The May 8 Star Tribune editorial, "Independence Party imperative for 2010 is to grow or die," really missed the mark.

While acknowledging that the party offered bright, thoughtful, highly qualified candidates in the past two gubernatorial races (Tim Penny in 2002, Peter Hutchinson in 2006), the piece accuses the IP of playing "spoiler" at the ballot box.

That's unfair and incorrect. The problem is not with the IP, its candidates, or its thousands of supporters. It's with an outdated electoral system that promotes extremism and gridlock. The imperative is to fix that broken system, and ranked choice voting (RCV) is the way to do it.

It's been 16 years since Minnesota has seated a governor with majority support. Four years ago, Hutchinson -- like Penny four years before him -- ran a smart, civil, issue-based campaign in an otherwise nasty, expensive, divisive election. His vote totals (6.4 percent) don't tell the whole story. I've talked with countless Minnesotans who told me "I prefer Peter but will vote for my second choice whom I do not like because I really don't want that third candidate to win."

In other words, voters fear that they might unwittingly help their least favorite candidate win by voting for their favorite candidate. As IP Chair Jack Uldrich summed it up at the party convention earlier this month: "What an awful way to have to vote -- to have to vote strategically, as opposed to voting with your heart."

According to a recent Wall Street Journal and NBC poll, nearly a third of Americans believe we need a viable third party. And a Gallup poll found that 37 percent of Minnesotans describe themselves as "moderate." Our Independence Party, whose members include disaffected Republicans and DFLers as well as centrists who never felt represented by either, is squarely in the U.S. mainstream. We're filling an enormous vacuum in the middle, addressing issues and perspectives that neither "major" party will confront. Any so-called lack of viability is due to what Thomas Friedman calls the "oligopoly of our two-party system."

In a three-person race, a moderate third-party candidate is hobbled by the specter of "wasted" votes. Centrist Republicans hesitate to vote third-party for fear that, if the independent loses, they'll have actually helped the DFLer win. Similarly, centrist DFLers hesitate to vote third-party for fear of inadvertently helping the Republican win.

Under RCV, or instant runoff voting, a middle-of-the-road voter could happily rank the independent candidate (or Green or Constitutional or Libertarian) No. 1 knowing that if that candidate doesn't win, his or her vote will immediately be transferred to her second choice. The result is a winner whose ideas and positions reflect the will of the majority.

Ranked choice voting is a consensus-building system that would mitigate the polarization of our two-party, back-and-forth political system -- a system in which candidates and policymakers fight endlessly while nothing much ever seems to get done. As the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other, policymaking suffers and frustration mounts in the middle.

The Star Tribune is absolutely right when it describes current IP gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner as "a person of stature and political experience" with "the potential to be a serious contender in the general election."

But it could not be more wrong when it describes his party, and mine, a "hindrance to democracy."

The real hindrance to democracy is our flawed, disempowering two-party system that stifles political competition. Hopefully, its days are numbered.

Gedney Tuttle, Wayzata, is former CEO of M.A. Gedney Co