Howzyer gummint goin'?

Great Debates
1

In 1787, in order to form a more perfect federal government, the Consititutional Convention set this up:

State governments decide how they are elected, and if you get to vote for the largest branch of the state legislature, you also get to vote for US Congressional Representative. (Later, the Constitution said you could not be denied the vote for reasons of race, sex, age (if over 18), or ability to pay any kind of tax.

State governments also voted for Senator, one third of the senate being elected every two years (this was later ammended to give the Senate vote to the same people as vote for Representative), and decide how to appoint the Electors who vote for the president. Currently, almost all states have a slate of Electors committed to a candidate put on the voters’ ballot, and the slate that gets the most votes takes all that state’s seats in the Electoral College, but they could decide to change that at any time.

Supreme Court Justices are appointed by the President and approved by the Senate, with no direct input from the voter.

This was all designed so that the government would have a more stable structure that was not subject to the shifting whims of the electorate.

Question: How’s this system workin’ for ya?

NOTE: Please leave all partisan bickering about the 2000 election to the 400 other threads devoted to it. This is for discussion of general government structure.
Do you like it? Would you change it? Would you be pissed if it were changed for you?

F’rinstance:

What if your state legislature decided to let Electors be determined in some other way than you voting for them? Or what about voting for each Presidential Elector by individual name instead of by slate? (That would be the top 52 vote-getters here in California. Yipes!)

Or found some way to deny you the vote, by law, without violating the Constitution?

What if they went back to letting state legislatures pick the senators AND electors, and you were left picking just your state and local governments plus the US Representative from your district?

Would it make elections a lot easier to give a crap about?

Discuss.

2

No, that’s ok…I’m good. I like my vote the way I have it, thanks.

3

Ummm…

47…

4

I think it works well overall, but I wouldn’t mind seeing some system of breaking up the Electoral votes in a presidential election based on the fraction of the vote that went to each candidate (maybe the top two candidates). I like the Electoral College overall, but that small change might be worth toying with. Then again, it seems such an obvious thing, it could be that the College was set up as it was for a reason. Dunno.

At any rate, it’s not something that keeps me awake at night. The Founding Fathers did a purty good job, if you ask me.
Jeff

5

It sucks. I’ll take proportional representation any day.

Imagine this scenario: There are two main political parties, Party A and Party B. A slight majority favors one party; let’s say 51% vote for Party A and 49% vote for Party B. To make it simple, let’s say they’re spread out evenly across the country: 51% of all voters in Spokane prefer Party A, as do 51% of all voters in Washington, and 51% of all voters in the country.

Under our current system, every office in every area at every level of government would be held by a member of Party A! Nearly half the population would be unrepresented.

6

In cases where the candidate with the most votes has less then 51% of the votes, I think a run-off election between the top two candidates should be automatic. OR, we should have Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). Personally, I prefer IRV, but actual runoffs would also be okay with me.

7

As I understand it, some states do split the electoral vote the way you describe, but many found that doing it that way reduced the overall impact of the states Electoral Votes. Give one candidate all your votes, and (especially if you are a big state) your state gets more attention from the candidate.The same mentality is what
drives the recent attempts of several states to “out-early” each other in terms of when their primaries are held.

The Electoral College was created as part of the Founding Fathers’ attempt to make each part of the Federal Government somewhat independent of the others, with the branches having more responsibility further removed from the ever-changing will of general electorate by creating what amount to “buffer layers” of voting or appointing.
That’s why you can’t vote for Supreme Court Justice, for instance.

They considered letting the Senate choose the President, but then the Senate would have too much say in the other two branches. Letting the state legislatures choose the president as well as the senators gave too much power to them. And forget about letting such an important office as the President be chosen directly by the “mob”.

Since they were out of options, they came up with the compromise of the Electoral College, a state-selected body that independently votes for the President. The sources I’ve read say that none of the Founding Fathers really liked the idea (and several of them hated the whole Constitution, for that matter), but they figured they’d let it run for awhile, and the problems would get fixed in another Constitutional Convention that was bound to be needed within a few years.

We’re still waiting.

