True, the Colorado Ballot Initiative Process does not involve a decision by the full assembly, but that could be easily rectified by a proposal in the assembly to have the tally of the votes direct the selection of the Electors subject to the result of this initiative vote. For whether the assembly might be of a mind to entertain such a proposal, consult your local Coloradan government junkie.
As far as the date, the votes for Presidential Electors will be cast on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November as usual. The Initiative simply states what the result of the count should be. In every state, as far as I know, the count must be certified. This process certainly does not occur on that date, and I have yet to hear of anyone being sued in federal court because of it.
Hardly anything is simple about the Electoral College. For instance, since you haven’t seemed to have noticed allow me to point out that it isn’t a body of any kind unless it’s a dismembered one. Congress is a body. It meets for various purposes. The Electoral College never meets. It is constitutionally forbidden to do so. Instead the Electors come together in each state to cast their votes.
People put up with a national legislature because we, or those of us who think about this sort of thing anyways, believe that it is too inefficient to consult the people on every single issue. Thus we elect representatives to handle the complex questions, consultations, and negotiations leaving the rest of us time to get on with our lives. Which candidate will make the best president can be a complex question but it is one that people seem comfortable making themselves. Personally I don’t want or need someone else to make that decision for me. YMMV
If I am being naïve it wouldn’t be the first time. But you haven’t demonstrated it.
The aphorism proves nothing. Of course people care about issues that touch their lives. National issues are the those that touch lives throughout the nation. I don’t know if you have ever followed a presidential campaign before but the candidates travel around giving stump speeches. If they didn’t feel the same basic issues would resonate with voters around the country they wouldn’t give the same speeches over and over. It seems to me the main issues in the current campaign are character, terrorism, Iraq, and the economy. These effect the entire nation. Did you see or read Kerry’s acceptance speech in convention? Do you really believe it was designed to appeal to just voters in certain states and not to Americans in general?
Thanks, just wanted to be sure. Before I refute the point lets examine just how insignificant it really is. The claim is only that the EC requires broad support geographically. Not by cultural background, gender, class, age, income, ethnicity, or an infinite variety of other factors that might be as important or more to a voter. Only by location. Even if it were true, it’s just not that big a deal. A nice feature, yes. But worth giving up your free and equal vote for?
And, of course, the claim is false. As I pointed out with the worst case scenario a mere eleven states between them control a majority of the Electors. A candidate could win pluralities in those states and take the White House without a single vote in the other states. Nor is something like this unheard of. Look at an electoral map of 1860. ( Courtesy of Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections ) Lincoln won with no support south of the Mason Dixon line. Of course, in the South if it were known you leaned Republican you wouldn’t have lived long enough to vote. But the fact remains. The White House has been with only regional support.
I asked how Bush demonstrated more breadth of ( geographic ) support than Gore. Unlike Lincoln both polled well in every state. Sure Gore only got 28% in Alaska and Idaho and 26% in Utah and Bush only received 33% in Massachusetts, 32% in Rhode Island, and 9% in DC but even there they demonstrated the support of a significant portion of the state electorate. Both Bush and Gore showed they had broad support. Please show me how Bush demonstrated more.
The EC wasn’t designed. It developed over decades. The original conception, however conceived ( historians differ… as is to be expected given the paltry records from the federal convention ), caused problems from the very first election and reform in the form of the 12th Amendment was ratified in time for the 1804 contest. The general ticket system became the norm over the next several elections except in South Carolina which didn’t start hold popular elections until after the Civil War.
I hope you will really think about it. Look at my earlier post in reply to scotandrsn. The Electoral College isn’t Congress. We don’t need them to represent us in the same way. And I find it difficult to believe that Campbell and Allard have always voted against your preference. My senator Arlen Spector and I don’t see eye to eye on much but we both think the Electoral College should go. So he does represent me even if he doesn’t do a very good job of it. The EC is different. They only vote once so they do indeed always vote against some people’s preferences.
