Two weeks ago I suggested that the number and variety of candidates in the California recall made a dramatic case for instant run-off voting. I suggested how IRV might play out in a race between eight of the 100+ gubernatorial candidates (a hundred year old woman from Long Beach, a busty porno star, a cross-dresser in pink, a soul food restaurateur, an angry car salesman, a techno geek, a student too young for whiskers, and a structural engineer worried about earthquakes, as described in a piece in the Times). I was gunning for the cross-dresser, a real radical with a progressive vision for California's future, who lasted four rounds before being eliminated. My second choice, the unreconstructed liberal Democrat with the soul food restaurant (let's note for those following along at home that these politics are only my projections onto the candidates based on the aforementioned NYT sentence - wouldn't want to hurt anyone's chances by endorsing them), made it all the way to the last round, where he lost to the busty pornographic film star - one assumes it was because of the breadth of her policy platform. Now it turns out someone else - several someone elses actually - had the same idea, and the patience and talent to follow through with it. Go visit the folks at RecallSanity and vote for Governor the way it should be done here here. Yeah - you can rank all the candidate's from 1st through 135th choice. And who said the internet wasn't any fun? And yes, the eight described in my little demo are on the list - but since the Times didn't list their names, your guess is as good as mine as to who's who. After you try it (or, better yet - there are 135 names to get through), e-mail or call CA Secretary of State Kevin Shelley and show him what democracy looks like. And if you go through with the on-line vote, e-mail me to let me know how you ranked them. Or, Dad, just to say hi...