Green-Rainbow candidate for governor Jill Stein took advantage of the today's surprise news that independent candidate for lieutenant governor Paul Loscocco endorsed Republican Charles Baker to make the case for an alternative voting method.

Responding to Loscocco's announcement this morning that he was leaving running mate Tim Cahill to endorse Baker, Stein said the focus was in the wrong place.

"The truth is there is a voting reform that gets rid of the problem that voting for the candidate you truly support might have unintended consequences - like helping a candidate you don't like," Stein said in a statement.

Stein, whose campaign was hit hard by narrowly missing the benchmark to qualify for matching funds from the Commonwealth earlier this week, made the case for instant run-off voting, also known as ranked choice.

Instant run-off voting allows voters to rank their choices for a political office, rather than choose one. If no candidate receives a full majority, the candidate with the least votes bumped out of the race, distributing their supporters' second choices among the other candidates. It's called instant run-off because voters make their second choice in advance, avoiding the need for expensive run-off elections.

Both Loscocco and senior Cahill adviser John Weaver said they could no longer support Cahill because they thought doing so would give the election to incumbent Democrat Deval Patrick.

"It's just recognizing the reality that it's just not going to happen for Tim and continuing on would have only help Patrick and hurt Baker," Weaver told the Associated Press. Cahill has been seen as having little chance of winning the race for governor, but had been pulling as much as 14 percent in some polls, including 11 percent of likely voters in a recent Boston Globe poll.

Baker and Patrick, meanwhile, were in a statistical tie, at 34 and 35 percent, respectively, giving rise to the age-old spoiler question.

Voter Choice MA, a group advocating ranked choice in the Commonwealth, claims that Massachusetts has fewest number of competitive elections in the nation. They say instant run-off ballots would diversify Massachusetts politics.

In an interview with WFCR's Fred Bever earlier this year, Stein also made the case for the alternative voting method:

This video from FairVote.org, a national ranked choice advocacy group, makes the case for instant run-off.

What do you think, Western Mass? Does this bust up the spoiler problem? Weigh in down in the comments.