No, it isn't. You said exactly "not binary compatible". If that were true, then NO PACKAGES would work. As abundant anecdotes have pointed out, SOME packages work. In fact, MANY/MOST do. Therefore you are wrong.
"We don't support that, it might screw up" is NOT equivalent to "incompatible".
8) Medical Marijuana - Another canned response "Needs more research - need to make sure there's a way that it doesn't get abused."
Uh, no. Bush won't say anything like that- he's already decided that there is no way to allow medical pot. Kerry will waffle on it, but doesn't want to appear too pro-drug (hoping to pick up some borderline Republicans on fiscal/international responsibility issues)
10 and 11) Draft - They'll all deny it, and everyone knows that. They may plan it, but they'll never admit to it. So don't bother to ask.
No. Anyone anti-war will happily admit to planning a draft, because they think fear of draft will help prevent going to war.
21) Civil Marriage for Gay/Lesbians - Stick it to them and watch Bush squirm. Worth asking, just to watch candidates try and see how to ride the fence.
Oh, you're TOTALLY wrong about that one. Bush will love that question- Kerry's the one who squirms about it. Yeah, Kerry's stated position is to be "anti-gay-marriage, but leave it to the states". Which to the voters that matter, sounds no better than "anti-abortion, but leave it to the mother".
Bush loves any chance he can get to be anti-gay, without seeming "hateful". And this issue casts anti-gay as "pro-family", which is all the edge he needs.
Also, that question was worded in a pushy pro-gay way, which Bush could turn to his advantage, by saying that "No, there aren't really differences between civil and religious marriage. The state interest is to promote stable families"
Revenge is condoned, in face it is encouraged. You kill my brother, I have a right under Islamic Law to kill your brother.
Not quite. You kill brother -> I kill you. Otherwise, murderers with only sisters would be quite safe. But, kill a child, lose a child.
36) Is it OK to change your mind? - CATFIGHT!!! YES!!!...Course, that's not the answer you'll hear either of them say!
Bush will say yes ("I would've changed my mind, if I'd ever been wrong about anything.") Kerry would say yes, but he's too scared of being called a flip-flopper. His best move is a non-answer that accuses Bush of either flip-flopping, or failing to change after being proven wrong.
if ever there was a time that we needed a cap much larger than 5, this posting is it.
There are numbers above 5, you just can't see them. When Roblimo picks out the questions to pass along, he'll be looking at scores of 20+. That's how it usually works for picking interview questions.
Catholics are Christians, just like humans are animals. But because there's no special word for "non-human animal", we put up signs reading "No animals allowed in the restaurant", and expect people to know what it means.
AC: The separation of church and state that they referred to was meant to prevent the government from interfering with the church. It was NOT meant to keep the church from interfering with the government.
But those are the SAME THING. If a church interferes in the government, then it causes the government to interfere with other churches!
The whole POINT of the Mayflower colonists you mentioned was to escape the influence the Church of England had on the British government!
AC: "Thou shalt not kill" in a courtroom during a murder try, lest those words sway the jury!
False, but anyway- which way do you think it would sway them? It might make them decide AGAINST issuing the death penalty, because then THEY'd be sinning.
No they don't. I'm pretty sure that if an excommunication had been issued, I've have seen it in the headlines.
It's ludicrous for him to claim he is a catholic. His PARENTS were catholic, but he is anything but.
He is a Catholic. Hypocracy doesn't disqualify you from membership in any group, especially when the group is based on contradictory faith. He says he is, he's got at least 1 priest who says he is, and the Pope hasn't issued any directive to the contrary... John Kerry is a Catholic.
If you wanted to be strict about it, George W Bush isn't a Christian... he's strongly in favor of both defensive war and punititive killing, and is prideful and highly judgemental. All those things go against the core of Christian belief.
That is complete laziness on the part of the developers, pure and simple.
Not laziness, but paranoia. Ok, I'm talking about multiplayer games and not Sims2 in particular. But these days, the game developers want to have the powers of a virus-scanner application, analyzing your whole RAM checking for any known cheat programs.