Since you are having trouble seeing how important the point is let me put it another way. A state is a collection of individual people. The difference between having an elective Electoral College and a popular vote is that the power is in the hands of the state instead of in the hands of the people. A person living in Tejas is not free to try to combine their vote with those from people living in other states. Instead they can only try to combine with their neighbors and if they are in the minority then all of their state’s electoral power, including their share, goes to a candidate they oppose.
The existence of a status quo, 2sense said patiently for the hundreth time here in GD, does not justify the status quo. Why should Americans accept the lack of equal representation? “Because that’s how things are” isn’t an answer.
In a popular vote areas don’t get a vote so they can’t overwhelm other areas. Only people vote and no voter has any more of a vote than any other.
Well, it isn’t happening to you now is it? “All politics is local”, remember? If you were the one being denied a say in who would lead your nation I suspect you would be singing different tune. Care to deny it?
That explains why we are in the situation we are in but remember, the existence of a status quo does not justify the status quo.
Ah… “They”. “They” can become a state? “They” as in every Puerto Rican? I’m afraid not. There are plenty of Puerto Ricans who would love to do so but “They” haven’t been able to convince their countrymen to go along. It is easier to ignore those people if you lump “Them” all together, isn’t it?
And what is so magical about statehood? Why must states be part of the equation in electing a president? Does he serve the states or does he serve all of America?
Of course not. I don’t think my worse case scenario is any more likely than yours. It is a bunch more scary though, ain’t it?
Wrong on both counts, I’m afraid. What enforces the 2 party system are plurality elections. When it’s winner-take-all it makes more sense for the opposition to band together before elections in order to win some pluralities and be able to compromise afterwards. If representatives are elected proportionally it allows parties to grow without having to gain a plurality in any particular district. These parties can get elected first and do the compromising in the legislature itself. So it isn’t the entire Electoral College that keeps the 2 party system staggering along but the fact that the states have tended to use the general ticket system. If the EC were replaced by a popular vote with some kind of Instant Runoff Voting then yes, the 2 party system would be weakened. But a popular vote can just as easily be a plurality election so comparatively, the EC doesn’t help reinforce the 2 party system.
And while a popular vote might be a single plurality election the Electoral College is not. Minor parties could form, if they were regional in nature. Look at the election of 1968. The Dixicrats ( American Independent ) took 48 electoral votes because while they didn’t earn the approval of a plurality of America their biggoted platform did gain the support a plurality in several southern states.
And lets notice that America, due to the structure of its government, isn’t in danger of losing stability by moving to proportional represntation and a multiparty system. America doesn’t have a parliament so legislative gridlock can’t bring down a government. And gridlock is what we have as often as not in our bicameral legislature anyways. Often one party controls the House and the other the Senate. That’s no different than a coalition of parties controlling one chamber and another coalition steering the other. There is still only one president to run the Executive.
True. Luckily we aren’t talking about any such undertaking. We are just talking about directly electing the president like we do all of our other representatives. Nothing out of the ordinary with plurality elections. We have thousands of them every decade.
If I haven’t changed your mind then I hope that at least I have shown you how poorly you understand our system for electing the president. It’s not as simple as it looks and perhaps, if you care to look into it, you will come to find that you can find no justification at all. I’ve never found one and I’ve been at these debates for years now.
Not at all. Good luck with that. I quit tobacco so I know how tough it is. Don’t quit quitting.
I am quite aware of how the Electoral college works. But we don’t technically decide who will be president, we decide which bunch of completely like-minded people will decide who makes the best president. A ridiculous situation, I think we both agree.
My solution is simply to promote a more representative take on the EC, since the rationale for full-slate voting has fallen apart in recent years.
Your solution, straight popular voting, has its own problems. I don’t necessarily think that it is in the people’s best interests to have to make all these decisions. Far from giving more power to the people, for example, I think direct election of Senators has dilluted the citizenry’s political focus. Some pathetically small percentage of people can name their Federal Representative, who should bhe more beholden to them than a Senator or a President.
I say, direct popular vote for Electors, and return to the selection of Sentators by the state government. Then, even when they are of a mind to focus on national issues, the people must act locally, which is in their best interests in the end, IMO.
