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From: William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: OT Politics Re: Three Body Problem
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2024 16:45:38 -0400
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Paul S Person wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Aug 2024 13:50:10 -0400, William Hyde
> <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Paul S Person wrote:
>>> On Sun, 25 Aug 2024 17:39:22 -0400, William Hyde
>>> <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Paul S Person wrote:
>>>>> On Sat, 24 Aug 2024 16:48:32 -0500, "Jay E. Morris"
>>>>> <morrisj@epsilon3.comcon> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> 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.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Only if that is how the election laws were written. I think it would be
>>>>>>> wildly impractical to hold multiple national elections.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Which is why some are advocating for a ranked voting system.
>>>>>
>>>>> Which the citizens of Alaska, IIRC, will shortly be voting on ...
>>>>> prohibiting, having had actual experience with it.
>>>>>
>>>>> It must be pretty stinky to get enough people to sign an initiative to
>>>>> prohibit it.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>> The conservative provincial government then forbid it, offering as usual
>>>> no actual reason.
>>>>
>>>> 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).
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>
>>> 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.
>>
>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>
>>> I'm not in Alaska and I don't know if/when we will try it here.
>>>
>>> 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.
> 
> Our Presidential Primary (way back last Spring) did not do that. You
> had to declare your party affiliation and vote only in that Party's
> part of the ballot. Mine went straight to the recycle bin.
> 
> Our current general primary is the one big zoo type: anybody can run,
> their Party is only a "preference" (and not required), our Party (if
> any) is not declared, and the top two face each other in November. In
> my area, we have been known to have a choice between two Democrats in
> November. We are rather tilted here in regards to politics.
> 
> But before that, we had the sort of thing we had last spring for
> President. That was after the Supreme Court declared that the sort of
> Primary you are describing (which was then in effect) was, if not
> unconstitutional, at least illegal. They subsequently approved our
> current format.
> 
> And, anyway, a lot the time the Primary is just window dressing. The
> actual decisions are made by the Party, either local for local
> offices, or in (State) convention assembled for State offices and for
> who the delegates to the National Convention are to vote for.
> 
>> Mind you, our method of selecting potential members of parliament is
>> even worse.
> 
> IIRC, Wells (or maybe a contemporary) describes an election in a small
> town which, because Parliament had lowered the property qualification,
> for the first time had one (1) voter! This was very exciting!
> 
> He was wined. He was dined. And, when he voted, he cast his two votes
> in public, with all his friends and neighbors watching, openly.
> 
> I'm sure things have improved a bit since then.

Canadian "primaries" can be worse.  To this day.

The election described might have been that of 1868.  The reform act of 
1867 enfranchised about a million men, and the ballot act of 1872 had a 
a secret ballot provision  but I suppose that despite the ballot act a 
person could vote in public if he so chose.


The third reform act was 1884, in Wells lifetime.  It enfranchised 
almost three million men, mostly in the countryside, so it seems the 
likely candidate.

William Hyde