[Samper]

In theory this is a great idea...I think. I don't know about politics but this election is huge....maybe the most important one of my lifetime. It would be nice to have a candidate in there who was voted in by the masses. What do you guys think of what they're trying to do?

Unity08: Select & Elect a Unity Ticket in the 2008 Presidential Race |

btw Stephen Colbert is one of the top voted candidates at 77% HAH!

watch the Doug Bailey interview
Comedy Central: Shows - The Colbert Report - Videos - Guest Interviews

[Ninong]

I don't believe Unity08 has any chance whatsoever. As far as which presidential election is the most important of your lifetime, I believe that would have to be 2000 and/or 2004. As I wrote in this forum prior to the 2000 election, the most important legacy of the next president would be his Supreme Court nominations. For some reason or other, that idea was questioned by a couple of people in that thread. It has turned out to be prophetic.

George W. Bush will leave us with two lasting legacies: his Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito and his failed foreign policy (especially the Iraq debacle).

His other legacy, the prostitution of the Constitution, can be reversed and is being reversed already now that the Democrats are in control of both the House and the Senate. And, as of the moment anyway, it appears that no matter who the Democrats nominate, he or she will win the White House next year.

The problem with third party candidacies lies in the possibility that the election could be thrown into the House of Representatives. This has happened in the past and it wasn't a pretty sight.

Let's not forget how our electoral process works. It's a lot more complicated than the average citizen imagines.

To be elected President or Vice President, a candidate must receive 270 electoral college votes (an absolute majority of the 538 possible). If a presidential candidate fails to receive 270 votes, the selection of the president moves to the House of Representatives. If a vice presidential candidate fails to receive 270 votes, the selection of the vice president moves to the Senate.

It's even more complicated than that because the House and the Senate follow different rules in voting for the next president and vice president. In the Senate, it takes 51 votes to elect a vice president and each Senator gets one vote. Believe it or not, if the vote is tied 50-50, the current sitting vice president of the United States, in his role as President of the Senate, gets to cast the tie-breaking vote. Let's say that the incumbent president and vice president were running for reelection and the election was thrown into the House and the Senate. The incumbent vice president would be allowed to vote for himself in the event of a 50-50 tie.

In the House of Representatives, the election of the president is a lot more complicated. If no candidate received the required 270 electoral college votes, the top three vote getters would now be offered to the House as potential presidents and the House gets to vote on any one of those three. It doesn't make any difference whatsoever which candidate received the most votes. In fact, there have been instances in the past where the third place candidate threw his support to the second place candidate to defeat the first place candidate.

Here's how the voting works in the House. Each state's delegation gets one vote. So Rhode Island has the same voting power as California or Texas or New York. Wyoming counts as much as Florida. California has 55 votes in the electoral college compared to only 3 votes for Wyoming but now they're equal.

Since virtually all members of the House are either Republicans or Democrats (with only a couple of Independents), any third party candidate would have absolutely no shot at being elected president in the House even if he was the top vote getter in the general election. What has happened in the past is that the third party candidate has, in effect, determined who will be the next president by bartering his support to either of the two major party candidates.

Since there are 50 states, it will take 26 votes to elect a president in the House. They must continue taking votes until one candidate receives 26 votes. Each state gets one vote. That means that if the Republicans are in the majority in your state, it is extremely likely that your state will vote for the Republican candidate even if your state went for the Democratic candidate in the general election. And if the Democrats are in the majority in your state, you can expect your state to vote for the Democratic candidate. If your state happens to have an equal number of Democrats and Republicans in it's House delegation and if they vote along strict party lines, your state will get no vote and will be counted as abstaining. I believe there are four states that fall into that category at the moment.

