[ExI] calling for our exi computer security hipsters, was: RE: Donald Trump

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace
…

 

>…The office changes the man and the makeup of the Congress helps define the role too…

bill w

 

 

In the quadrennial November election, the popular vote merely selects the membership of the electoral college.  In about half the states, the members of that assembly are not legally obligated to vote for the candidate who sent them; they can vote for someone else.  They seldom do, but in every election, we see one or more, for a total of a couple hundred examples of faithless electors all together.

 

So now, one version of American history holds that the unstated purpose of the electoral college is to limit damage if neither of candidates the proletariat selects are suitable.  But the constitution doesn’t actually say how suitability is determined, and it doesn’t say what happens if the college elects someone else besides one of the candidates, or if the same proletariat who gave us the dreadful choices doesn’t accept the third candidate.  

 

It isn’t clear to me what happens if they have two candidates and plenty of the members of the EC decide the one with the most votes is unsuitable but the one who came in second is almost equally unsuitable or even worse.

 

Now we pile irony upon irony: the strongest argument against a libertarian candidate is that libertarians can never win.  Even when both major parties select a candidate who is unsuitable and the entire process is thrown into chaos, we still hear the same argument.  So, here are the principles, as I understand them:

 

1.     The libertarian party cannot win.

2.    In those extremely rare circumstances when principle 1 is false, principle 1 is still true.

 

So the argument goes, there is no point in voting for a candidate who cannot win, for even if a perfect storm occurs and that candidate can win, that candidate cannot win, so there is no point voting for that candidate.

 

Another take: plenty of voters, perhaps even a majority, might say “This weird year, the libertarian guy really is better than either of the majors, but we already know we must choose between one of the majors, since we already know we must choose one of the majors.  Only one of the majors can win, even if a majority realizes the third party candidate is superior to either of them.  So cut the fantasy crap and choose the least bad of the two majors…”

 

Is this really what we are saying?

 

spike

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