Trego's Mountain Ear

I noticed some polling results: 47% want Joe Biden, 48% want Donald Trump, and 49% wish that both would just quit the race and give us a couple of different candidates.  I may not be phrasing things quite like the poll – but I think the gist is correct.

Interpreting the poll – and I’m using Occam’s Razor – gives me another descriptor.  Half of Biden’s support comes from people who flat can’t stand Donald Trump.  Half of Trump’s support comes from people who can’t stand Joe Biden.  Half the nation (49% + 2%)  is going to be dissatisfied whichever one is elected. 

My primary ballot gives me a choice – a candidate despised by about half the nation or “no preference.”  That’s the fault of our local pols – the ones we send to Helena.  I don’t want ‘no preference’.  I want “none of the above.”  The Trump-Biden choice can only be ‘no preference for the majority when it’s a forced choice.  The voters deserve a ballot that looks like this:

                                    Trump

                                    Biden

                                    Neither of the above is acceptable

I’m close to being a member of the majority when 49% would already prefer a do-over.  Come to think of it, this is a do-over from 2020.  It really makes me understand the sort of candidates that drove those old Athenians to develop ostracism:  Ancient Greeks Voted to Kick Politicians Out of Athens if Enough People Didn’t Like Them

“In the 1960s, archaeologists made a remarkable discovery in the history of elections: they found a heap of about 8,500 ballots, likely from a vote tallied in 471 B.C., in a landfill in Athens. These intentionally broken pieces of pottery were the ancient equivalent of scraps of paper, but rather than being used to usher someone into office, they were used to give fellow citizens the boot. Called ostraca, each shard was scrawled with the name of a candidate the voter wanted to see exiled from the city for the next 10 years.

From about 487 to 416 B.C., ostracism was a process by which Athenian citizens could banish someone without a trial. “It was a negative popularity contest,” says historian James Sickinger of Florida State University. “We’re told it originated as a way to get rid of potential tyrants. From early times, it seems to be used against individuals who were maybe not guilty of a criminal offense, so [a case] couldn’t be brought to court, but who had in some other way violated or transgressed against community norms and posed a threat to civic order.” Athenians would first take a vote on whether there should be an ostracophoria, or an election to ostracize. If yes, then they would set a date for the event. A candidate had to have at least 6,000 votes cast against him to be ostracized and historical records suggest that this occurred at least a dozen times.”

Click  the link – it’s a good story about bad elections when democracy was just being invented.  We couldn’t get by without a functioning president – or are we?