The Democrats now control 26 state delegations, the Republicans control 20 and 4 are evenly split. Of course, this doesn't matter because the new Congress will be the one that chooses the next president and the new Senate will be the one that chooses the next vice president, should the election fail in the electoral college. Even though the electoral college votes 41 days following the general election, their votes are not officially counted until a joint session of the new Congress where they are officially counted. Then, and only then, would the House and the Senate immediately take up the selection of the next president and vice president, assuming no one got the requisite 270 electoral college votes. BTW, if the electoral college ever splits exactly 269-269, the election is thrown into the House for the president and the Senate for the vice president.

I remember back in the days of the Dixiecrats and other third parties based on the preservation of segregation in the South, that their main goal was to throw the election into the House so that they could barter their votes to either of the two main parties (Republican or Democratic) who promised them the best support for their racist, pro-segregation goals. Strom Thurmond carried several Southern states when he ran as did George Wallace when he ran. It didn't make any difference either time but it could have made a difference if they had succeeded in throwing the election into the House. Democrats in Southern states that supported Thurmond or Wallace would have voted as instructed by Thurmond or Wallace even if that meant voting for the Republican candidate. Those Democrats are all Republicans now, the ones that are still living. Strom Thurmond and all the other pro-segregation Southern Democrats switched to the GOP during the years following Lyndon Johnson's 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Anyway, the point is that this country works best as a two-party political system. Just look at Italy and Israel if you want to see what happens when you have more than two political parties. The minor parties wield inordinate power because they get to barter their support to either of the two major parties in return for support for their extreme positions on their favorite issue.

Getting back to the House and how it elects a president. California has the largest delegation because it's the largest state. California's delegation is strongly Democratic. It doesn't matter because California still gets only one vote. States like Utah, Wyoming and Idaho have very small delegations because not many people want to live in those godforsaken states, but their delegations are strongly Republican. They each get one vote just like California. This may have made sense two hundred years ago but it doesn't make much sense today.

Right now former Democrat turned Republican turned Independent Mike Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, is considering a third party run for the White House. He has indicated a willingness to spend at least $500 million (10% of his net worth) of his own money on the effort, should he decide to run. He has been talking to two different Republicans as possible running mates. You might call that a Unity08 ticket because Bloomberg is really a Democrat who changed to Republican for political expediency, not for any change in political convictions.

I don't think Bloomberg will run unless he thinks he can carry several large states, especially New York and California. He won't know that until he knows for certain who the Democratic and Republican candidates will be and what the polls will show after that is known. With his money, he can afford to commission secret polls every few weeks from now on to see what his prospects might be. We're talking about asking people to choose between three candidates -- the leading Republican, leading Democrat and Bloomberg. Right now the leading Democrat is clearly Hillary Clinton but there is always the possibility that Barack Obama could overtake her. No other Democratic candidate has any shot whatsoever. This assumes Al Gore does not enter the race, and I don't think he will in spite of the fact that he is seriously considering it. If he enters, he takes away from Hillary more than Obama, in my opinion.

The Republican side is a lot more difficult to predict but it appears that Giuliani, believe it or not, has a lock on the GOP nomination -- something I find hard to believe. Fred Thompson will enter the race next week but he will self-destruct within a few months. McCain's candidacy is hopeless at this point. Romney will never be nominated by the GOP because of his religion and because they don't believe all of his new & improved positons on gun control, abortion, gay rights, stem-cell research, immigration, etc. Romney has done a 180 on at least half a dozen social issues that are important to the GOP base. They don't believe he's sincere.

This next presidential election may prove to be more interesting than we're ready for if Bloomberg decides to run as a third-party candidate. With his money, he could concentrate his advertising in those states where he has a chance of drawing more than 1/3 of the vote and where the states' electors are required to vote the entire block for the winning candidate, instead of splitting. It's difficult to predict what his chances might be because we don't yet know for sure who the two major political parties will nominate. If there is enough dissatisfaction with the two major candidates, you could see a backlash of protest votes for Bloomberg. I don't think Bloomberg or any other third-party candidate can win 270 electoral votes outright but they certainly could win just a few states and throw a close election into the House.