So Oregon has more weight in the EC than a straight population vote. See the protection now?
No. California still has a combined IQ of 90, and still gets to just outstrip the rest of the west with the Moron Contingent. If Oregon gets 7 votes, so should California. That would be protection.
BTW, when do y'all plan on paying us back for the electricity you stole in 2001?
Of course, you can still do what I do - apply for an absentee ballot and mail it in.
Don't do that. Go *really* vote. Many states prohibit by law registering absentee unless you're going to be out-of-state on election day, and no state counts it's absentee ballots unless there is a tie.
plenty of federal dollars go to Johnstown, PA, which is represented by one of Bush's staunchest political rivals in Congress. Any disparity to Bush's political rivals would be occurring because of the incompetence of those representatives, who should be replaced.
There's a world of difference between political rivalry like you describe, and pathological hatred, which is what's happening.
Let me be explicit here: suppose a majority of the districts in the US want to pass a law. Suppose the population of the US, centered in one state, don't want to pass the law. Congress gets elected, and tries to pass the law. The districts are happy. The president vetoes the law - the population is happy. Both Congress and the President get reelected, because their constituency is still happy. And it continues on.
That happens anyway. Stem-cell research anyone? The only difference now is the electoral college reinforces that we cannot democratically remove the problem.
The executive isn't nearly as powerful as you think it is. If it is, we've already lost, and we should just up and start over again.
If you think it's easier to massage votes in a republic than in a democracy, you're crazy. In one case, you've got 50 individual elections you need to rig. In another, it's just one.
Who says eliminating the electoral college would take the counting out of the hands of the states? I'm just saying the states report their numbers, and the feds come up with a grand total instead of the EC system. I'm in no way advocating a federal election system, that's obviously stupidly insane for the reason you state.
With one vote per person, you have an executive which is representative of a different country than the legislature. Explain that one to me. You'll have a situation where the legislature and the executive never agree on some things because they're sponsored by two different populations.
This is different from now how? Look at federal dollars going to states President Bush has openly stated he hates (Oregon has been baselessly compared to Lebanon by pretty much every member of the Bush family holding a political office). Compare that to federal dollars going to Texas or his native Massachusetts. Even if you break it down per capita, the states Bush doesn't like still get kicked in the teeth.
I don't see how you can possibly hate the electoral college and yet support the relative sizes of the House and Senate. It's exactly the same thing. Proportionally, Wyoming will still have 3X the congressmen than California has.
Because we're not talking about the one person that sets the federal agenda and holds veto power over everyone else. The executive branch is where our system breaks down.
Of course, what's funny is that if you read the constitution and try not to believe that every little thing possible is crammed into the interstate commerce clause, then that's pretty much what the founding fathers intended in the first place. Maybe the experiment isn't quite over yet;)
I'm not sure anybody that can float to the highest ranks of our system has anything but contempt for the constitution these days. Why have 50 small countries when you can have an empire?
Demogogs love this idea. The understand they only have to control California and New York and they can bend the entire country to their will.
You mean like they already do? It's not like California has the same number of votes as Oregon...no, instead California has an order of magnitude more. If the Senate were voting for president, then the EC concept would make sense, since all states have the same number of senators.
The Electoral College was a mechanism put in place to prevent the rise of populist demagogues, on the assumption that the elected officials at the state levels would be less likely to be swept up in mob psychology furor to throw over the democratic structures in order to put a hero on the throne.
The irony is that it makes it easier since there isn't any mandate for EC voters to follow the local popular vote. Really, they only have to campaign for the few hundred people who hold EC voting privs.
Federalism is a good idea. It is a good idea to have certain aspects of governance be adminstered by local subgovernments. But that is all states are: local subgovernments.
Someone either failed history class, or had a history class that didn't teach state history (and I feel sorry that you have so little historical perspective on the state and country you live). States are supposed to have the majority of power with the feds only working out what the states can't, not the other way around. Now go enroll in some state history at your local community college for your own good.
It's not just semantics. It's counter to the very idea of States' rights. While the EC was meant to approximate the elective power of each state according to their population, it reserves the right of each state to allot their votes as they choose. Most states have a winner-take-all system, but at least one state splits its EC votes according to the popular vote in that state.
Please note that except with very little exception, this is by tradition only. Very few states mandate their EC delegates votes reflect the outcome of the local popular vote. It's possible for someone to get elected president that *nobody* wanted except a couple hundred people who happen to have EC votes.
