[837] in libertarians
Re: Winning vs. changing the debate
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin THEOBALD)
Tue Mar 21 09:28:15 1995
From: theobald@duke.cs.mcgill.ca (Kevin THEOBALD)
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 09:23:13 -0500
In-Reply-To: S Jens's message [Winning vs. changing the debate] as of Mar 21, 1:50
To: S Jens <sjens@MIT.EDU>, libertarians@MIT.EDU
| Say, hypothetically, that in a Senate race in Georgia, the major parties split
| the vote 49-48 with 3 percent to the Libertarian. If either major candidate
| could get that three percent, they'd win the election with no run-off. They'll
| be aware of this.
Why bother being hypothetical? Look at reality! Last November, Feinstein
beat Huffington by fewer votes than the LP candidate got. (Although in that
race, there were some other third parties who could also claim to be spoilers.)
| Two main points:
| o Two is an important number.
This is true. It's harder to claim to be a spoiler when there are three or
more others. Canada currently has 5 parties sitting in Parliament, and the
demographics are so bizarre that any editorialist can twist the stats to say
whatever he wants.
Kevin Theobald
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| Well, like they say: Live and learn -- die and teach the gene pool. |
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