Challenging incumbent stupidest state Florida, California just completed a move that all intelligent people recognize makes no sense. They have removed their own elected Governor Davis in favor of an Austrian body-builder. For some reason, a large number of people from one of our most liberal states has decided that a man with no political abilities whatsoever would make a better Governor than… a porn star? What the hell is wrong with that state? People are so clueless that they fail to realize that this was nothing more than a power move by the Republican Party which is sick of not being able to win elections legitimately. Instead they cry foul about the horrible economic situation to force a recall and then ignore that issue completely because it will, of course, point back to them in the end. Anyone else notice that Bush has helped the entire nation into an economic downfall? And of course the funny thing is that people still don’t get why I think democracy is a lousy form of government.
3 thoughts on “California takes a stab at stupidest state”
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I posted a bit about this on my LJ… basically, just fiddled with some numbers and percentages and came to the conclusion that (a) the format of the ballot and vote was absurd, and (b) if it were done as a simple head-to-head re-election, Davis would have won.
Of course, I’d be willing to accept this if it meant that in 2004, I could simply vote “no” to re-elect Bush, or simply have my vote go towards whichever other candidate was already winning, just to improve their chances of beating Bush.
If you take away all the people who voted “no” to recall and put Schwarzenegger as their second choice, so to speak, this election wouldn’t have even been close.
I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that the solution to California’s woes will be to put a man in office who actually got less support than the man they’re getting rid of.
On another note, I do like the idea of runoff elections. Basically you list the candidates in order of preference. That way I could say, “Harry Brown is my #1 man, but otherwise I’ll take Gore.” I seriously doubt Bush would have come anywhere near victory had Nader supporters had the option of listing Gore second. It’s also the best way (possibly the only way) to ever truly break the two-party system and still give the winner a decent chunk of the support.
I was thinking about that myself, with the California election, but never really went into it… basically, I wondered what percentage of Nader’s votes would have gone to Gore in that case. A weighted first choice / second choice ballot makes sense, but would probably just complicate things in a real election.
I’d still like to have the option to vote for “the non-Bush candidate with the most votes right now,” just to help push any one candidate as far ahead of him as possible.