Yes, we can infer that, because that's all your posts contain.
There was a very simple question asked: "Why is it better if the candidate with the most votes can lose the election?". You might TRY to answer that.
To the extent your lengthy digressions have addressed that topic at all, they've taken the following structure: 1. The Founding Fathers were really smart. 2. Way smarter than any of you jokers. 3. They set up the Constitution to work this way. 4. Therefore, it's best this way. 5. Now be quiet unless you can refute these 3 totally separate issues that I care about.
Holes in that "reasoning" are almost too apparent to bear mentioning, which is prehaps why we haven't said very much about them.
Most of the documents and rationalizations you provided have ignored the fact that states can choose the assignment of electors however they wish. Indeed, it seems quite plausible that the "Founders" did not consider the implications of that permission- because what arose is a form of Tryanny of the Majority, taking place in each of the 50 states upon every election.
Certainly, Texas COULD divide its electors proportionally, and send out 20 Bush supporters alongside 14 of Kerry's men. But as Republicans have the majority power, they won't do this. The rights of the minority Texan Democrats are trampled by the dominant GOP. (The reverse problem happens to the Massachusett GOP)
One might argue that this inequity is the fault of the states... but one would be wrong. The circumstance was the result of systems created by the USA Constitution, and only that Constitution has the power to alter them.
The system for electing the President has been subverted by the practise of not placing the electors' names on the ballot, but those of the Presidential candidates themselves
Printing ballots with the elector's names would be (a) dishonest, because it implies they have ANY power beyond saying "Aye" to the man (or party) they were sworn to, when they really don't. (b) waste a lot of paper, because the DNC and GOP would need to hand out reference-sheet listing their electors outside every polling spot. (c) make "exit polls" more reliable, because the media could just count the color of each pamphlet voters grab on the way in. (Voters could obfuscate their choice by taking both hint-sheets, but that'd be anti-environmental)
avoid it in the hopes they would, with some rationality, choose based on the merity of a candidate and not because of political affiliation or any like consideration.
You keep expounding the remarkable forsight of the "Founding Fathers"... but to assume for one minute that the electors would be anything but pawns serving one interest or the other is not just ignorant, but unimaginative.
How could we possibly fix any of this with a direct popular vote?
Again, you're flying far away from the topic. As a reminder, that topic is: "Why is it good for the candidate with the most votes to loose the election?" Most of your voluminous verbiage relates to entirely separate problems.
These people aren't trying to banish the "media circus" from political coverage- they're just looking out for themselves, and trying to maximize the power of their own vote. The plurality was disappointed to lose to a smaller number of Bush voters, and became inclined to seek a change.
PS. Spelling of "loose" intentional, per standards of Simplified Internet English.
The entire thing was about the rationale for the indirect method of electing the President
Yes, that's exactly what it is. But we're not talking about INDIRECT elections- the topic here is NONPROPORTIONAL electoral power. Specificially, why should it be possible for someone with more citizens voting for him than anyone else to lose the election? Why should all the electoral votes from a state go to just one candidate? And why should states get 2 votes added to their electoral college votes, independent of their population?
It would be entirely possible to continue having indirect, electoral college elections, while drastically reducing the probability that the loser of the popular vote could become president.
You pointed to the Federalist Papers somehow supporting that the justice of the lesser number of total votes winning the election. I'm aware of a few arguments in favor of that idea- some of them even makes a little sense- but the FP doesn't contain any of those.
So if you could point out a few lines that you feel directly support your position, it'd be quite nice. (Feel free to elide the colonialist legalese)
you should really know better what you're talking about
That's a good idea, you should give it a try! Although, I do understand it can be tough to remember what the topic is when you're posting in 5 different sub-threads at once.
For the sake of discussion, I will ignore the fact that the current USA system actually increases the power of high-population areas, and instead use the simplifying interpretation that rural states get a small advantage.
