h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

They had to do this on Groundhog Day.

Stephen Colbert is complaining about how many candidates there still are for the presidential nominations. He demands to know, 'Has somebody been getting them wet or feeding them after midnight?' (If you don't get the reference, ask Awix, I'll bet he remembers that movie.)

The Iowa Caucus has just been held. In case you're not familiar with this 'tradition', Iowa holds its caucus first, then the rest of us get to help choose candidates. A caucus? Er, it's a sort of town meeting way to choose, rather than a properly supervised primary election. Opinions vary on the pros and cons.

Ms Clinton won over Mr Sanders. By .3 percent of a point. As Colbert says, 'His name is Carl.'

It gets worse...

Some local caucuses settled on their choices with a COIN TOSS. It's hard to say which is more likely to make you shudder: the fact that this is allowed procedurally...or that SIX different precincts used this method to choose a candidate to back.

I feel like quoting TS Eliot right now...not with a bang, but a whimper...

Oh, did I mention that I've spent the last two months writing civics lessons? About how democracy works and such?

Why bother? Good grief...no wonder Netflix is offering to show us movies about the end of the world. They're HOPING that asteroid hits us on my birthday, so we don't have to vote in any more silly elections.



PS You want quotes from a front-running candidate? Listen to Colbert on the subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Oo0RcL4PJw

No prophet could have predicted this. Not even the Delphic Oracle...

I was really shocked when I read about the coin tossing thing on the news. I mean, really, the US election system obviously didn't arrive in the Century of the Fruitbat.

I don't follow. If they can't choose between them, then surely a coin toss can't return anyone that's worse than the other.

I believe you are making a false assumption these, Icy. You're assuming that if the voters in Iowa couldn't decide, then the candidates were essentially equal. Which is not necessarily the case.

Just to clarify, the coin tossing was between Sanders and Clinton - not the Republican candidates, who are frequently mistaken for one another. Few can identify most of them in a line-up - I certainly can't, since I have a handicap involving facial recognition and have to go by their statements...

The worst of it is that the Republican frontrunner, alas, is a real estate tycoon and sometime tv personality. It seems to have escaped notice that these are not qualifications for running the executive branch of a major government...

I get the same feeling when there's a penalty shootout at the end of a soccer game. I feel robbed (particularly since England are especially bad at them).

The trouble is we can't make both of them the candidate (or can we?)

Theoretically, their party could choose one, and one could run as an independent - or under the aegis of another party.

It's been known to happen - in 1912, the election had four major candidates including Bull Moose Party candidate Teddy Roosevelt - but it splits support up and is usually regarded as bad form. Let's see, when was it that Nader was a 'spoiler'? Was that 2000? The worst election in history, even worse than 1876...

Anyway, there are actually always more than two candidates come November, but as far as US voters are concerned, they 'don't really count'. I mean, the Socialist will run one, no doubt, and maybe even a Communist, and...

There was a lovely man named Harold Stassen, who always ran. He could be counted on.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/05/us/harold-e-stassen-who-sought-gop-nomination-for-president-9-times-dies-at-93.html?pagewanted=all

I certainly have to agree about the 2000 election.

First time in my experience I couldn't call the winner once the major party candidates had been announced since the Kennedy/Nixon race of 1960.

Then, Gore tried to throw the election into the House of Representatives and didn't concede the election until it became clear the Democrats had lost control of the House.

If that hadn't happened, if the Democrats had kept control of the House and Gore had won in the House, the Republican party had won enough states they could theoretically have called for a constitutional convention, though its unlikely it would have come to that.

A scary proposition that certainly reminded me of the 1876 election of Rutherford B. Hayes in the House as a compromise candidate over issues relating to the end of the post American Civil War reconstruction era. despite the point that Hayes hadn't technically won in the polls.

Not the first time something like that had happened.

Andrew Jackson's loss to John Quincy Adams on electoral votes despite having won the popular vote was nearly as controversial.

Jackson of course went on to win the next two presidential elections, in the process changing forever the way in which election campaigns were conducted.