The never ending scare campaign

Day 2,025, 05:31 • Published in USA United Kingdom • by wingfield

Too often in recent days we have seen the scaremongering about the effects of not voting for the “Unity” candidate. The bogeyman put up to frighten all the young eRep citizens has been that voting for anyone other than the approved candidate will result in an AFA victory.

Balderdash!

The simplistic view is that a three way race will lead to an AFA victory. It is argued that the AFA candidate will win a plurality, with neither the Unity candidate nor an independent able to run first. Consider the following options:

Option A: One candidate secures an absolute majority.

Outcome – this is simple: the candidate in question wins.

Option B: The leading candidate secures a plurality. In a three way race, the leader will secure between 33.33% and 50.01% of the vote. The other two will secure a lower percentage each, both getting less than 33.33%.

Outcome – obviously the leading candidate wins. The other two spoil each other.

The scare campaign centers on the assumption that the non-AFA candidates will always spoil each other. This is not necessarily the case, not at all.

Consider the following alternative scenario, quite possible in an open democratic process:

Candidate A (Unity) vote = Existing forced vote is REDUCED by the free voters for independent Candidate C

Candidate B (AFA) vote = AFA supporters alone, also REDUCED by free votes going to the independent candidate.

Candidate C (independent) vote = personal vote for the independent candidate, PLUS votes previously only going to Candidate B (AFA) because of dislike of Unity, PLUS votes only going to Candidate A because of the lack of a non-AFA alternative.

In this scenario, it is not the AFA candidate (Candidate B ) who will secure the plurality. It is more likely that Candidate C would win, or even that the Unity nominee (Candidate A) keeps enough votes to succeed.

Here is the crucial determinant: The voting figures for the AFA always include many dissenters from the government line. Even with these people, the AFA is not managing 33.33% of the votes any more. With a lower true figure, the chances of stealing a plurality become even more remote.

The first time that a strong independent candidate makes a solid run, the Presidency will drop out of the hands of Unity, without any real risk of an AFA victory.

The scare campaign is totally lame and should be buried along with Unity.

The bottom line is that the AFA does not win because it does not have enough votes, not because of the existence of the Unity system.