I take it you have never purchased heard of restricted (non-refundable, non-transferrable) airline fares.
Airline fares are not comparable to software. One is a service, the other is a product.
After the ticket is sold to you, the airline is perfectly free to decide "You know what? Flying sucks- I'm going into the donut business". You hired someone to perform a future service, but he has the right to back out at any time (which reverts ownership of the monies paid). Life insurance and music concerts work the same way.
Software, obviously, is different. Once the Windows XP box is in your hands, you couldn't care less if Bill Gates flips out and burns down Microsoft HQ the next day. You've got your product, and don't need them anymore.
The license for which YOU PAID FOR is a restricted license which is sold to you at a discount in exchange for the ability to transfer the license to another machine.
There is no legal way a copyright holder can command a person not to pass his legally-acquired copy to someone else. The Right of First Sale is very clear in most nations. Only if they secured an agreement from you before shipping the product would they have legal standing.
The EULA is especially invalid in cases like this, where the purchaser never opened shrinkwrap or clicked-through a license.
Well fine, so then lets get rid of the EC then. The 3/5 compromise was removed.
One could argue it was never really removed. For all practical purposes, it's still in effect, and states recieve a population bonus equal to 3/5s of every slave. Thing is, there's not enough slaves to really make it noticable.
I'd cry Godwin's Law, but I think I brought it on myself. I'll just point out that Nazis never were a numerical majority in Germany- people voted for them out of fear.
Sure, card-carrying Nazis were a minority... but the massacres of Jews and Gypsies was supported by a large majority of the German public.
In fact, there were many anti-Nazi groups that decided to temporarily hold back from critizing Hitler until the Jewish Problem was eliminated.
The line about "Oh, I'm a good man, if I ever voted for the Nazis it was out of fear for my life" was concocted out of reasonable fear of persecution, but that doesn't mean it's true.
nothing about *agents of the state*- only *Congress*.
Normal public schools are agents of the federal Congress.
Most recent one I heard about was a couple of years back- a football team in a middle school in some southern state which had a tradition of the captain of the football team (not the coach, but one of the kids) praying before every game
because an insane person is half as likely to vote, etc
That's untrue. In the USA, the clinically insane have a much above-average voting rate. (Apparently because their nurses want any excuse for a field trip)
One cannot be truly for a free market, laisez faire, and then turn around and be for the regulation of politics.
Sure you can. In fact, that's the only way a free market can survive. Any free market will eventually tend to accumulate power towards a minority of the investors (typically people who capitalize on a natural monopoly). Once that happens, the market is no longer free- the monopolist can control it by fiat, just like a king or dictator. Only a force outside the market (whether an armed revolution, or just federal trust-busters) can bring it back towards freedom.
In the same vein, an anarchal government cannot provide personal freedom (for very long).
to freely be able to pray as their own religion demands
I suppose there are some religions which demand that, but none based on the Christian New Testament. It forbids public prayer.
Too bad a small minority is forcing atheism on the schools then- by your own argument the current situation of *no* prayer in schools is forcing a religious belief on children.
Statements like that further underscore that you don't even know what "religious" means. Of course, since you said that one religion is about as good as another, we already knew that.
when Clinton was in office, people in conservative states were disadvantaged by his more liberal domestic policy.
False! Clinton's domestic policy was a lot more conservative than either the Bush before or after him. It was Reagan who shifted the Republican party away from conservatism.
This is not a fault of the Electoral College. It is a fault of Texas, which decided that all of its electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote.
No, it's the EC's fault. Given that the EC exists, and people want their votes to be effective, statewise allocation is inevitable.
Other states do it differently.
Only states too small to have meaningful influence under any voting regime.
And you mean "complete nonsense", not "completely nonsensical",
No. "Nonsensical" was exactly the word I wanted. The grammar of both phrases is fine, but the connotation of the words is somewhat different. "Nonsense" would mean it doesn't fit there at all, while "nonsensical" means it can fit, but it was silly of you to select it. If you'd said "my bannanas keep spinning", that would've been nonsense.
At least a slave owner had to provide food, clothing, and shelter- and if he wanted to protect his investment, medical care as well.
