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SAN FRANCISCO — The Green Party, hoping to continue its growth in California, announced its candidates for the state’s two highest offices Wednesday and said it supports a move toward instant runoff elections. 

Peter Camejo, a former presidential candidate, will be the party’s candidate for governor in 2002. Donna Warren is the candidate for lieutenant governor. 

Camejo, who ran for the presidency in 1976, emphasizes prudent investing and points to the state’s energy crisis as an example of bad investments that he said he would avoid. 

Camejo founded and runs Progressive Asset Management, Inc., which promotes socially responsible investments, and helped set up the Eco-Logical trust for Merrill Lynch. 

Camejo also said he would push for runoff elections to prevent the possibility of election troubles that Florida faced during the 2000 presidential election. 

Warren has run for Congress as a Green Party member and has been working to get the Three Strikes law to apply only to violent crimes. She’s also the lead plaintiff in a suit against the CIA, accusing it of letting drugs into the country. Warren’s son was addicted to crack. 

Both candidates emphasized the Green Party’s work in local elections. 

In the past few weeks, 50 Green Party candidates have been elected to local positions nationwide, said campaign strategist Rebecca Kaplan. 

Much of the party’s support comes not just from Green Party members but from crossover voters — those registered as Democrats or Republicans who vote for Green Party candidates. 

Such crossover support in the 2000 presidential election drew criticism, especially from the Democratic Party. Many Democrats accuse Green Party candidate Ralph Nader of siphoning votes from Democratic candidate Al Gore. 

That’s why the Green Party is pushing for instant runoff elections, Kaplan said. 

The instant runoff would let people rank their top two candidates. If no candidate received a majority, then those people who didn’t list those candidates as their first choice would have their second choices counted, in an automatic runoff including the two candidates who got the most votes overall. 

San Francisco has an instant runoff proposal on the ballot in March, and New Mexico and Alaska also are considering such a plan, Kaplan said. 

The party is growing by 4.6 percent a year in California, party officials said, and now it numbers around 150,000 members.  

By contrast, about 7 million voters are registered Democrats in the state, and about 5.4 million voters are registered Republicans.