The Nader Effect In Play After Virginia's Decision [Obama Godsend?]

You are correct, tnlibertarian. This would be done at the state level since states determine how the electors are selected. That’s why this doesn’t have anything to do with the founding fathers, the Constitution or the electoral college.

Bottom line, if presidential election runoffs aren’t implemented, it’s only a matter of time before the Democrats realize all they have to do is fund a third party conservative candidate, even if they’re a total fake, and they can probably guarantee the Republicans will lose the election every time in many states. I believe they already got caught trying to do this in a NJ election a couple years ago. So I predict presidential runoff elections will happen eventually, but probably not until it’s too late and much damage has been done by not simply asking voters all the necessary questions on the ballot.

And the idea of spending time fighting to keep people off the ballot is just plain stupid, when all you need to do is reform the ballot to ask voters the right questions and a third party would be no threat. You don’t even need to hold an actual runoff election, and I think it’s better if you don’t, since you don’t have to worry about who would show up again. You just have to have a properly formed ballot that asks voters who their second choice pick is if their first choice doesn’t win.

None of these are new ideas. Many smaller elections already implement regular runoffs and instant ballot runoffs. The reasoning behind it has nothing to do with politics, just with the most basic, simple logic. If 55% of the voters would prefer Bush or Perot to Clinton, then it’s pure stupidity to think that Clinton won any kind of election with only 45% of the vote. The concept of voting itself should hinge on the fact that over 50% of the people must agree on something before it moves forward.

Your post is the silly one, Dave. Runoff elections are just a better, more accurate way of counting votes. It has nothing to do with the issue of a democracy vs. a republic.

Let's look at an example. If Texas didn't have runoffs in their Senate primary, Dewhurst would have won. He had 44.6% in the first primary election and Ted Cruz only had 34.2%. Because Dewhurst didn't hit 50%, they held a runoff between the top two, and Ted Cruz beat him 54% to 46%. That's because a whole lot of people wanted to vote against Dewhurst in the primary, but their vote was split among several candidates. If states ran presidential votes the same way, we would've had a runoff between Clinton and Bush and Clinton might've lost enough additional states to lose the election.

You would have to explain to me why it's preferable to have elections decided by a minority of voters instead of a majority. Nobody's saying to turn us into a pure democracy, but if you ARE going to hold a vote on something, shouldn't what the majority of the voters want be upheld?

Why do you think that if people know the truth about Romney they will have to vote for Obama? I don’t. Many conservatives feel they have to hold their nose and vote. I understand, been there done that. My hope is that they may give some thought to how we got here. I used to blame the liberal RINOs but I know it is my fault also. Every time I held my nose and voted I was giving them the thumbs up sign. I don’t have the solution but I know what I was doing will not work.

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