[ale] OT: Go Vote!

[James P. Kinney III]

On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 19:44 -0400, Jim Philips wrote:
> KingBahamut wrote:
> > I guess there is that whole electoral college thing, which I dont get 
> > entirely.
> >
> Well, without it, the candidate who got the most votes would win. And 
> that would be too logical. So, we created the electoral college as a way 
> of allowing the minority vote-getter to win. Ingenious, isn't it? (This 
> is not a partisan post. I just think the electoral college system is crazy.)

It ranks up there with getting elected with less than a majority of the
ELIGIBLE voters, not just those who showed up to vote. I always thought
if the voter turnout was less than 50% that should be a clear sign that
none of the candidates should hold office. A quorum of the voters should
be required to have the election held as valid.

I also like the voting system of allocating a ranking score to all the
candidates.  example:
For each office I am allowed to designate a first choice, a second
choice and a "do not want". The counting gets fun too: A person can win
with a simple majority of "first choice" votes. If no simple majority,
the a simple majority of "first OR second choice" votes. If STILL no
majority, then each candidate has a first choice subtracted for each "do
not want" vote and the fist choice majority is tested followed by the
first or second choice majority.

Clearly the purpose is to find the least offensive candidate.

I keep contemplating changing my name to either "None of the Above" or
"The lesser of the evils" and running for office on a platform of
mandatory open source software for all government use, autonomous
transportation systems and free beer on your birthday. (And World Cup
soccer matches that are tied at the end of overtime are decided by a 5
minute, sudden death play followed by the goalies playing rock, paper
scissors in the best 3 of 5.)

> 
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James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
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GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
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