Even better would be a three-way split: The US, CSA and the Californian Republic. God knows Oregon, Nevada and Arizona see a clear need to stop immigration from California...
The Electoral College system has one huge advantage over the "one vote per person" system. It's flexible. One vote per person is not.
Yup, easier to massage votes that way. You work for Diebold, eh?
Even if you fix this, a Montana citizen still has 1/2 the representation that a Wyoming citizen does in the House of Representatives, and a California citizen has a minimal representation in the Senate compared to a Wyoming citizen as well. Why is this okay, but the Electoral College is not? Your argument essentially undermines the entire foundation of the country.
At least with one vote per person, there isn't any illusion of balance that doesn't exist in an unnecessary, outdated administrivia designed to put enough English-literate people in one spot to vote. It was installed as a stopgap measure so there would be enough informed voters during a time that almost nobody could read. The only way to keep the EC and make it work the way you describe is if 1 state gets 1 vote, or abolish it. Anything in between makes every presidential election a dangerous crapshoot.
Because that was the way our founding fathers configured it. Intentionally.
Has it ever occurred to you that the founding fathers might be wrong, or might not have had any foresight at all? I'm kind of tired that people worship the "founding fathers" like they were noble heros, when really they just had it in for the British and spent the vast majority of their time drafting the declaration of independence and the constitution while drunk off their asses in a pub across from Independence Hall. The fact that a nation can be founded by a group of beligerant drunkards and last 200+ years is amazing in and of itself, but that doesn't mean that it's going to work as smoothly for another 200 years, or even 20. It's like reading Leviticus out of the Bible and expecting it to be 100% congruent with today's society (Example: Are you wearing any clothes of mixed fibers? That's a sin on the same level as screwing animals according to the Bible). That's not to say that they weren't right about some things, just their message doesn't stand the test of time. What worked back then doesn't necessarily work for us now in the 2000s.
Or perhaps I should say that our Founding Fathers configured it so that each state would have a say, not the individual. The only reason why a person in New York has a vote at all is because the state of New York decides that you have a vote. Comparing your vote to the fellow in Wyoming is ridiculous. He's voting for how his state's electoral votes will be counted, and the New York fellow is voting for how his state's votes will be counted.
English literacy was not America's (or any country's) strongpoint at that time, most people couldn't read. The idea of the electoral college was to make sure someone in the crowd could read when it came time to vote. English literacy being 90+% now obsoletes the EC's original purpose.
Better dissolve the individual governments, and subject them all to total rule from the Federal government.
We tried that once and nearly imploded because of it and had to start over again: Nobody could get the states to agree on anything. Better to go with an EU-style system of state soveriegnty and let the federal government handle only issues that cannot be handled at an individual level. Yes, I am advocating the federal government becomes a mostly hands-off treaty organization holding nearly no power over member states. The worst enemy any individual state has at the moment is it's immediate neighbors.
Or, rather, it could do the opposite. A voter could be in a state with a small population where his vote would count more. Perhaps he would be in a state that is nearly split down the middle, and his vote may matter more with the electoral college than with the gross sum voting system. The electoral college is there to give each region (state) as much power as the next region in the federation, creating a balance of power in the federal level.
What you say would make sense if Oregon got, say, five votes, and California got, say, five votes. Instead, California has a combined voting power greater than that of all the states within an eight hour drive of California combined. Oops, forgot about that, didn't you?
If I could vote for "none of the above" and if enough people did it it would them find another contender... then I'd be truly interested.
Read your ballot's instructions before voting. I've yet to hear of one or see one that didn't say, "If you want to abstain, do not select any candidate for that office. If you want to choose a candidate not on the ballot, follow the write-in instructions."
You gotta remember...this is a union of STATES, each one actually, is similar to a small country joined together with the other states. And as large and varied as the cultures, resources and environments as the US is...this isn't necessarily a bad thing.
It is when one state, like California, shits in it's own bed for the better part of a century, then instead of cleaning it up themselves, they just move to Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, or Arizona and start shitting in those beds, too. Go ask those states if they think open borders are a good idea and I think you'll be surprised with the response.
If you can file your taxes online, why not vote online? Some people say that it couldn't be secure, or that there's no way to implement it, but if they can do taxes online they can certainly do that. Brazil implemented internet voting awhile ago, if they can do it there's no reason the US can't.
