this is why I love Barr.

The flaw in your analysis is that you think it's easy to determine who is more closely aligned to whom. It's far more complicated than that. A recent poll of Barr supporters showed 56% prefered Obama over McCain. The reason, I think, is that people who decide to buck convention to vote for a third party guy are doing it because they have long given up the desire to vote for a major party candidate. Even if most Libertarians came from the GOP, that doesn't mean they are more closely aligned. In fact, on many issues (civil liberties, etc.) they are more closely aligned with the democrats right now.

How is that a flaw in my analysis? The potential is obviously there to screw with the system. If it happens once in one state in one election, then it's a problem.

It's a flaw because you think the one getting the 46% is not worthy to win because those other 10% somehow belong to the one getting 44%. I'm saying you can't so easily make that assumption.

Isn't this pretty simple math? If a third party candidate ever gets votes c such that c > a - b (votes for candidates a and b), it's very possible that a two man election could have provided different outcome.

It's happened in the past and it will happen in the future. It's a bad practice.

I guess I'm saying I don't see that as a problem. The fewer the candidates, the more voters have to vote for the lesser of evils. Just because a two candidate election may deliver a different result doesn't mean more people got someone who represents them better.

The winner of an election doesn't have to be the majority choice. As long as everyone has the same rules the winner could be the one who gets the most votes. This is a republic and not a true democracy. That's why we have an electoral college rather than just going with the popular vote. The electoral college forces a situation where the winner gets the majority of the votes that count. If the electors can't decide, then our elected representatives decide it. I have no problem with that, and I think more voices rather than fewer would actually lead to a better result than what we have now which is two major candidates making themselves look as similar as possible to get that voter in the middle. What was up with McCain's new bailout proposal last night? I"m seeing less and less difference between the dems and the GOP every day. If congress had to form different coalitions to get bills passed every day, they would either pass fewer laws, which would be good in my book, or they would have to listen to more viewpoints and of necessity they'd have to represent more than just two views on everything.

I seriously doubt NC will go Democrat. The thought is amusing.

what makes it seem nearly impossible for McCain to pull this off is that Obama has solid leads in every state the democrats carried last time. To win he only needs to steal a couple of states from McCain and it appears that is going to happen. The states Cali mentioned don't even have to be in play.

Heh. Arizona is not in play either.

I don't believe it. On either one.