Sorry, 2sense, I’m not terribly interested in debating someone about the merits of the electoral college whose response is that I don’t understand how it works, and implies that if I did understand how it works I would automatically agree. As I said in the Pit thread, we could recreate the Federalist Papers if I was smart enough. Well, I may or may not be smart enough to do that, but I’m definitely smart enough to know when I’m not interested in getting involved in a certain type of debate.
P.S. The word ‘naive’ (and derivations thereof) is a word in the English language, absorbed from French, and as such does not include diacritical marks.
But your solution wouldn’t necessarily make the decision of which candidate is best suited to be president representative of the view of the nation at large.
That is not my solution. I compare the EC to a direct popular election because that is how the debate is usually framed. It’s a convenient view from which to criticise the myths of the EC and if we are going to have some kind of election by the people then it should be fair. If I had my druthers the president would be selected by the House of Representatives.
The decision we are discussing here is who should sit in the Oval Office. Why do you think it is in the best interest of people to allow others to make that decision for them?
I think that more people would pay attention to the House if we abolished the Senate. As it is the Senate is easier to follow because it is smaller and less opaque. The cloture rule puts things out there in the open. If a senator supports a bill s/he votes to end debate after a reasonable period. If they don’t then you know they don’t support it no matter what they say. The House is trickier. They have special rules for each major bill, killer amendments, and procedural votes that, frankly, I don’t understand. Plus my congressman, like most of them, is a nobody. His name is rarely in the press as opposed to our senators.
Since it is the duty citizens to moniter what our representatives do in our names I don’t see that it is much of a burden to ask citizens to give their opinion of them twice every six years ( for both senators ) as well as once every other year ( for the House member ).
The purpose of an election isn’t to impose your opinion on the voters. The idea is to determine their opinion and impose it upon the political system.
The problem is that you didn’t understand how it works. At least not to the extent you thought you did. If, for whatever reason, you don’t care to pick up the tattered remains of all those points I just refuted at length then that is your perogative. What matters is fighting ignorance. If you cease spreading ignorance about the Electoral College there will be no need to correct your mistakes.
Oh I think you are plenty smart. But we have plenty of smart people here in Great Debates. What we don’t have enough of are posters who can admit they are wrong. Mistakes happen. I make them all the time. The classy thing to do is to acknowledge it and move on.
Yup. I’m not the greatest speller and I thought there was an accent on the final “e”. ( I guess I was thinking of “naïveté”. ) So I looked it up on Merriam-Webster Online and it turns out you are right. The French word looked cooler though so I copied and pasted that instead. Sorry for any confusion. I did put the word in italics as I believe is customary when using foreign terminology.
What community? I understand why, politically, state-identified politicians want to say that they “gave” the President votes. But that’s not a community interest, it’s a sick joke.
I vote for proportionality. This is largely because once a Ross Perot type gets enough votes in the electoral college that no one has a majority, the negotiations get really interesting.
Unless the Perot type had coattails long enough to elect some Congress critters, he or she would be immediately blown out of the water by whichever party had the majority in the House of Representatives at the time. What you want to make things interesting is a Wallace type. Now 1968, now you’re talking! Had Wallace pulled some of Nixon’s states along with Humphrey’s, there definitely would have been support for him in the House.
Read up on the 1824 election. Fascinating and twisted stuff.
Not necessarily. Depending on where Electors pledged to a minor candidate were elected and how commited they were it might be possible to negotiate before the election is thrown into the House. That is, if they were elected in states without “faithless elector laws” ( 21 states don’t ) or if they had the cojones to break such laws then they might cast their electoral votes for whichever major candidate that offers them the best deal thus creating a majority in the college and avoiding the House altogether.
And, just to be clear, it is not a majority of House members that is needed to decide an election thrown into the House but a majority of the state delegations. Each state gets only a single vote.
So the House has the power of selection AND impeachment? So much for checks and balances.
The original structure of the government was not to let any of five entities, the Judicial, the Executive, the Legislative, the States and the People have too much power over the others. Your scheme would throw that off entirely.
