[EM] Conceding Victory

[Forest Simmons]

On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, Paul Kislanko wrote:

> I hate to interrupt this discussion, but it is not founded on anything
> useful.
>
> A "concession speech" is just that - a speech. Generally delivered to a
> candidate's campaign workers and sometimes in front of lots of media who
> report "so-and-so conceded", by which they mean she acknowledged that
> she wasn't likely to win and wasn't going to contest the outcome in
> court.
>
> It has no legal standing at all,

The courts might go along with your perfectly reasonable interpretation.
If they do, no harm done.

Lack of legal standing hasn't prevented repeated use of the tradition.
We're just proposing that the tradition be expanded: why not have third
party candidates make concession speeches, too, even if they are not
legally binding?

Whatever publicity gets generated in the process will be all to the good.

> nor should it.

This is an interesting opinion.  Do you think the status quo is better
than Candidate Proxy (a binding form of candidate concession)?

>
> When Truman went to bed on Election Day in 1948 he thought from all the
> press reports and polls he'd lost (and I doubt he was too upset by the
> event). And maybe even made a "concession speech" to his close advisors.
>
> But the candidates do not count the votes, nor does someone voting for
> them give them the right to change the voters' vote.
>
> Even if Truman had "conceded", when the votes were actually counted, he
> would still have been the winner.

That's a good summary of the conventional point of view. What we're trying
to do is create a more useful doctrine of concession, one that could bring
some publicity to election reform, without necessarily being accepted as a
legally binding practice.

>
> The ideas are interesting, but what the candidates do or do not do can't
> ever be made a part of the "method" used by voters to select their
> leaders.

Are the candidates less representative of their voters than the members of
the Electoral College are of the voters in their states?

The likely prevalence of your point of view is the main reason that
we have recast Candidate Proxy as a two election process similar to that
used in other countries in which a PR body chooses the Prime Minister:

(1) First, all of the presidential candidates (with votes above a
threshold number) are elected to a single purpose parliament (i.e. a
"convention") for the purpose of deciding who is going to become
president.

(2) Then after the parliament parlies for a while, the members of this
convention choose the president from among their number by some process in
which each member has as many votes as supporters in the first election
(i.e. the election to the convention or parliament).

Then this parliament is disbanded, having accomplished its sole
purpose.

Having said that, I want to emphasize (once again) that conceding by third
party candidates is something that can be done without adopting Candidate
Proxy or any other formality.  No court ruling is needed. No legislation
is needed. No constitutional amendment is needed (as long as the first
amendment is still there). The major party candidates never asked
permission to concede. Why should independent candidates wait for
permission?

[We're talking about conceding, not seceding.]

Conceding is speech, and should be protected speech.

In this connection it should be noted that money has been defended as
protected speech.  Are candidates allowed to concede their campaign
finances to other candidates when they drop out of the race?  Or do they
have to return it to the contributors?

If you can trust a candidate with your money, why not with your vote?

And if you would trust a candidate to represent you in thousands of
decisions once elected, why not trust him in one decision in the
parliament or convention?

Those of us who have voted for independents and third party candidates
over the years would dearly love to see our candidate have the opportunity
to represent us on even one political decision.  Under Candidate Proxy
those who regularly vote for one of the major party candidates could
continue to do so if they didn't think that any of the other candidates
would better represent them in the convention.

I suspect that many of them would rather be represented by another
candidate.

Candidate concession is one small step in that direction.

Forest