Arnold, I am sure that one can come up with examples of countries that work ok with more than two factions dominating politics and being allowed participation in legislating. Someone in another thread suggested New Zealand and Germany, where proportional representation grants legislative seats to parties with relatively small returns. However, I maintain that America, with its size and diversity, would be hopelessly factionalized under such a system, held hostage to the demands of smaller parties with which coalition governments would be built, or, if separation of the executive still existed, prevented from passing any but the most bland legislation for the same reasons.
Not to get everyone riled up, but for much the same reason (the scale issue) I have often maintained that representative democracy would fail horribly in countries the size of China. (ducking and running out the door…)
Thanks to your brilliant guidance, I now see what an idiot I am. You made sure to call me stupid several times just so I would understand. I bow to the brilliance that is you!
For those of you who like DS can not understand oppposing points of view due to arrogance or idiocy, that was sarcasm.
What brought that on D? Are you really that big an asshole or did you just have a really bad day?
Again I disagree with the popular vote would mean that group x would always win. Arguments to this effect usually discuss the Slavs vs the Croats. I have yet to see a single analysis of what group if any would dominate in America.
As for the proper strategy being to run for the middle, thank you for proving my point. In an election by popular vote, cannidates would still head for the center. The change in campaign style would be zero.
And D, Bush and Gore can say what ever the hell they want. It doesn't change their records. Bush is a conservative, and pro-life. Gore is liberal and pro-choice. I saw no ads or speeches in which they said otherwise.
That’s why I think the example of Switzerland is particularly apt. While not having the extent in size of the USA, Switzerland is very diverse in any other areas:
three main language groups (four national languages)
a country approx. 50% catholic and 50% protestant
economy split between agriculture and industry
large foreign population (around 15% in the 1980s)
etc…
If it’s possible in Switzerland it would be possible in the USA.
Getting back to the original intent of the Electoral College system, I believe it was a compromise between those who wanted the president chosen by the people and those who wanted the Congress to choose. The way it was originally drawn up, it was assumed that there would usually not be a majority of the electoral votes, presumably because there would be a lot of favorite son candidates, and that Congress would usually choose the president.
That wasn’t the case and the system was modified by the 12th amendment.
Very few electors in the pre-12th Amendment elections acted as free agents. Hamilton’s and Jefferson’s people arranged to make sure that the various state legislatures would appoint electors who would vote the way they wanted them to.
Washington was afraid that when he was elected that some elector would leave him off a ballot and make him VP instead of president and that would have really pissed him off.
I have a philosophical difference with the statement “The State’s have a right to exist”. I feel that a state ( and by this I am refering to a nation or part of a nation ) exists solely on the sufferance of its citizens. If they decide to snuff it then it has no right to refuse. I see no benefit to balancing the rights of a state with the rights of the people. I would be interested in knowing why you disagree. Again, I don’t think it’s necessary to delve full bore into the State’s Rights debate itself but if you have reasons why it is a good idea vis-a-vis the Electoral Collage then I’m listening.
On yet another side note, I find Congressional gridlock detestable. Slowing down change when there isn’t a consensus isn’t a good idea in and of itself. It only is useful if the system encourages the consensus that can break the deadlock.
aynrandlover:
Thanks for the reply. I do think that I now have a better understanding of your position. Since I am a centrist I doubt that we will ever agree on the issue of the States. So instead let me try a different tack. Why not have the President represent the people of the United States and let the Congress represent the states? After all, Congress is not elected by the people as a whole but rather by the people of the states and of sections of states ( House districts ). This already gives power to regions and the people could balance that by the influence of the President.
You keep your checks and balances, and I get my popular vote.
The one thing I still don’t get about your position is how the minorities are protected by the EC. If a majority can’t be trusted to elect the POTUS because they will trample the rights of others then how can a minority that happen to live in certain locations be so trusted? I am half-tempted to take the position that no President should be elected by less than a 3/4 majority of the states out of fear of overbearing minorities.
As a final note, I would like to explain the lack of voice of the Californian Bush voter. S/he voted for Bush but Gore won the state and with it the electoral votes. Those electoral votes represent all of the people of the state of California so a tiny part of those 54 votes represent that Bush voter. S/he ended up voting for Gore.
What I think you are missing is the complex agreement the Constitution entered us into. When I say a State has a right to exist, I mean that the people in New York, California and Texas can not decide to absorb or disolve Delaware, Rhode Island or Hawai.
The States are supposed to protect our regional wants and needs in a government. If Vermont wants to allow gay marriages and Colorado does not, then fine. The States only exist as another mechanism for the individual to magnify and protect their needs.
I’m no Constitutional Scholar, but I am not quite sure I agree with this. On one hand, I will be the first to quote The Declaration of Independence in a Bill of Rights debate about establishing a new government when the current one gets out of control, but I am not sure we are talking about the same thing here.
Are you talking about the people dissolving their State and becoming subject to the Federal gov’t? I’m not sure this would be allowed since all people are guaranteed a Republican form of gov’t in their states. At the very least this would take a Constitutional amendment.
Consider it a trigger lock on gov’t:), it’s just another check and balance. The state IS the people who live in it, as you have pointed out. The State is a mechanism that allows them to be heard on the national level.
I would actually like to see this debate, and participate where possible. I have not really explored where I specifically stand on States rights and why. Or at least, I don’t think I can fully verbalize it in a neat coherent package. I wouldn’t mind going down this road if you have a mind to participate in another non-election thread.
See…I disagree here. I think that our society is functioninng pretty well. This election has illustrated that there are two widely divergent paths America wants to take. If running down either of those paths would tear the country apart, then I am OK with standing still for awhile. we have a remarkable ability to get our asses in gear when we really have to.
I’m going to commit a “drive-by semi-hijack” here for a moment…
Bush may have run the election but only because the lesser populated states have a disproportinate share of the electoral votes. Mickey Kaus argues this…
Is this one advantage of the EC, people in the smaller states having more voting value than the populous states.
This goes to explain why Gore won the popular vote (49%-48%) and still could loose the election.
First, even if the popular vote meant ANYTHING at all, we do not know who won it. We never counted all the absentee ballots in the country, and even then the margin of difference on either side would be so small that we would need a nationwide recount.
Second. The popular vote is a meaningless statistic in our system of elections. Neither side is playing to win the popular vote, and neither side is voting based on the popular vote. So, unless we switch to a popular vote system, we need to ignore the results of the popular vote because they mean nothing.
As JubilationTCornpone noted earlier, we don’t know that Gore would have won a popular vote because we didn’t have a popular vote. People may have voted differently if they knew their votes would be counted differently. Some people ( Texans for instance ) may have not bothered to vote at because the outcome in their state was not in doubt.
It is also true that we can’t be sure that Gore won more total votes than Bush because the margin of error is higher than Gore’s margin of victory; however, Freedom2 goes a bit too far by asserting that the popular vote is irrelevant. The perception that Gore won more votes but lost the election will be damaging to Bush’s presidency.
To answer SterlingNorth’s question: Some of the people that I have argued with have asserted that the people in smaller population states need to be overrepresented in order to be heard. They feel that this inequity is an advantage. I disagree.
Perhaps Freedom2 would care to explain.