No he didn't. He could decide to starve or directly kill the slave at any time. Sure, if he's economically rational, he'll want to keep some of them alive- a concern Wal-Mart shares.
Yes- too bad when they got here their descendants ended up with $2.13/hr minimum wage, with tips.
And the ability to quit if you don't like it, and a lot fewer people beating on you with horsewhips.
the new slave class, just under a different name because they get paid less than it costs to keep a slave.
False. If slavery were legal today, the daily cost would be between $0.90 (young female) and $2.50 (adult male).
Really? wow can you point the the part of the authority they gave him in which they said you must meet these conditions? Can you point to how he did not meet those conditions.
Sure. Just read Bush's own speech when he asked Congress for that vote. It's the 4th paragraph from the end:
Later this week, the United States Congress will vote on this matter. I have asked Congress to authorize the use of America's military, if it proves necessary, to enforce U.N. Security Council demands. Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable.
Did the UN Security Council demand an invasion and occupation of Iraq?
When an American compares combatants in some conflict to the Revolutionary Americans, I usually take that as an expression of sympathy with said combatants.
That's your problem, then. A quick look at the facts: In the following paragraph, change "rebels" to either "American Minutemen" or "Iraqi Insurgents" and change "occupiers" to either "British Redcoats" or "US Army".
The rebels are scattered, and lack traditional military organization, but they've turned this into an advantage. Their unorthodox fighting style refuses to meet the well disciplined, better armed occupier on it's own terms, and instead strikes by surprise, before blending into the civilian population. It may be dishonorable, but the effectiveness cannot be denied. With each death, the occupier's foot-soldiers are less and less enthused to fight and die on distant soil. These losses aggravate the occupier into foolish
civilian massacres which only amplify the resistance against them. Despite their naval dominance, the relentless propaganda defeats mean that the occupiers will probably never succeed in reconstituting a friendly government to export the area's natural resources without demanding a high payment for itself.
There are important differences, however. The Redcoats had the advantage of speaking the same language of the contested people, making counterinsurgency easier. Not only could they conduct quick interrogations to discern friend and foe, but the American public was more likely to accept leadership imposed by someone at least culturally and religiously similar. Also, the Minutemen had the benefit of outside support from a world superpower.
So, by the simple factors, the Iraqi Insurgents are more likely than the American Minutemen to be ultimately victorious. The safest way for the USA to win is to redefine their expectations of success.
True, although you don't mention why this is: it's because the Congressmen themselves are allowed to modify their district boundaries, carefully working to maintain a majority of their own supporters. A household not voting for you? Push it into another district!
If districts were laid down by a preset mathmatical formula that only went by head-count and no other factors, then the Congressional stagnation wouldn't happen. Allowing Congressmen to pick who gets to vote for them means they'll almost never be voted out. The word of the day is gerrymandering!
Without the electoral college, candidates would have to focus on even less than 30% of the voters.
How do you figure??
By your own calculation, the EC allows someone controlling the correct 30% of voters to cement a win. Without the EC, you're only assured of victory after reaching 51% votes.
With the EC, winning all of the coastal states is one way to play it; without the EC, it would be the only thing that mattered.
False. Without it, you could win one coast and not the other, for example. Just like you could today- 2 votes added to every state just isn't enough of a difference to make any major pattern succeed or fail. Nobody can ever win without serious coastal support, and Bush gets everything from Virgina southward.
I've done the math, and even if we removed the "Senator bonus" within the next week, it still wouldn't push Kerry over the top. (That would make it 179-247, instead of 207-317, which is the current projection)
If he had openly endorsed it, it would have been disqualified from the Academy Awards.
He's already been disqualified by leasing it for TV broadcast this year. It will be on next month.
The real reason he couldn't put it online is that he doesn't have 100% copyright ownership. It's not his decision to make.
but it is important to the producers and the financial backers.
Not for this film. True, many movies get revitalized popularity after an Oscar win- but F911 has an onrushing expiration date. After the US election, nobody will care about it. All the profits need to come now. (And it's already earned far more than they hoped, which is why Moore is personally alright with free internet trading)
he shows a clip of some politician claiming "and we've set up an 800 number so you can call us and complain," and inserts a little subtitle claiming "this isn't true." The truth is that the phone number was (and still is) a 1-888 number
Wrong. At the time F911 came out, there was no number at all. Only in response to the movie was the number created. (And it's not 888, either)
The most balanced objective take on the file I've seen so far is the point by point list of deceits.
