Good Afternoon, Kristofer

re: "Strictly speaking, clones are candidates that are so alike
     each other that every voter ranks them next to each other
     (but not necessarily in the same order)."

   and

    "More generally speaking, a clone could be considered a
     candidate that's very close to an already existing candidate
     and whose presence changes who wins."

Thank you.  That's a clear explanation.

Even allowing for my general ignorance of the topic, cloning seems to be more significant for multi-party systems than for the two-party system that dominates U. S. politics.

Nah. I guess that opinion is wrong. In the U. S., a third party probably can't avoid cloning some portion of a major party candidate. If so, eliminating clones probably increases the distance from a two-party system to a multi-party system. Anyway, wouldn't we be better served by conceiving a way to advocate the common interest instead of worrying about whether or not a clone will harm the parochial interests of partisans?

Fred
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