John McAfee announces he's running for President | Hacker News Reader

John McAfee announces he's running for President

money.cnn.com

33 pointsilyaeck20 comments

To be totally honest, for the first 30 seconds or so as I was reading the story I was sure this was some kind of joke. Not because of anything specific against McAfee, but because of how many candidates there are.

Shit, maybe Colbert or John Stewart (or John Oliver) should run for president too. Everyone else is, and it would help fun each respective show, and perhaps could even be leveraged to demonstrate the impact of money in politics.

> To be totally honest, for the first 30 seconds or so as I was reading the story I was sure this was some kind of joke.

Sadly, this isn't the only campaign I feel that way about.

Al Franken is missing out.

He doesn't have the energy or sensible plans.

Sanders + Lessig appears to be the current best hope for the U.S. and world causes.

PS: He's coming off as a Byronic attention-queen at this point, and that makes me embarrassed and ashamed on his behalf. He could be fighting for sensible privacy open-source projects with nonpartisan advocacy and security foundations for the public good. Instead, it's the heroin-rattled rockstar "what sh&t will he say today" celebrity narcissism-cult routine rather than planning to "get sh&t done."

Ya know, I might be willing to support McAfee, depending on his actual positions. But right now, my feeling is that his campaign has zero chance of winning, simply because he's doing this "start your own party" thing. And realistically, he'll struggle to simply get on the ballot in enough states to have a mathematical chance of winning - especially starting this late in the game.

I don't know. Maybe a year is enough time to build a party infrastructure, run ballot access petitions, etc, IF he has a ton of his own money he's willing to throw at the problem. But color me skeptical.

Personally, I think he'd have been better off pursuing the Libertarian Party nomination, if he doesn't support the Democrats or Republicans. Curious to know if he decided to go a different direction on ideological grounds (maybe he hates Libertarians, who knows?) or something else.

Lack of electability is a poor reason not to vote for someone. The cool thing about elections is the person with the most votes wins regardless of how electable they seem. There are much better reasons not to vote for McAfee

With a first past the post election system, lack of electability is a very good reason not to vote for someone as that vote subtracts one vote from a candidate who has a realistic chance of winning.

This wouldn't be as big of a problem in a runoff style voting system.

With a first past the post election system, lack of electability is a very good reason not to vote for someone as that vote subtracts one vote from a candidate who has a realistic chance of winning.

Not if you would have simply chosen not to vote at all otherwise. Nobody is entitled to my vote, and every candidate has an equal opportunity to earn that vote. Somebody will, most won't. If nobody does, I won't vote. And I'm not the only person who operates this way.

This wouldn't be as big of a problem in a runoff style voting system.

I'd love to see us adopt Approval voting, but I'm not holding my breath.

www.electology.org/approval-voting

Everyone has a realistic chance of winning if enough people vote for them.

Lack of electability is a poor reason not to vote for someone. The cool thing about elections is the person with the most votes wins regardless of how electable they seem.

You're talking to somebody who has been voting Libertarian since 1996 and who ran for Lieutenant Governor of NC as a Libertarian in 2008. You don't have to tell me that "Lack of electability is a poor reason not to vote for someone". I'm just observing that McAfee is going to have a VERY difficult time with this, not telling people not to support him.

My own willingness to support him would hinge on a better understanding of his positions and principles, and how favorable I find those to be, relative to the other candidates.

There are much better reasons not to vote for McAfee

I'm sure there are. :-) I'm going to be very curious to see what kind of into on McAfee emerges as this unfolds, if he's serious about this.

The problem is, common voting methods fail the Favorite Betrayal Criterion.

http://scorevoting.net/FBCsurvey.html

I can't help but to question his claim of fear of enforcement when he was wanted for connection with a homicide. I mean you created the company McAfee and you are an American, you are wanted by Belize police but you are scared the police would kill you? I mention American here because I don't think Belize police would dare to kill an American during investigation and wage an international diplomatic controversy. Just my cynical way of thinking about being an American.

There's a big difference between "dare to kill an American" and "dare to have an American killed"... especially when the people that want you dead are potentially doing so to hide their corruption which would be an even bigger controversy if exposed.

a more viable option than Trump....

he might even legalize drugs and end cartels (and end mass spying, of course)

I'm down for all of the above.

"AntiVirus for President" is all I imagine people saying.

Once elected, we'd never be able to completely get rid of him.

excellent!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com