I can already find multiple obvious lies in that file... and an even greater number of deciets (using truth in a misleading way). The single funniest mistake is #21, although it's irrelevant to the overall theme. The Crusader was NOT a missile! There's even some weird things like #35 and #36, which affirms a fact and then immediately claims it's not true- even though that same document just said so! #42 is funny too, because by those standards, the Bush Administration were also Al Quaeda collaborators.
#58 is by far the gravest lie and reveals a true bias by the file's author:
In Fahrenheit, Moore pretends to support our troops. But in fact, he supports the enemy
In reality, he said the enemy was going to win; that's a pessimistic prediction, not a statement of support. For example, I don't support G.W. Bush, but I do say he's going to win re-election.
Still, it would be nice to have a version of F911 containing only the facts, minus Moore's leading sarcasm. Bush would only come off worse if you actually sit there watching him for 7 minutes without a stream of jokes in the background. Maybe a special "no director commentary" feature on the DVD.
it also ensures a final vote that has zero statistic error.
It does no such thing!
There is zero doubt about the legitimacy of the Presidency in such as system.
Just because the final addition is too simple for any math errors to creep in, it absolutely doesn't protect the result from doubt about legitimacy. Or haven't you noticed the bumper stickers with "Let's not elect him in 2004 either" ?
Mathmatically, error propagates throughout expressions. If term B isn't believed to be correct, then A+B+C isn't believable either. Someone who thinks (for whatever reason) that Florida was counted wrong won't agree that Bush really won.
The bicameral legislature is a compromise that is functioning as it was designed. The electoral college is not, due to mathematical mistakes.
I don't really see what's that different between the 2 Senators and the 2 Electoral votes each state recieves regardless of population. Both are an intentional shifting of power to less populous states.
The only real difference between them is that it's possible for a state's 2 senators to be of different parties, while the electoral votes (aside from 2 minor exceptions) always go to just one party.
I suppose that avoids the biggest unfairness, because a 49%-48% D-R split won't go completely Democrat, but it's a rather minor difference.
Currently 13 of the 50 states have Senators of different parties. In the big picture, Senators' role in lawmaking is tremendously more influential than the 2 Electoral Votes attached to them.
PS. For a point of accuracy, the bicarmeral system has 2 different desired effects, but only one relates to this discussion: giving a boost to less populated states. The other is to impair the federal government's ability to make rapid changes, by requiring all new laws to be passed twice. Hopefully the other house will notice any stupid oversights from the first time a bill was approved. However, that function could be performed even if the senate was also assigned by population.
This is not the fault of the EC itself. This is a fault at the state level, because each state decides how to assign the EC votes.
No, it's the nearly inevitable result of the EC. Given that states are controlled by humans, and all humans want power, then states will choose the method that gives them the most power. Winner-Takes-All allocation does this. Texas is controlled by Republicans, therefore the assignment of Electoral Votes is entirely up to them. Will they give all 34 to Bush, or send 11 to Kerry out of regard for the 30% vote he gets in the state? Hmm... tough question.
So petition your state legislature! It's easier to make a change at the state level than at the federal.
The only reasonable approach is a widespread campaign for public support, followed by a national amendment to impose one allocation regime on all states. It's a case of "Ok, I'll lower my gun, if you put yours down at the same time"
You can't just completely ignore people's concerns because they're a minority.
"Power in proportion to your population" is somewhat different from "completely ignore"
the primary reason that pure democracy doesn't work!
No. The prime reason is that it's overly time-consuming to hold a nationwide election each time we need to tow a parked car.
Hell by now a large amount of our military signed up post 9/11 and have no excuse to say they didn't know.
