Please ask our friends from the other side of the Atlantic about the problem of having parliamentary districts won by candidates who get like 25% of the vote. Now take that kind of problem and transfer it to an office that controls the most powerful military in the world.

Would our friends from the other side of the Atlantic prefer the Electoral College? Because if you want a President with no legitimacy, just look at 2000-2004.

"Hillary, as a moderate centrist, is far, far more likely to win the general election than Sanders."
Sanders has won every election he has contested for decades, which makes him a seasoned and formidable campaigner. Sanders is beating each of the Republican contenders in head-to-head polls (national as well as in battleground states) by a significantly larger margin than Clinton is. Democrats win when the electoral participation is high and Sanders has proven that he brings in thousands of voters that would otherwise never vote. Sanders doesn't hide from socialism; he readily insists that he wants to build a better society, a vision voters respect. Sanders just crushed Clinton in New Hampshire by over 20 percentage points and also won all but a small handful of towns throughout the state, all this despite starting from scratch a few months ago. Sanders has raised over one hundred million dollars from over 3,850,000 individual campaign contributions, more contributions than any presidential candidate in history up to this point in the race. Sanders is extremely popular among unregistered and independent voters, who are key to winning general elections.

Sanders can win. Sanders will win with your vote. Don't let the media tell you otherwise.

Anyone who says Sanders isn't electable has a reason to believe it that has little to do with electability.

Bo, that's not the question. The question is whether, given the electoral college, a large number of candidates for president is a good idea. The answer is pretty clearly no.

There don't need to be givens. If we're talking revolution, let's actually talk revolution. If we're not, then let's stop saying we are.

Also, food for thought:

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/02/after-sanders-big-win-in-new-hampshire-establishme.html

I'm fine with talking revolution, but there's no point in discussing things that are completely infeasible. The electoral system isn't going to undergo drastic change before this year's election. Under the system that is in place, a race with six legitimate candidates would lead to a president lacking legitimacy. It's that simple. Putin's saying that it doesn't work. You saying that the electoral college sucks isn't a counterargument, it's just a fact.

If there is "a race with six legitimate candidates," how can you have a president without legitimacy? Obviously, he doesn't have the majority, but that's not a first. Obviously, things would be pretty goddamn tense, but that's not a first either. Congress would have limited respect for him, but that's not a first either. The rate of favorability of the president within the populous is hardly ever above 50% anyway, so that wouldn't be a first. How can there be less respect for the President of the United States of America than there is already? Bush and Obama, particularly Obama, were both treated like they were drunks crashing the party.

And yes, I know that's not what you meant by legitimate candidates, but the point stands. If they're seriously considered as potential POTUSes before the election, why would they no longer be taken seriously afterwards?

Having six legitimate candidates and a split between all 6 so that one person can technically become President with the backing of 19% of the population pretty obviously doesn't make that legitimate CANDIDATE into a legitimate PRESIDENT, Bo.

If people don't think that a popularly elected candidate is legitimate, I don't know what to say. You can bitch and complain about it all you want, but if your preferred candidate was better, they would have gotten more votes.

With the Electoral College in place, having six candidates in the running and winning electorates would be a hilarious shitshow that would be worth four/eight years of miserable politics.

Frankly, I can't think of a downside to seriously pissing off the establishment and making pretty much everyone in the country angry.

That's the spirit, Bo.

If there are six legitimate candidates, none of them would reach 270, and the vote would go to the House. Which, unless something drastic happens, would lead to an establishment Republican, such as Rubio, Kasich, or Bush.

Which would piss the living shit out of people.

"Because if you want a President with no legitimacy, just look at 2000-2004."

Right and your system would compound that problem many-fold. Instead of complaining about a President who didn't win the popular vote we'd be complaining about a President whom 75% of the country never voted for.

That's a particularly disgusting image, bo.

Keep your obscene fantasies on vdip, please.

Ok, fact of the matter is that a lot of Bernie supporters, maybe bosox and even myself sometimes, exaggerate the extent to which we wouldn't support Hillary in a general election. But I can't stress enough how many people engaged in the Bernie Sanders campaign have become so infuriated by Hillary over the last few months.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI

if there were 6 candidiates this is how we would NEED to do it... also I am a big supporter of STV. So enjoy.

STV is pretty meh though. You essentially have people voting FOR their candidate but also against others. Irish general elections use it and it's often used to keep Sinn Fein down below their true support levels as everyone non-supporter votes for everyone except SF to keep them out.

Still a whole lot better than FPTP or EC though.

AMS or D'Hondt are by far the best voting systems.

[Obviously, AMS and D'Hondt are not applicable to a US presidential election, though]

D'Hondt and similar proportional representation systems can also be messed with. The math behind d'Hondt slightly favors the most popular party, but this effect can be magnified by establishing an electoral threshold or subdividing the pot. Each pot often has an electoral threshold, which eliminates smaller parties from all representation and wastes votes. What's worse still is when you have much of the country divided into electoral districts only allotted, say, three parliamentarians. The effective electoral threshold in small constituencies is often much higher than the official electoral threshold and wastes many votes. Izquierda Unida in Spain has always been severely castigated by the peculiarities of the d'Hondt method as implemented in Spain, regularly winning only a small fraction of the seats it would have gained under a truly proportional system.

@y2k ... I'm not exaggerating. I will vote for Trump over Hillary.

@HR - I have no back ground with irish politics but if I understand you correctly the people who oppose SF are voting against SF and thus SF doesn't gain and ground. If that is the case then isn't the system working? If people can vote against the party they disagree with and choose instead to favor a party they agree with then doesn't that make it more democratic?

yea this was such a spam thread. I wonder who made this.