Talk:2000 United States presidential election/Archive 1
Why isn't the "US Election 2000" page a redirect here? And why isn't "2000" a subpage to "U.S. presidential election"? Having an article about each election as a main topic seems a bit overenthusiastic. --Pinkunicorn
There are elections held in the U.S. every year--local, state, or national (sometimes all three). "U.S. election 2000" simply doesn't mean "U.S. presidential election." As for the second question, please see the essays about subpages at Larry Sanger/Columns. Subpages are evil. --LMS
I don't agree. If the idea is that this is the only election with an entry (because of it being unusually bungled), then I think this name is fine for the article. If there are going to be lots of them, then they should be on subpages. Look in a normal encyclopedia and you'll find that articles have subheadings (and no, Wikipedia is not paper is not a valid answer). Having them on subpages gives us a natural place for a summary. --Pinkunicorn
"If there are going to be lots of them, then they should be on subpages." I don't understand this. I don't see how the antecedent implies the consequent.
I am opposed to subpages basically on principle. I am inclined to think we should completely eliminate them, and I wish Clifford had never added that feature. :-) (Except that it sure has made talk pages easier, and without them this project would be a mess.) If you read my essays, Pink, you'll see why I say this. (Although I haven't, admittedly, given any defense of eliminating them entirely. That would require a bit more argument--or, probably, just extension of the argument I've already given. Generally, after months of experience working with them, I have grown to loathe them. It's mainly because I don't understand them--what the hell does the slash mean? It doesn't mean anything determinate. The slash just indicates that the subject of the part of the title after the slash was thought by someone to be in some fashion subordinate to the subject of the part of the title before the slash. Anyway, I feel like I'm just starting to repeat what I've already written (though, please, bear in mind that the above is only one of my arguments), and it's getting to late for me to be doing this anyway. --LMS
Okay I noticed a mistake in this article. Harry Browne was not on the ballot in all 50 states in 2000, due to some legal rangling involving two different groups which claimed to be THE Libertarian Party of Arizona he didn't get on the ballot in that state. The renegade state party put L. Neil Smith, a science-fiction author on the ballot instead.
Here's the scoop: http://www.lp.org/press/archive.php?function=view&record=151 --MemoryHole.com
- The new version is more accurate (50 of 51 ballots). --DanKeshet
This isn't quite right
- The "spoiler" dynamic created by the Nader candidacy is a consequence of Duverger's Law, which states that the plurality-based voting system (used in the United States) reinforces the two-party system.
The problem here is that Presidental elections isn't quite first past the post system because of the electoral college. If it were Gore would have won. Now one could argue that the electoral college reinforces the two party system, but that isn't Duverger's law. One might try to argue that Gore lost because Nader took away votes in some key states, but that's different from what the paragraph says and is also different from Duverger's law.
Electors in most states are picked using first-past-the-post, and so Duverger's law absolutely applies here. It's a classic example of the effect. William Riker, considered an authority on the subject, brings up the 1968 U.S. Presidential election as a clear example of Duverger's law at work, citing the research of Bensel and Sanders in analyzing the results of this election.
I'll try to make the subtleties a little more clear, but the applicability of Duverger's law to U.S presidential politics (and Bush/Gore/Nader specifically) can hardly be refuted.