That was the nice thing about Ross Perot. If he'd gotten elected, he'd have caused serious chaos in Washington (even though he was basically just another Republicrat), and the worst case is the Second Amendment said we could shoot him if he got too crazy. Unfortunately, he wouldn't let go of the Reform Party, preferring to give the party to the Transcendental Meditation cult if it wasn't going to be run by the Ross Perot personality cult, and now Buchanan has a certain risk of coming out behind the Libertarians :-) (Probably won't happen, since the LP hasn't done enough successful publicity to get mentioned in the media's "oh, yeah, there's also Nader and Buchanan" afterthoughts, but it'd be nice.) At 07:36 PM 10/27/00 -0500, Mac Norton wrote:
So, everybody's third choice gets elected, or they take turns holding the office, or what? Weighted voting can work for corporate directors or other committees, but for a chief executive? Even the electoral college sounds better. MacN
On Sat, 28 Oct 2000, BENHAM TIMOTHY JAMES wrote:
That's simply a result of the dim-bulb "first past the post" voting system that the US (and apparently you) endure. In countries with electorates that are expected to be able to count past 1 (eg Australia) they have preferential voting and you can express your preferences from 1 to N (the number of candidates).
This allows you to express your preference for libertarian drug-taking pornographers and still have an equal impact on the outcome.
Tim
Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639