But this year, there are three big, fast entries in the race, and it turns out that in an election, as opposed to a sailboat race, there's more to winning than coming in first. In fact, determining the people's choice can not only get incredibly complicated, it can be impossible.
Some flaws are worse than others.
The warts of our system seem particularly bad as we begin to consider the possible outcomes of a split vote among George Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. It helps to think of an election as if it were a scientific investigation. There is some best candidate but we are unsure who it is. To find out the truth, we do an experiment. We ask each voter to examine the candidates and give us an opinion.