first" in a multi-candidate race) eliminates all of these complications. It could be four times as labor-intensive for the poor voters, but they could, for example: (1) approve of 8, (2) narrow their approval to 4, (3) again narrow their approval to 2, and (4) finally choose between the 2 remaining candidates in an election resembling our current plurality process. Nothing could go terribly wrong if such a process were implemented. More importantly, such a processs could never be manipulated so as to force the voters to make complex decisions that would saddle them with leaders whom they despise. And the four sequential runoffs would make for a great show in which voters could make many meaningfull choices. (You do not increase meaninful choices merely by in creasing the volume of choices. For example, If I offer you a lottery ticket and let you choose the played number, I am not giving you any more than I would were I to offer you a lottery ticket and reserved the choice of played number to myself.)

All of the "relatively superior" "IRVs" are far too complicated to be executed without the aid of massive computer mediation.

Consider Australia: Those people have had a form of IRV for a very long time indeed, and they have been saddled with an utterly tyrannical "two-party system" for some time now (which they utterly despise).