Not really. When the Constitution was adopted, there weren’t political parties at all, no one knew what the spoiler effect was. The smartest among them might have had an idea that there had to be a better way, but no one knew what it was.
And remember that as bigoted and racist as the founding fathers were, some even considered such for their time, they were extremely egalitarian towards each other. Most of them truly believed in a nation run by free (white) men. A nation of the people (white men).
A few actually voiced displeasure when candidates won with less than half of the vote, and talked about it with their French counterparts. A man named Condorcet actually came up with a few alternative methods of voting, hoping one of them would allow the best candidate to win, now known as the Condorcet winner.
The Condorcet winner is the candidate who could win in a 1v1 race against every other candidate.
Condorcet had a lot to say about elections and such because he was tasked with writing the French constitution. But then a rival power block gained control of the developing government, and they introduced a new constitution that they had written in secret, then ratified it and had Condorcet thrown in prison, where he died two days later.
Anyway, election science has come a long way since then, and the I’d like to think that at least some of the (white) men who first wrote the American constitution would have advocated for a better voting system had one been available. But not the Montagnards. Fuck them for killing someone as cool as Condorcet.
A quote;
‘The rights of men stem exclusively from the fact that they are sentient beings, capable of acquiring moral ideas and of reasoning upon them. Since women have the same qualities, they necessarily also have the same rights. Either no member of the human race has any true rights, or else they all have the same ones; and anyone who votes against the rights of another, whatever his religion, colour or sex, automatically forfeits his own.’
Nader and Stein certainly changed things. They made them worse.
Ross Perot also changed things, but arguably for the better.
All by fucking with the election and getting the person on the opposite side of the aisle elected.
Because that’s how the spoiler effect works.
[Resolved] Third parties splitting the vote
“Working as intended.”
Not really. When the Constitution was adopted, there weren’t political parties at all, no one knew what the spoiler effect was. The smartest among them might have had an idea that there had to be a better way, but no one knew what it was.
And remember that as bigoted and racist as the founding fathers were, some even considered such for their time, they were extremely egalitarian towards each other. Most of them truly believed in a nation run by free (white) men. A nation of the people (white men).
A few actually voiced displeasure when candidates won with less than half of the vote, and talked about it with their French counterparts. A man named Condorcet actually came up with a few alternative methods of voting, hoping one of them would allow the best candidate to win, now known as the Condorcet winner.
The Condorcet winner is the candidate who could win in a 1v1 race against every other candidate.
Condorcet had a lot to say about elections and such because he was tasked with writing the French constitution. But then a rival power block gained control of the developing government, and they introduced a new constitution that they had written in secret, then ratified it and had Condorcet thrown in prison, where he died two days later.
Anyway, election science has come a long way since then, and the I’d like to think that at least some of the (white) men who first wrote the American constitution would have advocated for a better voting system had one been available. But not the Montagnards. Fuck them for killing someone as cool as Condorcet.
A quote;