Slashdot Mirror
Iowa Seeks To Remove Electoral College
Zebano writes "Since changing the US constitution is too much work, the Iowa senate is considering a bill that would send all 7 of Iowa's electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote in a presidential election. This would only go into affect after enough states totaling 270 electoral votes (enough to elect a president) adopted similar resolutions."
Finally us white aristocratic land owners won't be the only ones electing the president!
Well, one thing I can assure you is that your vote will NOT count in Iowa, should this bill pass into law.
Your vote will count in Iowa, as long as you don't vote there.
--
Oh, wait.
Apparently I could drop a daisy cutter on your house and not kill anyone who knows where Iowa is.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
What you see as a flaw is still seen as a feature by many.
It seems to me that populists on slashdot who would normally suppose that the population of the country/world is overwhelmingly stupid want 'pure' democracy - yet in any other situation would rant at the lunacy of the matter.
Think about this, Slashdot: most of you make well over the median or average US income. Americans are, in this day and age, overwhelmingly socialist (in the "what can I get?" sense) as evidenced by the election of Barack Obama. What do you think is going to happen to that "wealth discrepancy" when the wild masses get absolute control of the government after they realize they can vote themselves affluence?
I'll tell you one thing... it won't be free markets or anything relating to self-determination. It'll be Animal Farm style democracy.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The idea of the Electoral college is to stop the largely populated areas from dominating the smaller and rural areas with policy that simple doesn't translate effectivly.
I saw some guy's sig a while back that summed it up more concisely-
The electoral college: Affirmative action for rednecks.
Now look! We've figured it 17 different ways, and each time we figured it, it was no good, because no matter how we figured it, somebody don't like the way we figured it! So now, there's only one way to figure it. And that is, every man, including the old bag, for himself!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Or there's the One Man, One Vote system in Terry Pratchett's Ankh Morpork: The Patrician is the one man, and he has the one vote.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
The British have a parliamentary system and your parties actually stand for something.
Oh my God, someone's removed this person's cynicism organ! Nurse, get him to the operating theatre immediately!