Signing up then implies you desired or expected to go to Afganistan, or someplace else where international Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists might hide. But Iraq isn't one of those places. (Yes, there are terrorists in Iraq... now. And yes, they're "international" in some way. But the kinds of guys who can work an insurgency in the desert are completely different from the type of people that could sneak bombs into USA cities)
Either way if there was a draft I would agree with your statement,
It's not just the people, but also the money spent on the war. It comes from federal income taxes. Montana gets a relatively larger amount of control of how those taxes are spent, without needing to increase the amount they pay in.
That's a minor form of taxation without representation.
but there isn't these people left their states voluntarily
No they didn't- at least not all of them. The National Guard, for example, probably only thought they would respond to emergencies inside the USA, and not go off to guard fuel lines in Iraq. The military population in general signed up long before an Iraq occupation was evident, and they had no chance to change their minds later.
You can talk about rural-vs.-urban or small-state-vs.-large-state all you want, but the elephant in the living room of the electoral college is that the current shape and populations of U.S. states is the result of historic accident, not logical planning.
True. The best example of this is to count the number of West Coast states (3) versus East Coast (15). That's 24 extra Electoral (and Senatorial) votes to the original colonies, just because they happen to be older and smaller.
I propose that to correct this unfairness, each Senator should be assigned a voting power multiplier proportional to the square miles of land in his home state. Similarly, the Electoral Votes for each state should be equal to (X * population + Y * acreage), instead of (X * population + 2) as it is today.
At least, it would be entertaining to see a spreadsheet of how those results played out. Alaska would suddenly have some swagger!!
Gosh, and I don't suppose any Republican is really supporting the EC for this exact same reason, do you?
I'd like to see a Republican propose dividing Montana into 25 new states, each with the land area of Rhode Island.
It is far less likely to come down to one vote with the electoral college.
That's completely backwards. It's far MORE likely to come down to one vote with the electoral college.
Assuming the country is about evenly divided, the chance of it coming to one vote is 1/(N^2), where N= the number of votes counted at once. Per-state voting means N=5,000,000; while a single national election would have N=100,000,000. Consider the ^2 and it's not even close.
Note that some people consider this fact a benefit, because it increases the chance that one vote will make a difference, providing increased incentive for everyone to vote. (But unfortunately, that incentive only applies in swing-states. Those in solid red/blue states are disinclined the same way)
The Electoral College effectively protects the smaller States from the tyrrany of the larger ones. Without it, a candidate could campaign only in the coastal states, where most of the people are, and ignore the inland areas.
No. Even with the current Electoral College, anyone who wins both coasts wins the presidency. Coastal states have more than 270 electoral votes, which is enough to defeat all inland places. (If you counted the Great Lakes as coastline, it'd be even more lopsided)
It is the States, not the People, who elect the President.
The people doing the voting don't much like that idea. If they really wanted it left to the State, they'd leave it in the hands of their governor or legislature, instead of going through the big expense of a wide-scale election.
ignore Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico (where the water and electricity would originate).
We've got a system to allow for the providers of a good or service to be compensated- it's called money.
The interests of Midwestern farmers would be ignored.
They are a small minority- why should they be disproportionately powerful? Let's play word replacement:
The EC protects the sexual perverts from the tyranny of the mainstream. Without it, a candidate could campaign only to heterosexuals, which most of the people are, and ignore the gay community. Suppose a candidate did that. He could promise marriage and tax breaks to heteros, and ignore gays. The interests of gays would be ignored.
(There are many less-silly examples I could've chosen. Bear in mind that as technology progresses, it becomes increasingly likely that a community with a common need will be geographically disperesed)
switch to a strict popular vote, then Smalltown, USA or Smallstate, USA would never get fair representation.
At best, that's a circular argument- it hinges on non-standard definition of fair. In a dictionary, "fair" means "free from favoritism or preference". You are claiming that giving them voting power based only on the number of people would be "unfair"- but that is actually expressing favoritism right there. Looked at objectively, 3 votes beating 5 votes is plainly less fair than the alternative.
Even defenders of the system must agree that it's unfair- but they claim the unfairness is justified by other factors, and that Smalltown deserves the bias.
I believe the people are better represented by moving the power back down to the State, County, and local level. Let them decide what is best for their State, and the State will represent them Federally.
That viewpoint supposes (or desires) that the national President is fairly weak. But that isn't the case- he's very powerful, and can make decisions that tremendously influence the people of each state.
