[clue-talk] McCain suggests raiding Colorado's water

[Nate Duehr]

David L. Willson wrote:
> I refuse to answer a top-post that follows a bottom-post, or vice-versa, but if I didn't
> refuse, I'd agree with Angelo and Richard.  A third candidate is a third candidate. 
> Saying that a third candidate is a spoiler... Well, isn't that a little like saying that
> Linux is a spoiler? 

I'm not so sure.  There's been a lot of real mathematics to show that 
the current voting system DOES have spoilers.

Various voting methods that WEIGHT the candidates have been proposed 
(and used successfully for voting for other things, but not people in 
U.S. political elections) that take into account the individual voter's 
preferences in an ORDER -- so that if they want to vote for a 3rd party 
candidate, but that candidate doesn't have enough votes to win, your 
votes still "count" in some way for the winning candidate.

Plus add in that really it's the Electoral College that's voting and not 
the popular vote (right or wrong, I'm not getting into that debate) that 
decides who the President is... there's some math to be done there too, 
obviously.  In fact, the two major parties definitely know this and 
campaign accordingly.

The more population moves away from the coasts and inland, the more 
difficult it becomes to mess with elections via the Electoral College, 
in my view.  But, IANAM.*

I think there's PLENTY of reasons to believe the common-sense knowledge 
that voting for a third-party candidate can screw the person you might 
OTHERWISE want in office, out of the job.

Plus, "common-sense" is often very very right.

I have met very few people who can tell me that voting for a third-party 
candidate feels right when they do a "gut-check" on whether or not it 
will mess with the real winners.

And I don't think the country is (yet?) at a stage where a landslide for 
a 3rd party will happen.  (Someday, maybe?  Not this election season, 
though.  Common sense also tells me that both McCain and Obama have 
*enough* support that no landslide toward a 3d party is going to happen.)

So with all of the above... logically, voting for a 3rd party is almost 
a guarantee to mess with the numbers for the only two possible winners 
in a modern Presidential election.

(As far as local elections go, there are and have been 3rd party 
candidates that CAN and HAVE won elections... but it's not happening for 
President this go-around, and probably won't in my lifetime unless 
conditions for the average person get so bad they vote for a 3rd party 
out of total frustration.)

Nate

*I am not a Mathematician.