THE PRIMARY SYSTEM GAVE US THE MOST DISLIKED NOMINEES IN DECADES

…This man should not be the GOP nominee

 

Both party’s primary systems are totally outdated…that’s not acceptable.

 

The one area that I do agree with Donald Trump on, is that both parties need to have a new way of deciding on a presidential candidate.

 

He was correct when he said that “Bernie keeps on winning, but Hillary is still ahead!”

 

And for Trump, he was winning, but the better ground game by Ted Cruz allowed Cruz to get some delegates that should have gone to Trump.  The real problem is that with so many candidates running in the Republican primaries, it’s pretty obvious that if the votes had not been split between almost 20 candidates, as the conservative columnist Kathleen Parker wrote,  “Had an [appropriate] voting system been in place, it’s conceivable that John Kasich could be accepting the nomination in July. And Trump would be piling up approval ratings where he belongs — on reality TV.”

 

Trump had argued for weeks that the system was rigged.  But when he turned out to be the winner, he then said he didn’t care that it was rigged.  (Another Trump problem.  Nothing to fix as long as he’s winning.)

 

I’m sorry, but comments about Trump like; “At least he speaks his mind,” or “At least he doesn’t suck up to anybody,” those are not reasons to elect him for running the country.

 

The reality is that another of the other GOP primary candidates might have beaten Trump if not for the voters dividing their ballots among so many. This is to say, the majority of Republican voters rejected Trump.  Remember, Trump never won the majority of the voters for months, only a plurality.  The total of the votes against Trump for most of the primary were against Trump.  Trump was not the majority choice of the GOP voters.

 

The problem with the current Primary system is that it should be a system where every voter’s ballot rates each candidate, and once all these rating are tabulated, the one with the highest ratings would be the winner.  If that type of system were used, which was a system that was recommended in 1770 by French mathematician Jean-Charles de Borda, Donald Trump would not be the GOP candidate.  In addition, today for the Democrats, Bernie sanders could be ahead of Hillary.  Too bad they didn’t take Borda’s advise.

 

Another voting method was developed and recommended by the 18th-century mathematician and political theorist Marquis de Condorcet. This process called for ranking candidates just in their order of approval.  Not ranking them with numbers, just putting them on the list in the order of the voter’s approval.  Those at the bottom were those with the least approval. The candidate that was at the top of the most ballots was the winner.

 

With the current election system we have today, it has given us the most disliked nominees in both parties of any of the past 10 presidential cycles, according to a 538 poll analysis.  Trump’s average “strongly unfavorable” rating of 53%, is 16 points higher than Clinton’s, and is at least 20 points higher than every other former candidate’s rating since 1980.

 

It is disgraceful that so many elected Republican leaders are now starting to cozy up to Trump. There are some that are distancing themselves from the candidate, but not enough of them.  Of all those original GOP candidates, Trump was the least qualified of the many Republican candidates, including people who offered governing experience, knowledge and even in some, real wisdom.

 

One of those early candidates, Senator Lindsay Graham has stated that, “The party is in a deep ditch and I don’t know if we can get out of it.”

 

Many of the other Republicans in Congress running for office are properly very wary that having Trump as the presidential candidate will negatively affect their attempts at getting re-elected

 

As Ms. Parker had said, if a more concise voting system had been used, “….it’s conceivable that John Kasich could be accepting the nomination in July.”

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016