The EC was a compromise. Everyone knows that. And as long as the number of states was small, it made sense to pool their votes together, rendering it a more or less useless body. Now, however, when even a state with over fifty electoral votes can not get the attention of the President, it has come time to really put the EC to the test by giving it some teeth.
For the same reason we don’t decide our national laws by gathering the entire electorate together in a field in Kansas to hash it out. If we educate ourselves enough to elect those competent on the issues of the day we can have greater confidence in the soundness of those decisions.
The electorate is, as we speak, changing their minds about who should spend the next four years fixing the economy, providing an exit strategy for Iraq, and guiding America’s way in the world according to whether or not one of the choices actually got shot at on a particular day while at war, based on information provided by friends of his opponent who, as documentary evidence shows, are lying.
I don’t want people this stupid to decide on the CEO of the nation.
Today’s press reports on the news you want to hear, not what might or might not be of consequence. Didja notice they never criticized Bush until his poll numbers dropped? They report on Senators and Presidents because that’s who they’ve become convinced you care about more.
The unfortunate consequence of the 17th Amendment was that, in giving the people more power over the upper levels of national government, it over-focused their attention on it, so that more and more problems seek their solutions at the federal level. IMO, you could repeal the Tenth Amendment tomorrow, and it would hardly cause a ripple in how the government is currently run.
We need to reduce the power of the federal government, and the way to do it is not to focus on the Executive Branch and the Senate, and then whine about how little they listen to us. There are people with a smaller voter base who are more beholden to you, or would be if you bothered to learn their names.
I say, repeal the 17th Amendment. Then, when you vote, you’re voting for your Federal Rep, your local offices, and perhaps your Electors.
You have national concerns? Pay more attention to the people in your own back yard who make those decisions, you’ll be better off for it.
It seems we see the world very differently. We liberals have a more generous view of human nature. I don’t want checks and balances in the government because they get in the way of the only real check: the people themselves. Keep government simple and open and I trust the people to reign in its excesses. Checks and balances get in the way of this by making government complex and difficult to understand and less responsive. Plus they eliminate the chance to experience the policy alternatives being debated. Since policy is rarely enacted without compromise the people never get to judge and compare the outcomes from opposing policies. Instead the law is often ends up being the worst of both possibilities.
Sure, I often am dissapointed by the ignorant opinions of the American people. Why, a quarter of us even vote Republican! But I feel this is because Americans are mostly insulated from the bad decisions that are made in their name and when they are not their governments are so complex it is difficult to assign blame. When it comes to politics I see Americans like spoiled children. They are never entrusted with responsibility so it is no surprise they act irresponsibly. I’m afraid that in my book the Founding Fathers were piss-poor parents.
[QUOTE=2senseWe liberals have a more generous view of human nature.[quote]
Please do not assume you speak for all liberals.
Naive. One does not have to know that much history to know how untrue this is.
Nonsense. Checks and balances (and compromises) require that small steps be taken in the direction of a goal. If something is found to be a mistake, it’s easier to back off a small step than a giant leap. If it turns out to be good, then take the next step.
I am growing increasingly aware of just who it is in this thread that does not understand the basis and the reasons for why our system of government is the way it is. Hint: it ain’t me.
Well WE liberals believe in keeping fascist tendencies out of government, and concentrating power in one area ain’t the way.
Everything you’re saying goes back to the Angels vs. Swine argument that the Founding Fathers themselves had to deal with: At heart, are people angels who will always act for the public good, or swine who will always act in their own self interest. The way you structure your government depends on your answer to that question.
Life has taught me that we are, at best, pigs with wings.
I’m not. The first sentence of my post is merely an observation of a, and I believe the, fundamental difference in worldview between liberals and conservatives. Notice the use of the pronoun “I” throughout the rest of the post as I explain my beliefs.
If it is so easy then please give me a handful of examples of noncomplex democracies able to commit excesses in the eyes of the people who elect them. I know a little about history and the only government I am familiar with that was “simple and open” is Pennsylvania under its revolutionary constitution ( 1776-1790 ). Vermont basically had the same constitution at the time and Georgia was also unicameral so they might qualify but I am unfamiliar with the actual practice of government under those constitutions. Perhaps you can show me that they led to popular excesses… I doubt it but who knows? As for the rest of the world, I will accept as “simple and open” any unicameral democracy ( even parliamentary ones ) with elected terms of, say, five years or less and either without judicial review or where the entire body of law is under legislative or direct popular control.
