Steve Landsburg points out that a miscount in the upcoming election wouldn’t be the disaster that some people want us to think it would be.
I felt exactly the same way last time. No matter which candidate you think won the election, the worst case is that we got the second best guy running instead of the best guy. That’s not how it was supposed to be, but it’s not as if Bush wasn’t in the running.
This assumes that democracies choose wisely. I think a better take is that regardless of the outcome, we will get a schmuck, not the best guy or second best guy. The best guy running doesn’t stand a chance, and the best guy period isn’t running.
True enough. It also assumes that the electorate is sort of distributed along a normal curve with most people near the center. If you have struggling factions, the candidates are further apart and less likely to be good substitutes for eachother.