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

[dennisjperkins at comcast.net]

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Nate Duehr <nate at natetech.com>
> 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.
> _______________________________________________

Weren't the Republicans originally spoilers?  This country had the Democratic and Whig parties.