[EM] Conceding Victory

[Forest Simmons]

On Wed, 7 Apr 2004, James Green-Armytage wrote:

> 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.

Whether or not it worked, if third party candidates consistently announced
whom they were conceding victory to, it would give publicity to the cause
of election reform.


> 	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.

I like your version even better.


> 	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.

Then (argues Nader) why has the tradition of conceding never been
challenged up until now?

> 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.

which is precisely the idea of Candidate Proxy: Instead of an Electoral
College, you have an Election Completion Convention in which the
delegates (i.e. the candidates) act as representatives or proxies of their
supporters.  Each candidate has as many votes as supporters, which gives
precise PR.

>
> ----
> Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>