RE: The Myth of the Third Party Solution
November 12, 2012 at 9:21 am
(This post was last modified: November 12, 2012 at 9:30 am by The Grand Nudger.)
That's quite the idealistic view of how this will all play out. Can't you imagine 2 or three actual candidates with the rest being maze funded socks for the others? I also don't see how it would allow anyone else to participate fairly as the barriers to entry seem to be cash and serpentine regulations. Two things which two parties have decidedly in their favor (and lets not kid ourselves..whoever found themselves in power would endeavor to make this so for their own party-assuming a changing of the guard).
Assuming the vote went out equally it would always be someone who 80% or more of the country didn't want to win - winning elections. The vote -against- the other guy (a vote for business as usual) would become even larger.
Let me play evil subverting motherfucker for a moment. I'm candidate 1's strategist. Candidate 2 has a chance against me (in our polling, should we be the last men standing). Now, candidates 5 and 6 don't stand a chance in hell against anyone (and maybe just maybe they're in somebodies pocket to begin with), I'm ignoring them. Candidate 3 is my direct rival (ideologically...diluting the vote) and candidate 4 is my competetion's (candidate 2) rival. I'm going to go negative against 3 in states I can contest, but positive on 4 in states I cant. Meanwhile, I'll go negative on 2 at every opportunity. If this sounds a whole hell of alot like our primaries that's because it is, and I didn't realize that people were very satisfied with the "two men standing" at the end of our primaries, that leads to the runoff we call "the general election".
Now don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more choices (specifically better choices) in our elections...hell, I may even be persuaded to vote. However, when we imagine the best case scenario of any system we're proposing I think we do ourselves a disservice. More candidates -might- mean more choice, but it also means more pieces to play in the political game, and a much easier road to power for smaller but more dedicated and dare I say cutthroat political camps. Now I'm not a political strategist, so if a way to game a system like this jumps out at me you can bet your ass that people who do this for a living will have ideas that exceed the manipulative nature of my own by orders of magnitude. Here's the real kicker though, they won't even have to manipulate quite as much, because the vote is already diluted for them at a base line (and not that this hurts their chances, because they could win as little as 16% and still take office)
Assuming the vote went out equally it would always be someone who 80% or more of the country didn't want to win - winning elections. The vote -against- the other guy (a vote for business as usual) would become even larger.
Let me play evil subverting motherfucker for a moment. I'm candidate 1's strategist. Candidate 2 has a chance against me (in our polling, should we be the last men standing). Now, candidates 5 and 6 don't stand a chance in hell against anyone (and maybe just maybe they're in somebodies pocket to begin with), I'm ignoring them. Candidate 3 is my direct rival (ideologically...diluting the vote) and candidate 4 is my competetion's (candidate 2) rival. I'm going to go negative against 3 in states I can contest, but positive on 4 in states I cant. Meanwhile, I'll go negative on 2 at every opportunity. If this sounds a whole hell of alot like our primaries that's because it is, and I didn't realize that people were very satisfied with the "two men standing" at the end of our primaries, that leads to the runoff we call "the general election".
Now don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more choices (specifically better choices) in our elections...hell, I may even be persuaded to vote. However, when we imagine the best case scenario of any system we're proposing I think we do ourselves a disservice. More candidates -might- mean more choice, but it also means more pieces to play in the political game, and a much easier road to power for smaller but more dedicated and dare I say cutthroat political camps. Now I'm not a political strategist, so if a way to game a system like this jumps out at me you can bet your ass that people who do this for a living will have ideas that exceed the manipulative nature of my own by orders of magnitude. Here's the real kicker though, they won't even have to manipulate quite as much, because the vote is already diluted for them at a base line (and not that this hurts their chances, because they could win as little as 16% and still take office)
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