Re: OT Politics Re: Three Body Problem

On 8/26/2024 10:50 AM, William Hyde wrote:

Paul S Person wrote:

On Sun, 25 Aug 2024 17:39:22 -0400, William Hyde
<wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
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Paul S Person wrote:

On Sat, 24 Aug 2024 16:48:32 -0500, "Jay E. Morris"
<morrisj@epsilon3.comcon> wrote:
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On 8/24/2024 2:37 PM, BCFD 36 wrote:

IOW, if it were the popular vote that counted, 2016 would have seen a
runoff election [1] exactly two choices: Hillary and Trump. The
expectation being that one or the other would get more that 50% of the
votes.

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Only if that is how the election laws were written. I think it would be
wildly impractical to hold multiple national elections.
>

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Which is why some are advocating for a ranked voting system.

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Which the citizens of Alaska, IIRC, will shortly be voting on ...
prohibiting, having had actual experience with it.
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It must be pretty stinky to get enough people to sign an initiative to
prohibit it.
>

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It worked very well in London, Ontario and while some of my best friends
live in London, I don't think that on the whole the population is much
smarter than average.
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The conservative provincial government then forbid it, offering as usual
no actual reason.
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Joke was on them, though, because the old system delivered us a very
left wing Toronto mayor, while ranked voting would have let in a
conservative (the conservative vote total was higher, but split).

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Only if the second choices were all the /other/ conservative.

 The conservatives were all much of a muchness barring one former chief of police.  I can't see people selecting the current, very left mayor as a second choice.  Perhaps her liberal rival would be a choice for those who oppose having a police chief as mayor.
 Voting (1) Conservative, (2) Conservative (3) Conservative would have been likely.
 As one such candidate was head and shoulders above the others. It's hard to imagine she wouldn't have been one of the three choices.

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And though I personally prefer the mayor we have, it is clear that in
this election the will of the people was not reflected in the result.

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Actually, I think it was. If the people had /wanted/ a conservative,
only one would have been running.

 I don't see how  the people's desires have any effect here.  Anyone can run for office.
 We have no power over those who run, except to vote against them.  I, for example, was very annoyed that there were two left wing candidates, of which one had absolutely no chance.  But I had no ability to dissuade him from running.
 There is a reason to run for mayor despite having no chance of winning, and that is as a beginning of the next election, or the one after.  So ambitious people will always be running, preventing a one-on-one match between the two dominant candidates (if indeed there are such).
 A majority voted for conservative candidates, a minority for liberal/ left candidates but the minority prevailed.  I think that is a bad thing, and can be avoided for the most part by a simple change to the ballot (ranked ballots do not avoid all problems, naturally).
 In this case the whole thing is of little consequence.  In other cases, though, it could be more serious.
 

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If you want to, just vote for the candidate of your choice, leave the
rest blank.  Or rank them 1,2,3.  I don't see how that's hard.

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I'm not in Alaska and I don't know if/when we will try it here.
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And wasn't there a primary somewhere where "None of the Above" won?

 Once I realized that in some states people can vote in the primary of the other party (Nixon encouraged republicans to vote in democratic primaries for McGovern), I lost all confidence in the primary system.
 Mind you, our method of selecting potential members of parliament is even worse.
 

It helps, slightly, to remember that the US Founding Fathers didn't want political parties and our electoral system wasn't built for them. Political parties just kind of condensed out of the air and forced their way in.
--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky dirty old man.