This is exploited by the occasional protest vote. In 1976 an elector voted for Ronald Reagan instead of Ford, and in 1988 an elector voted Bentsen for pres, Dukakis for VP, instead of the opposite. And in 2000, one Gore elector abstained.
In first day or two after the election in 2000, one possible combination of the very close states where the election was still in doubt led to a one electoral vote margin of victory. There was speculation that enormous pressure would be brought to bear to convince one or another elector to break from their party. Had that happened, the groundswell of discontent that owlstretchingtime suggested would likely have materialized.
Complexity is in the eyes of the beholder. Rest assured we look at your government and wonder why you don’t abandon such a complicated system for a simpler one like ours.
Just a little more detail on felons and voting. I saw this on MSNBC last night.
Two states (both in the Northeast) forbid convcted felons from voting only while the felon is actually in prison.
14 states forbid convicted felons from voting under any circumstances (excepting of course, a full pardon)
However, the remaining 34 states forbid convicted felons from voting while they are on probation or parole. Once they have satisfied the terms of their probation/parole, the right to vote is restored.
In other words “convicted felons can’t vote” is true only about 1/4 of the states. In the rest of the U.S., it’s more like “convicted felons who are still under the supervision of the criminal justice system can’t vote.”
But on the other hand, without the Electoral College, such a situation would be far rarer. The election in Florida in 2000 was a statistical tie (that is to say, one cannot be statistically confident that either candidate won), but large sample sizes tend to make things much easier in statistics. So unlikely as it is in a single state, it’s much less likely in the nation as a whole.
Another odd case was 1876, which had its parallels to the 2000 situation. Four states, including Florida, ironically enough, had disputed results, with conflicting boards of electors claiming to represent the states, certified as “official” by different factions of government. It was actually a bigger mess than 2000, which, as observed was simply too close for a statistically valid result in Florida:
On one hand, the system survived that mess, so that says something about its robustness. On the other hand, it also points out how entrenched it is - even a crisis of that magnitude didn’t cause it to be overhauled.
And I believe it is scandalously democratic, particularly our western states’ reliance on referenda, and that we abandon our states only at our enormous peril. States are decidedly inconvenient, particularly since many metropolitan areas cross state boundaries, but at least they provide some basis of legitimacy for an upper house that protects minority interests. I believe Britain has had some difficulty figuring out just how to reform the House of Lords in a way that makes sense, and Japan has been diddling with its House of Councillors for decades.
And I also am emphatically of the belief that we shouldn’t be encouraging voting any more than we already are. Voting requires sacrifice, and if you can’t will your arse to get yourself registered (which is quite easy in most places) and into a polling station at some point during the 14+ hours that they’re typically open, then you shouldn’t be voting at all. No whining, if you’re not willing to take even these basic steps as a citizen then you don’t deserve to be treated as a citizen.
Oh, and in a nation that’s as diverse as the U.S., the last thing we need is proportional representation - that would be a guarantee of regional disintigration. Bad enough that our two parties are increasingly geographically isolated - but enabling third parties to gain traction would accelerate the trend. Plus, our system has the salutary effect of forcing people to make unpleasant choices - generally, the two-party system produces compromise candidates that not many people actually like. But life is mostly unpleasant choices, and it’s utterly adolescent to presume that one should be able to choose a candidate whose positions match one’s own peculiar beliefs.
You believe the electoral college is scandalously democratic or that the entire political system is scandalously democratic? In reference to the electoral college, I wouldn’t be so bothered if it was undemocratic and fair, but it is, in fact, undemocratic and unfair, and it leaves more than half the population disenfranchised.
I also agree that, while perhaps more democratic, the referendum system is inefficient and leads to nonsensical results based on decisions by insufficiently informed voters. Yeah, vote for the legislators and let them work out legislation.
Enormous peril? Bit of hyperbole. Anyway, I don’t argue that we should abandon the states. We should only rid ourselves of the silly notion that the states should be treated as sovereign entities and that the states have rights against the federal government. Principally, I believe we should rid ourselves of the notion that the states choose our president rather than the people as a whole.
I have no problem with this.
What role an upper house should have is a problem in any parliamentary democracy, because essentially all governmental powers reside in the lower house. I’m not suggesting we switch to a parliamentary system; I like separation of powers.
I would argue that the following steps would be beneficial:
Federalize election regulation and make the rules uniform for all voting, while leaving the actual administration of the rules to locally elected officials.
Eliminate the requirement for registration in advance.
Either:
(a) Make election day a mandated paid holiday, or
(b) Hold the election over a period of several days (say a week) that includes a Saturday and a Sunday.
I agree it would have the opposite effect. Yes, we have a polarized electorate, but it is polarized on geographical lines only under a winner-take-all system. Proportional representation would empower people across the political spectrum no matter where they lived and cause them to create nation-wide constituencies. However, I’m not really a proportional representation advocate when it comes to U.S. senators and representatives. I would like to see some sort of neutral commission drawing district lines to make them fair, however.