When Bush pushes the nation into an Iraqi war, the effort and sacrifice is borne not by the states, but by the people. Does Montana share a bigger proportion of the costs of national-level action than California does? No. Treasure and blood comes from the population as a whole.
If the Presidency were a weak, mostly ceremonial post, then the per-capita unfairness of his selection would be less troublesome.
Slashdot Mirror
I take it you have never purchased heard of restricted (non-refundable, non-transferrable) airline fares.
Airline fares are not comparable to software. One is a service, the other is a product.
After the ticket is sold to you, the airline is perfectly free to decide "You know what? Flying sucks- I'm going into the donut business". You hired someone to perform a future service, but he has the right to back out at any time (which reverts ownership of the monies paid). Life insurance and music concerts work the same way.
Software, obviously, is different. Once the Windows XP box is in your hands, you couldn't care less if Bill Gates flips out and burns down Microsoft HQ the next day. You've got your product, and don't need them anymore.
The license for which YOU PAID FOR is a restricted license which is sold to you at a discount in exchange for the ability to transfer the license to another machine.
There is no legal way a copyright holder can command a person not to pass his legally-acquired copy to someone else. The Right of First Sale is very clear in most nations. Only if they secured an agreement from you before shipping the product would they have legal standing.
The EULA is especially invalid in cases like this, where the purchaser never opened shrinkwrap or clicked-through a license.
Well fine, so then lets get rid of the EC then. The 3/5 compromise was removed.
One could argue it was never really removed. For all practical purposes, it's still in effect, and states recieve a population bonus equal to 3/5s of every slave. Thing is, there's not enough slaves to really make it noticable.
I'd cry Godwin's Law, but I think I brought it on myself. I'll just point out that Nazis never were a numerical majority in Germany- people voted for them out of fear.
Sure, card-carrying Nazis were a minority... but the massacres of Jews and Gypsies was supported by a large majority of the German public.
In fact, there were many anti-Nazi groups that decided to temporarily hold back from critizing Hitler until the Jewish Problem was eliminated.
The line about "Oh, I'm a good man, if I ever voted for the Nazis it was out of fear for my life" was concocted out of reasonable fear of persecution, but that doesn't mean it's true.
nothing about *agents of the state*- only *Congress*.
Normal public schools are agents of the federal Congress.
Most recent one I heard about was a couple of years back- a football team in a middle school in some southern state which had a tradition of the captain of the football team (not the coach, but one of the kids) praying before every game
That anecdote only undermines your position.
because an insane person is half as likely to vote, etc
That's untrue. In the USA, the clinically insane have a much above-average voting rate. (Apparently because their nurses want any excuse for a field trip)
One cannot be truly for a free market, laisez faire, and then turn around and be for the regulation of politics.
Sure you can. In fact, that's the only way a free market can survive. Any free market will eventually tend to accumulate power towards a minority of the investors (typically people who capitalize on a natural monopoly). Once that happens, the market is no longer free- the monopolist can control it by fiat, just like a king or dictator. Only a force outside the market (whether an armed revolution, or just federal trust-busters) can bring it back towards freedom.
In the same vein, an anarchal government cannot provide personal freedom (for very long).
to freely be able to pray as their own religion demands
I suppose there are some religions which demand that, but none based on the Christian New Testament. It forbids public prayer.
Too bad a small minority is forcing atheism on the schools then- by your own argument the current situation of *no* prayer in schools is forcing a religious belief on children.
Statements like that further underscore that you don't even know what "religious" means. Of course, since you said that one religion is about as good as another, we already knew that.
when Clinton was in office, people in conservative states were disadvantaged by his more liberal domestic policy.
False! Clinton's domestic policy was a lot more conservative than either the Bush before or after him. It was Reagan who shifted the Republican party away from conservatism.
This is not a fault of the Electoral College. It is a fault of Texas, which decided that all of its electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote.
No, it's the EC's fault. Given that the EC exists, and people want their votes to be effective, statewise allocation is inevitable.
Other states do it differently.
Only states too small to have meaningful influence under any voting regime.