Your vote won't count unless you live in the North East, Los Angeles, and a few other places
Wrong. Your vote would count just as much as anyone else's did- there just happen to be more people in those places.
Do you know why $10 from me buys just as much as $10 from Bill Gates?
And as a side effect the views of rural America won't be represented at all,
So you claim that rural people deserve more power than city people? Why is that? Does the country lifestyle make them inherently more moral?
Arguments like yours are terribly vulnerable to parody:
Your vote won't count unless you live in the North East, Los Angeles, and a few other places. And as a side effect the views of rural America won't be represented at all
Your vote won't count unless you're a Christian, Muslim, Jew, or a few other religions. The views of Wiccan Americans won't be represented at all.
Your vote won't count unless you're white, black, or maybe hispanic. The views of Asian-Americans won't be represented at all.
Your vote won't count unless you're heterosexual, or maybe abstinent. The views of homosexual Americans won't be represented at all.
Your vote won't count unless you're an moron, idiot, imbecile, or some other kind of retard. The views of intelligent Americans won't be represented at all.
See the pattern? You need to explain why one kind of minority deserves a boost to it's power, but not any of those others.
So if disenfranchising 40% or more of the population is your goal
Only 40%? The existing system has disenfranchised the 75% of voters who don't live in swing states, so that'll be an improvement.
Of course, according to your argument, 49% of the population is ALWAYS disenfranchised by the other 51%. From one point of view, that is true- but still meaningless.
Once a significant number of states embrace the idea, then we can reasonably talk about making a sweeping constitutional amendment that has a prayer of being passed and quickly ratified.
Wrong. The only feasible way to make this change is as an Amendment. We CANNOT expect states to voluntarily do it to themselves first.
Just look at California, for the strongest example. 35 electoral votes, which always go Democrat, and a solidly Democrat legislature. If CA changed to proportional allocation, then instead of giving the Democratic nominee 35 votes, he'd only get 20. That's equivalent to 30 points shifting over- which in terms of the current campaign, would be absolutely fatal for Kerry.
Or you could make the same argument regarding Texas and Republicans. Given that states are controlled (at least marginally) by one party or the other, any state deciding to switch to proportional allocation will be hurting it's own dominant party on the national level.
In conclusion, switching to proportional allocation means voluntarily giving up power. We can't expect anyone to do this, unless they were assured that everyone else would be making the same change at the same time. CA and TX might agree to a universal amendment, but they would never implement it piecewise.
I'd prefer to see it phrased "proportianal voting system". that includes approval, ranked, condorcet, party list
No. First off, "proportianal" is not a word. Secondly, "proportional representation" is a completely separate question from election methods. Changes to election methods will only matter as the election is going on (or as candidates are planning for elections, etc). Going to proportional representation would impact the daily running of government even long after the inaugerations are done.
That's appeal to tradition, which I already said is invalid. The burden of proof falls on him with the outwardly more complex or less plausible argument.
My argument is simple: equal people should have equal power.
If you believe that's wrong, and that people should actually have unequal power, then you have the less-intuitive position, and must defend it.
Or, from another perspective, whoever wants to change someone's mind always has the burden of proof. Since the anti-equality people are the latecomers to this thread, it falls to them to advocate their own position. But they haven't; they
Gore had a plurality of the popular vote and probably would have won any of the alternative methods like IRV, Condorcet, or PR.
Not quite. If there had been any other voting system in place, then the Republican party wouldn't have selected Bush. McCain would've been on the national ballot, and he'd definitely have beaten Bush, and probably Gore too.
The parties wouldn't even need primaries if we had a more flexible voting system. They'd have no incentive not to run Dean and Kerry and Edwards and everyone else.
The electoral college would prevent this sort of thing from deciding the election.
No, it couldn't prevent it at all. Suppose that the faked anti-Bush memo on CBS hadn't happened until the week of the election, and suppose that they actually dug up an old typewriter to fake it on, so it took more than 20 minutes to discover the forgery.