If I were naive as you say then I’m sure you would be able to quickly come up with some counterexamples. Somehow I doubt you will be able to. If and when you fail can I expect you to admit your error?
That is the standard American theory of government, yes. I use different maxims. Just because we disagree doesn’t make your theory right and mine wrong. That’s why we use the term “theory”.
And just because I disagree doesn’t mean I don’t understand the standard American theory of government. I grok it; I just think it is all wet. What I am becoming increasingly aware of is that you are one of those people who has difficulty seeing the difference between your opinion and reality.
I missed your post the first time around. Sorry. I wasn’t ignoring it.
Pardon me but are you claiming to be liberal? If so do you mean it as the word is commonly used today? Because, as I said, us liberals tend to have a more generous view of human nature than you have displayed so far.
And as I have said to This Year’s Model, I understand the standard American theory of government. I’ve heard the refrain that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutly over and over. I realize it is taken as an article of faith that if all, or even most, governmental power were put in the hands of a single body then things would quickly devolve into fascism. I believe that this truism flurishes because of American ignorance of foreign politics.
I’m American too and I suffer from our insular attitude. I’m not an expert on how Great Britian runs her government but from what I’ve heard the House of Commons runs the whole show. The House of Lords can only delay things for a year. The Crown can only delay things for as long as it takes to hold elections and reform a dissolved government. The courts can only delay things for as long as it takes for the Commons to pass a bill overruling the judicial ruling. That seems like pretty much all of the political power to me.
So, if I am wrong and you are right, how come Britain isn’t a fascist state?
Or is it?
And that overly-generous view bites liberals in the ass repeatedly.
Take environmental issues. Now I was a kid in the early seventies, and I remember the days when smokestacks billowed gigantic plumes of filth into the sky day and night, and everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, chucked any trash they generated while driving to the side of the road, where it collected in foot-high piles that stretched along the sides of every major highway. Things are a lot cleaner now, and liberal reforms taken then are the reason.
Pollution doesn’t know from state borders, and many types don’t stay where you leave them. Any problem where differences between state regulations can place burden on another state qualifies as a problem to be solved at the federal level in my book. If Louisiana wanted to keep its stretch of the Mississippi clean, there’s not much they could do on their own if Missouri decides in can dump whatever it wants to in the river.
I like the idea of the EPA, but somewhere in its design, the people who designed it somehow failed to provide for the contingency of when a non-tree-hugger gets assigned there. The EPA pretty much has total control over the environmental policy of the nation, and when an arch-conservative appoints the governor of a state that wouldn’t know a clean environment if it walked up and peed on them to the post, havoc can ensue. You can’t assume that a tree-hugger will always hold that office, but somehow, the lawmakers who created the EPA thought they’d banished evil from the globe with their actions. Too bad.
Britain is not a fascist state at the moment because their parties are built into the political structure through proportional representation, which, as we have seen people argue on this board endlessly, may promote the flourishing of more that one oppositional party to keep the ruling party in check.
Parliament is structured in such a way that the Chief Executive, the Prime Minister, is always in the same party that controls the House of Commons, which enables things to get done quickly. Great for you if your party is in charge, not so much if it isn’t. As long as British public opinion remains reasonably divided between the platforms of several parties, the ruling party is always going to have to compromise their thrust to get anything done.
However, this little political utopia has the potential to crumble the instant that British public opnion solidifies to the point that one party obtains enough seats that they need not worry about the opposition. If that party had, shall we say, something far less than the good of all mankind in their hearts, then the quick-acting abilities of Parliament become a potentially horrific liability rather than an asset.
For this very reason, parties are not built into our constitution, although various procedures dilute that somewhat, such as the prevalent EC system.
Our federal governent is designed to move slowly, and only speeds up when one branch decides to abdicate its responsibility to check the power of the others.