And you mean "complete nonsense", not "completely nonsensical",
No. "Nonsensical" was exactly the word I wanted. The grammar of both phrases is fine, but the connotation of the words is somewhat different. "Nonsense" would mean it doesn't fit there at all, while "nonsensical" means it can fit, but it was silly of you to select it. If you'd said "my bannanas keep spinning", that would've been nonsense.
At least a slave owner had to provide food, clothing, and shelter- and if he wanted to protect his investment, medical care as well.
No he didn't. He could decide to starve or directly kill the slave at any time. Sure, if he's economically rational, he'll want to keep some of them alive- a concern Wal-Mart shares.
Yes- too bad when they got here their descendants ended up with $2.13/hr minimum wage, with tips.
And the ability to quit if you don't like it, and a lot fewer people beating on you with horsewhips.
the new slave class, just under a different name because they get paid less than it costs to keep a slave.
False. If slavery were legal today, the daily cost would be between $0.90 (young female) and $2.50 (adult male).
Sure. Just read Bush's own speech when he asked Congress for that vote. It's the 4th paragraph from the end:
Did the UN Security Council demand an invasion and occupation of Iraq?
That's your problem, then. A quick look at the facts: In the following paragraph, change "rebels" to either "American Minutemen" or "Iraqi Insurgents" and change "occupiers" to either "British Redcoats" or "US Army".
There are important differences, however. The Redcoats had the advantage of speaking the same language of the contested people, making counterinsurgency easier. Not only could they conduct quick interrogations to discern friend and foe, but the American public was more likely to accept leadership imposed by someone at least culturally and religiously similar. Also, the Minutemen had the benefit of outside support from a world superpower.
So, by the simple factors, the Iraqi Insurgents are more likely than the American Minutemen to be ultimately victorious. The safest way for the USA to win is to redefine their expectations of success.
OSAS believers say that if you pray the sinner's prayer, you're saved.
Namu Amida Butsu.
It'd be a good thing for children to learn to respect all Gods.
Oh yeah!
The problem is in the Congress.
True, although you don't mention why this is: it's because the Congressmen themselves are allowed to modify their district boundaries, carefully working to maintain a majority of their own supporters. A household not voting for you? Push it into another district!
If districts were laid down by a preset mathmatical formula that only went by head-count and no other factors, then the Congressional stagnation wouldn't happen. Allowing Congressmen to pick who gets to vote for them means they'll almost never be voted out. The word of the day is gerrymandering!
Without the electoral college, candidates would have to focus on even less than 30% of the voters.
How do you figure??
By your own calculation, the EC allows someone controlling the correct 30% of voters to cement a win. Without the EC, you're only assured of victory after reaching 51% votes.
With the EC, winning all of the coastal states is one way to play it; without the EC, it would be the only thing that mattered.
False. Without it, you could win one coast and not the other, for example. Just like you could today- 2 votes added to every state just isn't enough of a difference to make any major pattern succeed or fail. Nobody can ever win without serious coastal support, and Bush gets everything from Virgina southward.
I've done the math, and even if we removed the "Senator bonus" within the next week, it still wouldn't push Kerry over the top. (That would make it 179-247, instead of 207-317, which is the current projection)
If he had openly endorsed it, it would have been disqualified from the Academy Awards.
He's already been disqualified by leasing it for TV broadcast this year. It will be on next month.
The real reason he couldn't put it online is that he doesn't have 100% copyright ownership. It's not his decision to make.
but it is important to the producers and the financial backers.
Not for this film. True, many movies get revitalized popularity after an Oscar win- but F911 has an onrushing expiration date. After the US election, nobody will care about it. All the profits need to come now. (And it's already earned far more than they hoped, which is why Moore is personally alright with free internet trading)
Wrong. At the time F911 came out, there was no number at all. Only in response to the movie was the number created. (And it's not 888, either)
The most balanced objective take on the file I've seen so far is the point by point list of deceits.
I can already find multiple obvious lies in that file... and an even greater number of deciets (using truth in a misleading way). The single funniest mistake is #21, although it's irrelevant to the overall theme. The Crusader was NOT a missile! There's even some weird things like #35 and #36, which affirms a fact and then immediately claims it's not true- even though that same document just said so! #42 is funny too, because by those standards, the Bush Administration were also Al Quaeda collaborators.
