Republican Elector in West Virginia says he might not vote for Bush

[Abbie_Carmichael]

I’m betting he will only do it if his vote doesn’t make a difference in the election either way. This guy is just looking for attention. Electors promise their party to behave if chosen for the EC. To mess up the election just to draw attention to himself would be politicial suicide around here; he may as well just pack up and leave the state.

[BrainGlutton]

@AHunter3

They should pass a national law requiring the states to have a non-arbitrary and formulaic way of determining how its electoral votes will be cast, and binding the electors to voting in that fashion.

@Liberal

Bah! There are already enough laws and regulations — millions of them in fact. The whole Byzantine web of contradictory and overlapping dicta constitutes a morass of quicksand justice in which the wealthy can buy a pole to grab onto while the poor must flail until they suffocate. I think this is wonderful news! Hurray for this elector, who is unwilling to allow a majority mob to break the knees of our beloved liberty!

@BrainGlutton

Look, would you care to expand that statement into something along the lines of a general principle? If a “majority mob” should not choose our president, then who should?

@Liberal

Why not let each man give or withhold his consent as he pleases, and select for himself that government which he believes is most likely to secure his safety and happiness? The general principle is the Principle of Noncoercion.

@BrainGlutton

You are trying to use an English-Ukrainian dictionary to square the circle, Liberal. The debate is over how we should elect the president of the United States – not over whether we should have a president, or a United States, or a government.

@Liberal

The debate? I was answering your direct question. You asked me to expand my statement and provide the general principle. I did. Perhaps you should refrain from jerking people around.

No, no, Liberal, I wasn’t trying to jerk you around. You made a reply to AHunter3’s post which seemed to disparage even the general principle that the American voters should play some role in choosing our president. I wondered where you were going with that. Perhaps, it appeared, you conceive of the College of Electors as properly following a “Burkean” model – i.e., like members of Congress, they should not conceive of themselves as mere deputies doing their constituents’ will as evidenced by the latest public-opinion polls, but should instead regard their duty as to do what is best for their constituents by their own lights and judgment regardless of what their constituents actually want done. That would be a starting point for a very interesting debate on the EC’s role in our constitutional system. But you responded instead with a post that seems to cast doubt on the very idea that we should have a single national government of which all of us, even the dissenters, are equally citizens and subjects. And that would be just too much of a hijack – it would be a discussion that would belong in a different thread.