Brazil doesn't have Diebold as a viable political force, and at a national level supports open source software. Don't even begin to think that can happen in a country owned by it's corporations.
Lots of those people don't know about absentee ballots, and/or don't know how to get them.
Never mind it's illegal to register absentee in most states unless you're going to be out of state on election day (or in Oregon's case, which has no election day, for the entire six weeks of the election), and US law requires employers to excuse employees without retribution to go vote on election day in states that still have an election day.
That is nice to know, but I think we should celebrate elections much we do other holidays. Voting should be a celebration, but not a hassle or a burden where we have to stand up and ask our employers time off when we know it will be 6 hours in line at the polls.
It's not our fault your state hasn't taken Oregon's lead in abolishing the voting booth altogether. You get six weeks to vote, and you can vote anywhere you choose as long as you get your ballot back to county elections by 7PM on the last day of the election (formerly known as Election Day before we abolished it).
Actually, proposals for mandatory voting aren't as crazy as they sound. All of the quasi-sane ones also put a "blank vote" on the ballot. That way, you can say "I don't support either candidate (or have any idea what's going on), but I want my vote to count".
You have that option already. To abstain (ie, vote against all candidates with a null vote), simply don't choose either candidate. Works for Oregon.
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No. California still has a combined IQ of 90, and still gets to just outstrip the rest of the west with the Moron Contingent. If Oregon gets 7 votes, so should California. That would be protection.
BTW, when do y'all plan on paying us back for the electricity you stole in 2001?
Please report your spam, or at least throw it at me so I can add the source to bl.ursine.ca...
Your abstain vote still counts as a vote, but not for any candidate. You're the one being obtuse. RTF Voting M.
Don't do that. Go *really* vote. Many states prohibit by law registering absentee unless you're going to be out-of-state on election day, and no state counts it's absentee ballots unless there is a tie.
People who don't understand that "abstain" means "none of the above" should be legally prohibited from voting.
You're assuming that Bush won't seize a third term for himself.
There's a world of difference between political rivalry like you describe, and pathological hatred, which is what's happening.
Let me be explicit here: suppose a majority of the districts in the US want to pass a law. Suppose the population of the US, centered in one state, don't want to pass the law. Congress gets elected, and tries to pass the law. The districts are happy. The president vetoes the law - the population is happy. Both Congress and the President get reelected, because their constituency is still happy. And it continues on.
That happens anyway. Stem-cell research anyone? The only difference now is the electoral college reinforces that we cannot democratically remove the problem.
The executive isn't nearly as powerful as you think it is. If it is, we've already lost, and we should just up and start over again.
Yes, yes we should.
Aah, there we go. Thanks very much, that was quite informative.
Who says eliminating the electoral college would take the counting out of the hands of the states? I'm just saying the states report their numbers, and the feds come up with a grand total instead of the EC system. I'm in no way advocating a federal election system, that's obviously stupidly insane for the reason you state.
With one vote per person, you have an executive which is representative of a different country than the legislature. Explain that one to me. You'll have a situation where the legislature and the executive never agree on some things because they're sponsored by two different populations.
This is different from now how? Look at federal dollars going to states President Bush has openly stated he hates (Oregon has been baselessly compared to Lebanon by pretty much every member of the Bush family holding a political office). Compare that to federal dollars going to Texas or his native Massachusetts. Even if you break it down per capita, the states Bush doesn't like still get kicked in the teeth.
I don't see how you can possibly hate the electoral college and yet support the relative sizes of the House and Senate. It's exactly the same thing. Proportionally, Wyoming will still have 3X the congressmen than California has.
Because we're not talking about the one person that sets the federal agenda and holds veto power over everyone else. The executive branch is where our system breaks down.
I'm not sure anybody that can float to the highest ranks of our system has anything but contempt for the constitution these days. Why have 50 small countries when you can have an empire?
You mean like they already do? It's not like California has the same number of votes as Oregon...no, instead California has an order of magnitude more. If the Senate were voting for president, then the EC concept would make sense, since all states have the same number of senators.
The irony is that it makes it easier since there isn't any mandate for EC voters to follow the local popular vote. Really, they only have to campaign for the few hundred people who hold EC voting privs.
Someone either failed history class, or had a history class that didn't teach state history (and I feel sorry that you have so little historical perspective on the state and country you live). States are supposed to have the majority of power with the feds only working out what the states can't, not the other way around. Now go enroll in some state history at your local community college for your own good.