#58 is by far the gravest lie and reveals a true bias by the file's author:
- In Fahrenheit, Moore pretends to support our troops. But in fact, he supports the enemy
In reality, he said the enemy was going to win; that's a pessimistic prediction, not a statement of support. For example, I don't support G.W. Bush, but I do say he's going to win re-election.Still, it would be nice to have a version of F911 containing only the facts, minus Moore's leading sarcasm. Bush would only come off worse if you actually sit there watching him for 7 minutes without a stream of jokes in the background. Maybe a special "no director commentary" feature on the DVD.
it also ensures a final vote that has zero statistic error.
It does no such thing!
There is zero doubt about the legitimacy of the Presidency in such as system.
Just because the final addition is too simple for any math errors to creep in, it absolutely doesn't protect the result from doubt about legitimacy. Or haven't you noticed the bumper stickers with "Let's not elect him in 2004 either" ?
Mathmatically, error propagates throughout expressions. If term B isn't believed to be correct, then A+B+C isn't believable either. Someone who thinks (for whatever reason) that Florida was counted wrong won't agree that Bush really won.
The bicameral legislature is a compromise that is functioning as it was designed. The electoral college is not, due to mathematical mistakes.
I don't really see what's that different between the 2 Senators and the 2 Electoral votes each state recieves regardless of population. Both are an intentional shifting of power to less populous states.
The only real difference between them is that it's possible for a state's 2 senators to be of different parties, while the electoral votes (aside from 2 minor exceptions) always go to just one party.
I suppose that avoids the biggest unfairness, because a 49%-48% D-R split won't go completely Democrat, but it's a rather minor difference.
Currently 13 of the 50 states have Senators of different parties. In the big picture, Senators' role in lawmaking is tremendously more influential than the 2 Electoral Votes attached to them.
PS. For a point of accuracy, the bicarmeral system has 2 different desired effects, but only one relates to this discussion: giving a boost to less populated states. The other is to impair the federal government's ability to make rapid changes, by requiring all new laws to be passed twice. Hopefully the other house will notice any stupid oversights from the first time a bill was approved. However, that function could be performed even if the senate was also assigned by population.
This is not the fault of the EC itself. This is a fault at the state level, because each state decides how to assign the EC votes.
No, it's the nearly inevitable result of the EC. Given that states are controlled by humans, and all humans want power, then states will choose the method that gives them the most power. Winner-Takes-All allocation does this. Texas is controlled by Republicans, therefore the assignment of Electoral Votes is entirely up to them. Will they give all 34 to Bush, or send 11 to Kerry out of regard for the 30% vote he gets in the state? Hmm... tough question.
So petition your state legislature! It's easier to make a change at the state level than at the federal.
For many things, that's true. But looking at the details, this time isn't one them.
The only reasonable approach is a widespread campaign for public support, followed by a national amendment to impose one allocation regime on all states. It's a case of "Ok, I'll lower my gun, if you put yours down at the same time"
You can't just completely ignore people's concerns because they're a minority.
"Power in proportion to your population" is somewhat different from "completely ignore"
the primary reason that pure democracy doesn't work!
No. The prime reason is that it's overly time-consuming to hold a nationwide election each time we need to tow a parked car.
Hell by now a large amount of our military signed up post 9/11 and have no excuse to say they didn't know.
Signing up then implies you desired or expected to go to Afganistan, or someplace else where international Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists might hide. But Iraq isn't one of those places. (Yes, there are terrorists in Iraq... now. And yes, they're "international" in some way. But the kinds of guys who can work an insurgency in the desert are completely different from the type of people that could sneak bombs into USA cities)
Either way if there was a draft I would agree with your statement,
It's not just the people, but also the money spent on the war. It comes from federal income taxes. Montana gets a relatively larger amount of control of how those taxes are spent, without needing to increase the amount they pay in.
That's a minor form of taxation without representation.
but there isn't these people left their states voluntarily
No they didn't- at least not all of them. The National Guard, for example, probably only thought they would respond to emergencies inside the USA, and not go off to guard fuel lines in Iraq. The military population in general signed up long before an Iraq occupation was evident, and they had no chance to change their minds later.