8

I understand that proportional representation is how a lot fo other democracies do it, but I’ve never understood how it works at the polling place, given that coverage of other countries’ elections that I’ve seen put forth individual candidates for each party in the various districts.

Once they determine which parties got what percentage of votes through their candidates, who then decides which of the actual candidates gets a seat in the legislature?

If there are 20 seats (voted by 20 districts), and therefore 60 candidates in a three-party system, for instance, if party X only gets 30% of the vote, who decides which 6 of the 20 candidates actually take office?

9

I believe that the parties make up a list ahead of time specifying the order in which they employ their candidates. I found some other methods too. See here.

My fave is the one used at my University to elect the Student Council: Single Transferable Vote. I would take almost nothing to employ it, and I wish it was. Vote in order of preference. If your 1st pick loses, your next pick gets the vote. (Then I wouldn’t hear so much of this “wasting your vote” nonsense whenever there’s a U.S. election).

10

Yeah, but then you have Condorcet’s paradox hitting you right in the face. I agree with Arrow…a perfect voting system is impossible.

11

My only complaint is that anyone can vote. There should be minimal intelligence tests required to register to vote. The ballots should ask a few simple fquestions like “who is the currrent president?” and “who was the last president?” and “how many states are there in the united states?” and “is canada above or below the united states?” It can even be multiple-choice (as it would then be scorable by machine). In order for your vote to count, you have to get all the questions right. And don’t tell me that this is racist. That’s an insult to whatever race you are referring to.

12

Mr2001, your objection is correct but, other voting systems have other drawbacks. We have discussed voting systems in the past and there’s no point in hijacking this thread but let me point out a few things:

In a system like the UK or the US, each circunscription votes for one candidate and you can have the effect that the minority goes very underrepresented, as you well explained. OTOH, each representative owes his represenattion directly to the voters of his circunscription and has a very direct interest in serving their interests.

Now look at a country like Spain where the circunscription is the province and voting is much more proportional (although modified by D’hont system). Now you have a situation where many people are voting for many candidates in lists presented by the parties. The result is that representation is more proportional to the numbers of votes for each party BUT the downside of that is that now the candidates do not owe their allegiance to the voters directly but to the party. This leads to monolithic parties because dissent is political suicide. The only thing a politician can do is switch parties if he thinks the other party is getting stronger and more likely to win votes. The responsiveness of elected politicians to the voting public is nil. You can see it very clearly in Spain today. The head honcho “Ansar” has decreed that Spain would back the USA in this war. This is extremely unpopular with the Spanish people and many politicians would reflect this if they owed their votes directly to the voting public but only a handful have resigned. The rest are toeing the party line unanimously because anything else is suicide. So here you have a situation where the politicians may be elected but the process means effectively that the people vote for the parties and the parties then control XX number of votes. Your vote under this system is much less effective.

As has been explained in other threads, there is no such thing as a perfect voting system or even a best one. They all have their shortcomings.

13

In what sense can we see one country as being “above” or “below” another? What would be the criteria for determining this? Please do tell us more.

14

I think he means on a map…above=north.

15

What stops the public from dumping the Ansar party, and voting for a party that better reflects their opinion?

16

Sure, but when’s the next election? A couple of years from now…

What if there’s serious popular opposition right now, that is essentially ignored by the ruling party, even if many in that party may privately agree with it?

I think sailor’s point is that a list-based system gives the party leaders too much power, because any dissenter can be pushed to the bottom of the list and eliminated from office in the next election. A healthy democracy needs dissent within parties, as well as between parties. Compare to the recent events in the British Labour caucus. Even though there’s strong party discipline in British parties, there have been members of the governing party which are able to dissent from PM Blair’s policy - they have an independent political base in their own constituency and don’t need to fear being dropped on the list the next time round.

17

Doesn’t seem too different from the position we’re in right now. A President elected by a very narrow margin, acting with little or no concern for the popular opposition.

The difference is that today, the ~49% of voters who voted for the other party are unrepresented. The President doesn’t have to address the concerns of the close-to-half of the public that didn’t vote for him; he just has to focus on the just-more-than-half that did.

18

Tests of various sorts have been widely misused in the south for the express purpose of denying black people the right to vote. Recent electoral shenanigans demonstrate clearly why they continue to have such potential.