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Politics : Piffer Thread on Political Rantings and Ravings -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jcky who wrote (461)	11/27/2000 7:50:31 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Respond to of 14610

I had heard of Arrow but forgotten the theory, which I was exposed to in undergrad econ courses back in the late 70's/early 80's..... I would not view this particular election as a pure example of his theory as I understand it, because it was really a two horse race for all intents and purposes. I suppose one could argue that if we rank ordered our candidates rather than voting for just one, Gore might well have one since he would have been the second choice of Nader voters while Bush would have been the likely third choice. This is more of a situation where nobody bothered to implement the proper voting technology, and so we have no friggin' idea who really won. That is frustrating in part because it is so unnecessary. I am sure that next time we will have better voting technology (I smell a federal program coming real soon), but for now we are left with a situation where (a) it is likely that more people in Florida entered the voting booth intending to vote for Gore than intended to vote for Bush; (b) it is likely that more people clearly voted for Bush than clearly voted for Gore; (c) it is almost impossible to tell exactly how many people really did clearly vote for each candidate because the counting mechanisms are inadequate; (d) the difference is within the margin of error of the counting method; and (e) the winner is going to be dogged by accusations of illegitimacy.