If that contributed to Kerry winning the election, do you actually think that any of his electors will say to himself "Well, I'm a lifelong Democrat, and the people of Florida selected me to pick the President. But- they might have been unfairly influenced by that fake scandal. I suppose I'll go and vote for Bush, just to keep things fair"
Actually the literacy rates were much higher during the 1700's than todays. If you want some insight into why do a
That's a total lie. The literacy rate in 1700 was less than 1/40th of what it is today. Even in the USA, literacy has increased by more than 5x in the past 300 years.
Maybe you're confused, and meant 1800 instead of 1700. North America experienced a huge literacy growth across that time.
google for John Gatto
Fortunately for him, Gatto is too smart to talk about literacy back before 1850. Note that many historical literacty statistics you find will often be biased to sample men only. And do you think they included the 12% slave population in those figures? Doubtful!
And unless every citizen gets to vote on every bill its not a true democracy.
Why do these people continue to argue against the dictionary? I can understand disagreeing with a word of recent coinage, like "piracy", "decimate" or "disconnect", but the definition of "democracy" has been set in stone for 1200 years. If you don't like it, get another word.
Fun fact: Even IF every citizen gets to vote on every bill, it STILL might not be a democracy! Consider France in 1721... there was one citizen, and he voted on each bill.
If the federal government were to try to provide legislation for every circumstance in every location across the country
You sure about that? Do you really think that having one single law against wiretapping (for example) would be more messy than 53 separate laws*, with different penalties and even different definitions of what a "wiretap" is? And remember, some states might not even outlaw it at all. (Then multiply the complexity to 52*52 if you're wiretapping an inter-state message...)
There's also a question of fairness. There's nothing magical about state boundaries that says it's OK to possess recreational fireworks on one side, and reckless endangerment to innocent lives on the other. Given that some laws shouldn't be universally applicable, it'd still be possible to turn them on and off without relying on state boundaries. We do it with speed limits...
* Yes, I said 53, not 50. There's also DC, Puerto Rico, Indian Reservations, and other places outside state jurisdiction that still need laws.
Those numbers are correct, but they don't tell the whole story. You're focusing on the ratio between population and electoral votes (which helps small states), but there's another important factor: winner-take-all allocation of those electoral votes.
WTA creates unfairness too, but it helps larger states. The math on it is harder to work through, but think about probabilities. The power of one person's vote is equal to the chance her single vote will tip the balance in that state, multiplied by the number of votes that state has. George Bush has a low chance of winning CA, but he still campaigns there, because if he were to somehow make it over the top, the Kerry campaign would be DEAD. There's no way they could come back from that 70-point hit.
All things considered, California votes have the most power, and Nevada the least, with Montana and Kansas down in the bottom 20%. That math is from Electoral College Primer 2000, although I'm copying the data from a Microsoft article.
You seem to be laboring under the assumption that the electoral college was put into place because a direct popular vote would have been impractical. That had nothing to do with it at all
Funny, because that's exactly what the Federalist Papers are all about. The majority of the text is spent discussing the trustworthiness of the electors, and how they will be chosen to represent neither their personal interests, nor those of a monied club or foreign empire.
Since your claims about the contents of that document are so at-odds against the actual text you linked to, prehaps you'd care to paste in a few of the bits that shore up your position?
(And just to make it more of a challenge, you're not allowed to choose sentences beginning with the word "Talents". I've already read that one line, and it's insufficient)
Slashdot Mirror
That's what incompatible means,
No, it isn't. You said exactly "not binary compatible". If that were true, then NO PACKAGES would work. As abundant anecdotes have pointed out, SOME packages work. In fact, MANY/MOST do. Therefore you are wrong.
"We don't support that, it might screw up" is NOT equivalent to "incompatible".
8) Medical Marijuana - Another canned response "Needs more research - need to make sure there's a way that it doesn't get abused."