The EC effectively disenfranchises these rural areas because they happen to be in the same state as large cities
Very true- the Chinatown effect.
You can talk about rural-vs.-urban or small-state-vs.-large-state all you want, but the elephant in the living room of the electoral college is that the current shape and populations of U.S. states is the result of historic accident, not logical planning.
True. The best example of this is to count the number of West Coast states (3) versus East Coast (15). That's 24 extra Electoral (and Senatorial) votes to the original colonies, just because they happen to be older and smaller.
I propose that to correct this unfairness, each Senator should be assigned a voting power multiplier proportional to the square miles of land in his home state. Similarly, the Electoral Votes for each state should be equal to (X * population + Y * acreage), instead of (X * population + 2) as it is today.
At least, it would be entertaining to see a spreadsheet of how those results played out. Alaska would suddenly have some swagger!!
Gosh, and I don't suppose any Republican is really supporting the EC for this exact same reason, do you?
I'd like to see a Republican propose dividing Montana into 25 new states, each with the land area of Rhode Island.
It is far less likely to come down to one vote with the electoral college.
That's completely backwards. It's far MORE likely to come down to one vote with the electoral college.
Assuming the country is about evenly divided, the chance of it coming to one vote is 1/(N^2), where N= the number of votes counted at once. Per-state voting means N=5,000,000; while a single national election would have N=100,000,000. Consider the ^2 and it's not even close.
Note that some people consider this fact a benefit, because it increases the chance that one vote will make a difference, providing increased incentive for everyone to vote. (But unfortunately, that incentive only applies in swing-states. Those in solid red/blue states are disinclined the same way)
The Electoral College effectively protects the smaller States from the tyrrany of the larger ones. Without it, a candidate could campaign only in the coastal states, where most of the people are, and ignore the inland areas.
No. Even with the current Electoral College, anyone who wins both coasts wins the presidency. Coastal states have more than 270 electoral votes, which is enough to defeat all inland places. (If you counted the Great Lakes as coastline, it'd be even more lopsided)
It is the States, not the People, who elect the President.
The people doing the voting don't much like that idea. If they really wanted it left to the State, they'd leave it in the hands of their governor or legislature, instead of going through the big expense of a wide-scale election.
ignore Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico (where the water and electricity would originate).
We've got a system to allow for the providers of a good or service to be compensated- it's called money.
The interests of Midwestern farmers would be ignored.
They are a small minority- why should they be disproportionately powerful? Let's play word replacement:
The EC protects the sexual perverts from the tyranny of the mainstream. Without it, a candidate could campaign only to heterosexuals, which most of the people are, and ignore the gay community. Suppose a candidate did that. He could promise marriage and tax breaks to heteros, and ignore gays. The interests of gays would be ignored.
(There are many less-silly examples I could've chosen. Bear in mind that as technology progresses, it becomes increasingly likely that a community with a common need will be geographically disperesed)
switch to a strict popular vote, then Smalltown, USA or Smallstate, USA would never get fair representation.
At best, that's a circular argument- it hinges on non-standard definition of fair. In a dictionary, "fair" means "free from favoritism or preference". You are claiming that giving them voting power based only on the number of people would be "unfair"- but that is actually expressing favoritism right there. Looked at objectively, 3 votes beating 5 votes is plainly less fair than the alternative.
Even defenders of the system must agree that it's unfair- but they claim the unfairness is justified by other factors, and that Smalltown deserves the bias.
I believe the people are better represented by moving the power back down to the State, County, and local level. Let them decide what is best for their State, and the State will represent them Federally.
That viewpoint supposes (or desires) that the national President is fairly weak. But that isn't the case- he's very powerful, and can make decisions that tremendously influence the people of each state.
When Bush pushes the nation into an Iraqi war, the effort and sacrifice is borne not by the states, but by the people. Does Montana share a bigger proportion of the costs of national-level action than California does? No. Treasure and blood comes from the population as a whole.
If the Presidency were a weak, mostly ceremonial post, then the per-capita unfairness of his selection would be less troublesome.