My post was dangerously close to GD territory, and I apologize; I’ll try to keep my answers more factual. Ascenray makes some excellent points.
Well, that’s rather question-begging, isn’t it - since you seem to believe that what makes it unfair is that it’s undemocratic! Seriously, the fact that only some states are competitive at any given moment doesn’t seem to be that problematic, because it tends to change over time. Right now, New York and California are considered Democratic gimmes - but that wasn’t true as recently as 1988, and it may not be true in the future.
Well, the fact that states are sovereign is part of the original Constitutional bargain, and the Electoral College is merely an example of that dual sovereignty. But the deeper point is that like the Senate, the Electoral College is designed to ensure that the least-populated states don’t get screwed. Right now, that aspect makes life a little easier for the Republicans because they have a lock on much of rural America - you can add up a lot of over-weighted Wyomings and New Hampshires to help balance the big states. But the basic principal - that we don’t let the big population centers control the country - is just as valid now as it was 217 years ago.
These all sound sensible, provided they’re paired with a national ID card that one would have to show in order to vote. ID requirements for registration are often very low, and if we’re to get rid of registration, we must care about ID.
Mmmm, not convinced. What you’re assuming is that a single ideology might be thinly represented around the nation, and for most ideologies I don’t think that’s correct - even now, people of like minds tend to congregate together. Sure, there are fundamentalist Christians in Seattle and environmentalists in Alabama, but they’re tiny minorities in those places. I don’t think that having either a Green party or a Christian party would exactly benefit the republic on a national scale.
Agreed. But to some degree, current gerrymandering is just payback for forty years of House control by democrats. There are exceptions - Iowa uses independent, nonpartisan redistricting commissions, and consequently their House races are more competitive than almost anyplace else.
Not of the voters, it doesn’t. It only requires compromise by the politicians themselves, which effectively lets voters off the hook from having to make adult, unpleasant choices.
The House of Lords was completely indefensible at every level - the idea that you should be governed by accident of birth doesn’t really work anymore (apart from the Queen - but she’s different). However the old HOL actually worked very well, as the Lords were there by genetic accident they represented a fairly wide spectrum of opinion, also they had no party allegiance (although some chose to align with a party).
The new and improved HOL is a right bugger’s muddle. This is being shown up by the foxhunting farrago. In the past the commons could over-rule the Lords with some legitimacy, now that the Lords is more representative it is more troublesome to cavalierly over rule (especially over some thing as trivial as fox-bothering).
If you have any good idea, I encourage you to enter the poll!
In most elections, it’s abundantly clear by the next morning who’s won and who’s lost, and the losing candidate has publicly conceded defeat. The 2000 election was, we thought, unusual, but this year could turn out to be just as much of a muddle.
Also do you mean Mark Oaten? Seems to be making a fair fist of hanging onto a natural Tory town. The rotter. It is a nice town though - nice pubs and such a lot of them.
The two tories before him (Malone and Brown) have a LOT to answer for.
He’s doing a pretty good job of holding on, but really, it’s only because the Tories have been running complete chumps against him. If they managed to get someone competent in there, he’d be in trouble - and he knows it. He works ridiculously hard on “pothole politics” to try and keep himself established since being an incumbent is really his only advantage.
Who are the Tories putting up against him this time?
I really don’t like gettingg involved in MP selection as the last one I helped choose was found dead on a table; wearing ladies underwear; with a dog collar round his neck; a plastic bag on his head and a tangerine soaked in amyl nitrate in his mouth.
Believe me he didn’t mention that in his presentation under hobbies!
That let the Liberals into Eastleigh. They’re still there.
However, it will certainly get challenged in court (especially if it tips the outcome of the election), on the question of whether the referendum is legal (the US Constitution explicitly assigns the state legislature the power to determine how a state’s electors shall be chosen – in theory, a state doesn’t have to hold a popular vote for President at all, and most of them in the early years of the Republic didn’t).
There is some case law supporting the proposition that a referendum carried out under a general referendum law set up by the state legislature would qualify. IANAL, so I can’t say how convincing it is.
The news organizations will be gun shy in projecting the winner of any extremely close state.
Despite that, assuming the vote will be nearly as close as 2000, we are likely to know with some degree of certainty the overall winner by midnight or before Central Time.
We are unlikely to see in our lifetimes another election quite like 2000. In included several uncommon or extremely uncommon elements all at once. The relatively large number states electorally won or lost by tiny percentages combined with this:the margin Bush had electorally in the clear winner states was almost exactly mirrored by the margin Gore won in the really close states.
Seriously, the fact that only some states are competitive at any given moment doesn’t seem to be that problematic, because it tends to change over time. Right now, New York and California are considered Democratic gimmes - but that wasn’t true as recently as 1988, and it may not be true in the future.