On Jan 21, 2010, at 8:58 PM, Terry Bouricius wrote:
Kathy,
I ask that you stop smearing me on this (and other) discussion lists.
"rots o' ruk."
I did not alter any standard definition of "spoilers." Webster's
online
for example defines it as:
"1. A candidate with no chance of winning but who may draw enough
votes to
prevent one of the leading candidates from winning."
This means a spoiler is a non-leading candidate with almost no
chance of
winning (I think the term "minor" is a fair way of stating that
concisely)
and not "one of the leading candidates." Note also that the
concept of
having a "chance" to win suggests the term can be applied
prospectively,
prior to knowing what the ballots reveal. Kurt Wright, being
perceived as
a likely winners and who was in first place in the initial tally
had an
EXCELLENT chance of winning, and almost did in the runoff, and thus
does
not meet the standard definition of a "spoiler."
Terry, you may have read that i take some responsibility for also
associating Wright as the spoiler by replacing "almost no chance of
winning" to "having lost" in the definition. and i know that they
are not the same thing.
strictly speaking, Kurt Wright was not a spoiler because it is
uncontroversial whether or not he had a chance of winning.
that said, i believe that a spoiler-lite (a candidate who loses and
whose presence in an election changes who the winner is) problem is
still a problem. i think, in these parts, we call it "Independence
of irrelevant alternatives". IIA is "spoiler-lite" even if it is not
always the spoiler scenario.
--
r b-j r...@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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