Citation needed. All media accounts that I've heard about the election has said observers found voting irregularities nationwide.
Please note that except with very little exception, this is by tradition only. Very few states mandate their EC delegates votes reflect the outcome of the local popular vote. It's possible for someone to get elected president that *nobody* wanted except a couple hundred people who happen to have EC votes.
Even better would be a three-way split: The US, CSA and the Californian Republic. God knows Oregon, Nevada and Arizona see a clear need to stop immigration from California...
Yup, easier to massage votes that way. You work for Diebold, eh?
Even if you fix this, a Montana citizen still has 1/2 the representation that a Wyoming citizen does in the House of Representatives, and a California citizen has a minimal representation in the Senate compared to a Wyoming citizen as well. Why is this okay, but the Electoral College is not? Your argument essentially undermines the entire foundation of the country.
At least with one vote per person, there isn't any illusion of balance that doesn't exist in an unnecessary, outdated administrivia designed to put enough English-literate people in one spot to vote. It was installed as a stopgap measure so there would be enough informed voters during a time that almost nobody could read. The only way to keep the EC and make it work the way you describe is if 1 state gets 1 vote, or abolish it. Anything in between makes every presidential election a dangerous crapshoot.
Has it ever occurred to you that the founding fathers might be wrong, or might not have had any foresight at all? I'm kind of tired that people worship the "founding fathers" like they were noble heros, when really they just had it in for the British and spent the vast majority of their time drafting the declaration of independence and the constitution while drunk off their asses in a pub across from Independence Hall. The fact that a nation can be founded by a group of beligerant drunkards and last 200+ years is amazing in and of itself, but that doesn't mean that it's going to work as smoothly for another 200 years, or even 20. It's like reading Leviticus out of the Bible and expecting it to be 100% congruent with today's society (Example: Are you wearing any clothes of mixed fibers? That's a sin on the same level as screwing animals according to the Bible). That's not to say that they weren't right about some things, just their message doesn't stand the test of time. What worked back then doesn't necessarily work for us now in the 2000s.
Or perhaps I should say that our Founding Fathers configured it so that each state would have a say, not the individual. The only reason why a person in New York has a vote at all is because the state of New York decides that you have a vote. Comparing your vote to the fellow in Wyoming is ridiculous. He's voting for how his state's electoral votes will be counted, and the New York fellow is voting for how his state's votes will be counted.
English literacy was not America's (or any country's) strongpoint at that time, most people couldn't read. The idea of the electoral college was to make sure someone in the crowd could read when it came time to vote. English literacy being 90+% now obsoletes the EC's original purpose.
Better dissolve the individual governments, and subject them all to total rule from the Federal government.
We tried that once and nearly imploded because of it and had to start over again: Nobody could get the states to agree on anything. Better to go with an EU-style system of state soveriegnty and let the federal government handle only issues that cannot be handled at an individual level. Yes, I am advocating the federal government becomes a mostly hands-off treaty organization holding nearly no power over member states. The worst enemy any individual state has at the moment is it's immediate neighbors.
What you say would make sense if Oregon got, say, five votes, and California got, say, five votes. Instead, California has a combined voting power greater than that of all the states within an eight hour drive of California combined. Oops, forgot about that, didn't you?
Read your ballot's instructions before voting. I've yet to hear of one or see one that didn't say, "If you want to abstain, do not select any candidate for that office. If you want to choose a candidate not on the ballot, follow the write-in instructions."
It is when one state, like California, shits in it's own bed for the better part of a century, then instead of cleaning it up themselves, they just move to Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, or Arizona and start shitting in those beds, too. Go ask those states if they think open borders are a good idea and I think you'll be surprised with the response.
Brazil doesn't have Diebold as a viable political force, and at a national level supports open source software. Don't even begin to think that can happen in a country owned by it's corporations.
Never mind it's illegal to register absentee in most states unless you're going to be out of state on election day (or in Oregon's case, which has no election day, for the entire six weeks of the election), and US law requires employers to excuse employees without retribution to go vote on election day in states that still have an election day.
It's not our fault your state hasn't taken Oregon's lead in abolishing the voting booth altogether. You get six weeks to vote, and you can vote anywhere you choose as long as you get your ballot back to county elections by 7PM on the last day of the election (formerly known as Election Day before we abolished it).
You have that option already. To abstain (ie, vote against all candidates with a null vote), simply don't choose either candidate. Works for Oregon.