Reply #9: "Close enough to steal" is statistically unlikely without help [View All]

[saras]

Given how unrepresentative of the public will both parties are, given how much elections are affected by negative propaganda at the last instant, given how popularity can swings around by twenty percentage points before the election, isn't it rather amazing how often elections counting tens or hundreds of thousands of votes come in within a couple hundred or less votes?

A simple test of progressive vs. conservative (not Democrat vs. Republican) is whether someone thinks the spoiler effect is either A. a fatal flaw of election systems that prevents representative government and guarantees corporate hegemony, or B. a necessary and desirable part of election systems that keeps extremist fringe elements on either side from unduly affecting the mainstream.