OK, that's interesting

[kayshapero]

Ganked from niall_shapero.

89% Chris Dodd
84% Hillary Clinton
84% Barack Obama
83% John Edwards
82% Mike Gravel
82% Bill Richardson
77% Dennis Kucinich
76% Joe Biden
43% Rudy Giuliani
35% John McCain
33% Tom Tancredo
32% Mike Huckabee
27% Ron Paul
25% Mitt Romney
20% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Not that much of a surprise though Chris Dodd wasn't even on my radar. Ah well, must go study voting records. I've put this off too long anyway.

Comments

[cloudchaser-s.livejournal.com]

Every time I see one of these, I wonder how many people on both sides 'll throw their vote away on little known candidates with little to no hope of winning about whom most people are like "(furst name here) who?" and then complain about the one that does win

[kayshapero]

What if you like neither candidate? Hard for folks to get enthused about Tweendle-dumb and Tweedle-dumber? They're better off picking whoever they want, regardless of how it comes out.

Mind you, in the final election, you probably do want to pick one of the majors. In the last few, things have been so close that a strong showing for any candidate but the Dem or Reb tends to toss the election to the candidate least similar to that candidate. :(

[cloudchaser-s.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I see what you mean. That even happened when Teddy Roosevelt ran as an independant. Many people who voted for him would otherwise have voted republican and as a result, the democrat got elected. I have heard it suggested that there really should be a none of the above choice on all ballots

[jeran.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of an automatic-runoff or preference voting system. To get elected, a candidate needs >50% of the vote. Period. When you vote you don't mark just one candidate, you number all the candidates in order by preference. On each round, your vote gets tallied against your top-ranked candidate who's still in the race. If no candidate tallies above 50%, the candidate with the fewest votes tallied is dropped from the race and the ballots recounted based on the reduced candidate list. Lather rinse repeat until one candidate gets a majority.

[kayshapero]

The LASFS does it that way, and I quite agree! Even with all the silliness we go in for, the results are solid.

[cloudchaser-s.livejournal.com]

That or just the two top candidates get to stay *remembers when Clinton got elected with only %49 of the vote because of that billionare on an ego trip*

[jeran.livejournal.com]

Won't work. Doing that in fact is what causes minority-winners like that. I can work up an exact scenario, but the general idea is that in a 6-candidate race 2 candidates place 1 and 2 on 25% of the electorate's ballots and 5 and 6 on the other 75%, and that other 75% split their 1st-4th preferences randomly between the other 4 candidates. Those two minority-preferred candidates will place first and second on the first round, so if you immediately cut the field down to the top 2 those are the only two who'll be left even though if you eliminate the field one at a time by the 3rd round they'll be placing 3rd and 4th out of 4 and won't make it to the final round.

[cloudchaser-s.livejournal.com]

I think I see what you;re saying, though I'm still thinking that there needs to be a way that does work.

[jeran.livejournal.com]

It only works if you eliminate candidates one at a time. The order you eliminate them in affects where any particular voter's vote goes on the next round, so if you've got N candidates you won't know which candidate is really the (N-1)th-place one until after you've removed the Nth-place one and recalculated.

Think of playing checkers, or chess, or Othello. If I make a move, my opponent gets to respond. And the possible moves left to me after he responds are different from what they were before he did. If I try making 2 moves at once without waiting, it may be that my second move wouldn't have been legal depending on what my opponent wanted to do on his turn.

[cloudchaser-s.livejournal.com]

Yep, that would work, but would take way too long

[kayshapero]

Surprisingly enough, automatic runoff done properly is quite efficient - certainly more so than calling everybody back for a runoff.

[kayshapero]

And GW Bush benefited from a third party candidate on the other side of the fence first time around.

More and more one gets the impression the electorate is flipping a coin on the top two parties, which, to be honest, have silted up over the decades. We need a new set with some vague relationship to the interests of the electorate at large.

You do know

[capplor.livejournal.com]

that Dodd dropped out. He can stay off the radar for now.

Re: You do know

[kayshapero]

That would explain it.

Politics

[urban-terrorist.livejournal.com]

I'm too cynical - a member of the "Only Good Politician is a Dead Politician" school. Dead politicians don't raise taxes, don't try to take our liberties, don't try to prevent children from getting medical care, etc.

As far as I'm concerned politicians are the employees of the people, and most of them should be fired for incompetence. Yeah now there's a plan, let's fire them all!

Seriously though, I prefer our political system in Canada. We don't have to put up with what is in effect a 2 year presidential campaign, in which you don't even get to vote directly for any of the candidates.

Wayne

PS: Glad to see you are on LJ Kaye - it's been a long time since alt.music.filk