[EM] Conceding Victory

[James Green-Armytage]

Forest Simmons <fsimmons at pcc.edu> writes:
>(5) Nader says, "Why not? Let's take it to the Supreme Court."
>
>(6) The Supreme Court says the tradition of conceding has withstood all
>challenges, but has never been spelled out. Let's spell it out in the way
>that will serve the best interest of the republic, i.e. the way that will
>ameliorate the vote splitting problem.

James here...
>

	It is kind of a neat idea, but not one that I'm qualified to comment on
from a legal standpoint. Basically the person to talk to would be a lawyer
with a specialty in election law. My first guess is that the idea that
you're suggesting would never be considered by the supreme court, but what
do I know. 
	If it did work, it would be cool. You could theoretically do it with more
than one candidate conceding, I suppose, for example if five candidates
had 51% of the vote between them and four of them decided to concede to
the fifth. 
	The main argument that would be wielded against the idea is that it's up
to the voters to decide the winner, not the candidates. I'm thinking that
this argument would probably triumph in the courts without much
difficulty. Again, it is sort of a cool idea though. 
	In effect it becomes similar to a situation where members of the
legislature are chosen by proportional representation and then it takes a
majority vote of legislators to appoint an executive.

James