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Nazrat wrote:I think you are misunderstanding my point. Ron Paul has 14 delegates. John McCain has 724. It takes 1,191 delegates to win the nomination.

I think you're missing my point entirely; no one would know that if primary day were standardized; on the morning of primary day there would be however many candidates had announced, and none would have received any votes yet. The next morning there would be one winner, with no votes swayed by the "he did badly in the earliest states so I'm going to vote for a guy I like less to keep the one I like even less than that out of it" mentality.

At the very least, when a candidate drops after having received votes, those states should be required to start over, thus eliminating the effect of spoilers like Romney.

Nazrat wrote:Having graduated with a degree in Political Science, I know that the primary math is over. The odds of anyone other than McCain becoming the Republican nominee are astronomical. Please vote for any candidate you like in the primaries but understand that your vote in November is much more significant.

IMO, all this garbage is why they need to standardize primary day nationwide; no spoilers dropping out after they've screwed up the numbers, and nobody whining about wasting votes on candidates who haven't done well in other states. Statistical likelihood of becoming the nominee has no place in the decision of who to vote for, so let's add immediate public flogging of anyone publishing incorrect predictions. (Correct ones are just as bad but if they still want to gamble with those stakes, I'll let 'em.)

Of course, I'd also like to see a lot of other changes in the election process, but that would be a good start.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:If they all turn out and vote for some "Slow Wheat" candidate they might as well just save some gasoline and flush their votes down the drain.

2004 election turnout was the highest since 1968 at around 122 million. Almost half of all households have at least one gun owner. Let's be really conservative and call it 40% of the 109,902,090 households. That's 43,960,836 votes - about 71% of Bush's total vote count in 2004. Given that it would also be nearly 44 million voters taken away from the other candidates, if all the gun owners vote for Slow Wheat, we'll have President Wheat.