You put the House in charge of selecting the President, then you’ve guaranteed an effective one-party state.
You’ve defined something that doesn’t exist. “Without judicial review?” Even non-democracies have judges to interpret and enforce the laws. There’s no such thing as a democracy that “entire body of law is under legislative or direct popular control” without any way of being overturned. But as long as I’m here one last time, how about the French revolution? How about late Weimar-early Hitler Germany? Surely you would admit those involved some popular excesses.
If I have anything to contribute to the OP, as in polls, or any groundswell of opinion here on the amendment, I’ll pop back in and note it. Otherwise, I’m done here.
So you are complaining that the EPA isn’t a perfect solution? That’s hardly a surprise. We have a contingency for when the EPA doesn’t follow the law. You take them to court.
Actually the House of Commons is elected in single member districts, just like the House of Representatives.
Great if you are interested in finding out if the policies of the majority party will work.
Why? If they believe the policies they promised to enact to get elected will work then why would they dilute them? They have the power to pass laws without compromise and if the policies work as advertised their belief will be vindicated and their grip on power strengthened.
But if their ideas work then they don’t have to worry about the ideas of the opposition.
If so they can be voted out at the next election and the new government will be able to act just as quickly to rectify the situation. This is a point a lot of people miss. When you make it hard for the government to do things you make it hard for the government to undo things.
Only so long as that party’s policies remain effective. Once they lose a single election they are completely out of power.
I never said any exists, now did I? The example I gave was historical. If you can’t find any counterexamples that’s your problem, not mine.
As it happens though, I think you are wrong. As I said to scotandrsn, British judges can only delay things for as long as it takes for the Commons to pass a bill overruling the judicial ruling. Yes their courts interpret the law but that interpretation can be overturned by a simple act of Parliament. There the entire body of law is under legislative control.
Not in Germany. The Nazis never were that popular. They never won a majority and anyways, terrorism isn’t democracy. They did as well as they did at the polls with a campaign strategy of beatings, torture, and assassination. The French Revolution is a famous example of popular excess but the lesson isn’t the danger of democracy but the danger of repression. Forcing people to endure the misery of the sans coulettes for generation after generation creates a flood of hatred that, if it breaks free, can drown peasant and aristocrat alike.
If the National Assembly were able to maintain its authority after the Terror subsided I believe they would have found a more moderate approach. In my example when the Quaker State got started it required a loyalty oath. This disenfanchised not just Loyalists but the Quakers as well. But after a few years the Constitutionalists ( supporters of the constitution of 1776 ) proved unable to maintain this policy. Quakers and former Tories regained the vote even before the new constitution of 1790. I never said excesses wouldn’t happen. I just said I trusted the people to reign them in. Going back to my spoiled children analogy, you can’t expect a kid to be perfect but you can expect them to learn from their mistakes.
Speaking as a conservative Republican who doesn’t like the Electoral College system and would prefer direct elections…
I still don’t see the point of a unilateral move by Colorado to divide the electors in proportion to the popular vote. Yeah, my quibble may seem suspect to liberals- after all, the immediate beneficiaries of such a change would be the Democrats. Colorado is USUALLY (not always) a safely Republican state after all, and proportional division of the electors would give the Democrats some votes from a state that usually gives them none.
But as a practical matter, if Colorado were to adopt this plan, they’d be making themselves utterly irrelevant in future Presidentiual campaigns. Let’s face it, if Colorado had a proportional system, both Presidential candidates would say “Well, if I win Colorado, I get 5 votes. If I lose, I get 4.” So, the bottom line is, a win in Colorado nets me 1 measly electoral vote. So, screw Colorado. If I win, I’ll take my lousy 1 net vote, and if I lose, I’m only down 1 in the Electoral College. Big deal." And no candidate would bother campaigning in Colorado, which would now be of less value than even Wyoming.
Again, I’ll be happy to see the Electoral College go. Pass around a petition to abolish it, and I’ll gladly sign it. But until the Electoral College is dissolved, it makes no sense for any one state to throw away whatever clout it has there.
