Yob’s qualifications to even vote in the Virgin Islands, let alone run for the convention, was challenged, as he had not lived in the Islands for a sufficient length of time. But a court let him run. I wonder if another legal case will nullify his election.
Well, turn it around. Why should a guy who had more votes cast against him get the nomination?
There is no “not-Trump” spot on the ballot. Zero votes will be cast against him.
I’ve said before that the numbers could line up right for the sales pitch: “Well, most of you voted against Trump, and for Cruz or Rubio, so here’s the Cruz/Rubio ticket.”
(Obviously this wouldn’t work if they instead say “Well, most of you voted for Cruz or Rubio, so here’s – the Kasich/Huckabee ticket.” But if they can plausibly say that most people voted (a) against Trump, and (b) for These Two Guys, then it fits.)
All the spots on the ballot are not-Trump, save one.
Of course, all spots save one are not-Cruz, et cetera. So while it is completely legitimate to say that most people have voted against Trump, it is equally (or more) true to say it of anyone else who has been on the ballot.
Thus the logic of nominating someone who has not been on the ballot at all; nobody has rejected him.
I disagree. Voting for a candidate just means you prefer that candidate, it doesn’t mean you have any issues with any of the other. The second choice of most Cruz voters is Trump, so its silly to characterize a vote for Cruz as a vote “against Trump” (as the post I was responding to did). Many people who vote for Cruz would also be fine with a Trump candidacy.
In anycase, in the case of extra ballots being needed to elect a candidate, I suspect the process will be much too chaotic for “logic” to have much to do with who ends up with the nomination.
So the votes for Rubio, Cruz, Kasich, et al are not votes against Trump?
In the American system, which does not have preference voting, there is no difference.
I was mostly talking about the logic of jsgoddess’ post above, and others similarly plotting it out now. Presumably a case would have to be made to potential new candidates ahead of the convention. I’m sure the convention itself would be a madhouse–but the winner will probably still be someone who was to some extent positioned for it.
Assuming, of course, that Trump doesn’t just wrap it up in advance.
No. See my last post. Saying you prefer one candidate isn’t saying you have a particular aversion to the others. And indeed, polling often asks people about their second choices, and some subset of Rubio/Kaisich and especially Cruz say they would like a Trump nomination, albeit as their second choice preference. So characterizing their votes as “against Trump” doesn’t make much sense.
In the current system, there isn’t anyway to vote against a candidate, except maybe in some States that give some variety of a “none of the above” option, which I guess can be argued to be against all the listed candidates.
But, relative to any particular candidate not voted for, that’s exactly the same. Every vote for a candidate is always “against” every other, in an American election.
You’re stuck on the idea that “against” implies aversion, a particular dislike. But non-preference is exactly, formally congruent with opposition. You could swap out the terms in every post above, and it wouldn’t change the argument at all.
I don’t think “non-preference” is a thing. You have a preference of one thing over another. You can’t just not prefer one thing in isolation. People can not prefer Trump to Cruz, or vice-versa. But they can’t just “not prefer Trump” without a context that indicates what they do prefer to him.
Opposition, on the other hand, can just have one argument. You can oppose Trump without needing another candidate to prefer to him (indeed, many people do).
Nope. Not in an American voting booth, you can’t.
It would be great if you could–I’ve advocated for a system that would allow just that–but it doesn’t exist in our system now.
Rubio won DC yesterday, completing a historic Mondale Sweep, winning in the primaries all of the states that Walter Mondale won in the 1984 general election. Feel the Rubiomentum!
nm - dbl post
Rubiomentum sounds like one of those unstable elements they create in a lab that disintegrate after a second.
And so far, it’s been an apt analogy!
I’d certainly want to see it tried out in a state (or smaller jurisdiction) before taking it national.
And how would it work, anyway? Would you have to choose between casting a vote for someone, and casting a vote against, or would you be able to cast one of each?
They both seem to have serious weaknesses, IMHO. One of each, and you’d get Republican rule almost by definition, because they’re far better at demonizing Dems than Dems are at demonizing Republicans. The vast majority of Republican voters would also use their negative votes on the Dem candidates, just because. While substantially fewer Dem voters would see the need to use their negative votes against the GOP candidate.
[For example, suppose in the ‘for’ vote, there’s a 55-45 Dem majority. But 90% of the R voters reflexively vote against the Dem candidate as well, but only half the Dem voters vote against the R candidate. (The others leave their ‘against’ vote blank.) The net Dem vote is 55 - 40.5 = 14.5%, and the net R vote is 45 - 27.5 = 17.5%, and the Republican wins with minority support.]
And if you have to use just one or the other - you might get elections where both major party candidates had negative vote totals, and the Green or Libertarian candidate got more positive than negative votes, and thereby won, simply because nobody outside of a handful of supporters gave two thoughts about them at all. (Take Bush-Kerry, 2004. Plenty of Dem voters were more against Bush than for Kerry, and the same was true going the other way. Both candidates might have gotten more negative than positive votes. We might’ve wound up with Ralph Nader or Michael Badnarik as President.)
Yeah, try this out somewhere small first. Maybe Kansas - they’ve been used as a lab experiment for the full grab-bag of conservative nostrums lately, so they’re so screwed up now that one more crazy experiment couldn’t make things much worse.
IIRC, Nader’s “none of the above” proposal was, if “none of the above” gets more votes than any other candidate on the ballot, there’s a do-over where new candidates can be put up, so long as – well, none of the above candidates are back for Round Two.
To build on this–Ryan was VP pick last time, so a case could be made that he’s the “heir in waiting” this cycle. Plus, he’s about the most conservative of the Establishment side, which means he would be broadly acceptable as a compromise candidate.
It’s entirely possible that the hardest part of the whole exercise would lie in persuading him to accept the nomination.
Except he’d want to go home on weekends.