Re:The U.S. has ‘worst elections of any long-established dem...
by camel_Snake on Sunday June 12, 2016 @06:05PM
(#11890523)
I feel like the Twelfth Amendment hampers this. I don't know anyone that wants the House to choose the next president. I can't even imagine what a fiasco that would be.
"If no candidate for President has a majority of the total votes, the House of Representatives, voting by states and with the same quorum requirements as under the original procedure, chooses the President. The Twelfth Amendment requires the House to choose from the three highest receivers of electoral votes, compared to five under the original procedure. "[0]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Amendment_to_the_Unite...
And here's a part of the problem... those aren't the "three remaining presidential candidates". At the very least any discussion of the presidential election should include Gary Johnson, who is the only other candidate who will be, if I understand correctly, on the ballot in all 50 states. Not to mention he's a very popular former governor, whose running mate is also a popular former governor.
OK, look, I understand that Duverger's Law[1] says that our system will tend to favor a "two party system". But there isn't an ironclad law like, say, gravity, in play here. Third party candidates can and do win elections, and excluding them from the conversation just helps perpetuate the existing system.
Unfortunately, in most years, the media seem to try very hard to pointedly ignore/downplay third party candidates. This year is the first I can remember where the LP candidate is getting some serious, mostly non-biased, reasonable media coverage.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law