Uh, no. Bush won't say anything like that- he's already decided that there is no way to allow medical pot. Kerry will waffle on it, but doesn't want to appear too pro-drug (hoping to pick up some borderline Republicans on fiscal/international responsibility issues)
10 and 11) Draft - They'll all deny it, and everyone knows that. They may plan it, but they'll never admit to it. So don't bother to ask.
No. Anyone anti-war will happily admit to planning a draft, because they think fear of draft will help prevent going to war.
21) Civil Marriage for Gay/Lesbians - Stick it to them and watch Bush squirm. Worth asking, just to watch candidates try and see how to ride the fence.
Oh, you're TOTALLY wrong about that one. Bush will love that question- Kerry's the one who squirms about it. Yeah, Kerry's stated position is to be "anti-gay-marriage, but leave it to the states". Which to the voters that matter, sounds no better than "anti-abortion, but leave it to the mother".
Bush loves any chance he can get to be anti-gay, without seeming "hateful". And this issue casts anti-gay as "pro-family", which is all the edge he needs.
Also, that question was worded in a pushy pro-gay way, which Bush could turn to his advantage, by saying that "No, there aren't really differences between civil and religious marriage. The state interest is to promote stable families"
Revenge is condoned, in face it is encouraged. You kill my brother, I have a right under Islamic Law to kill your brother.
Not quite. You kill brother -> I kill you. Otherwise, murderers with only sisters would be quite safe. But, kill a child, lose a child.
36) Is it OK to change your mind? - CATFIGHT!!! YES!!!...Course, that's not the answer you'll hear either of them say!
Bush will say yes ("I would've changed my mind, if I'd ever been wrong about anything.") Kerry would say yes, but he's too scared of being called a flip-flopper. His best move is a non-answer that accuses Bush of either flip-flopping, or failing to change after being proven wrong.
I expect David Cobb to do much the same (as I presume it will be included with his questions).
The Green Party platform is that all software should be Open Source. (How that might be encouraged or mandated, they don't say)
if ever there was a time that we needed a cap much larger than 5, this posting is it.
There are numbers above 5, you just can't see them. When Roblimo picks out the questions to pass along, he'll be looking at scores of 20+. That's how it usually works for picking interview questions.
Chatolics are Christians
Catholics are Christians, just like humans are animals. But because there's no special word for "non-human animal", we put up signs reading "No animals allowed in the restaurant", and expect people to know what it means.
AC: The separation of church and state that they referred to was meant to prevent the government from interfering with the church. It was NOT meant to keep the church from interfering with the government.
But those are the SAME THING. If a church interferes in the government, then it causes the government to interfere with other churches!
The whole POINT of the Mayflower colonists you mentioned was to escape the influence the Church of England had on the British government!
AC: "Thou shalt not kill" in a courtroom during a murder try, lest those words sway the jury!
False, but anyway- which way do you think it would sway them? It might make them decide AGAINST issuing the death penalty, because then THEY'd be sinning.
But since they do,
No they don't. I'm pretty sure that if an excommunication had been issued, I've have seen it in the headlines.
It's ludicrous for him to claim he is a catholic. His PARENTS were catholic, but he is anything but.
He is a Catholic. Hypocracy doesn't disqualify you from membership in any group, especially when the group is based on contradictory faith. He says he is, he's got at least 1 priest who says he is, and the Pope hasn't issued any directive to the contrary... John Kerry is a Catholic.
If you wanted to be strict about it, George W Bush isn't a Christian... he's strongly in favor of both defensive war and punititive killing, and is prideful and highly judgemental. All those things go against the core of Christian belief.
That is complete laziness on the part of the developers, pure and simple.
Not laziness, but paranoia. Ok, I'm talking about multiplayer games and not Sims2 in particular. But these days, the game developers want to have the powers of a virus-scanner application, analyzing your whole RAM checking for any known cheat programs.
Can't do that without admin.
So far, all I've been presented with is dogma.
Yes, we can infer that, because that's all your posts contain.
There was a very simple question asked: "Why is it better if the candidate with the most votes can lose the election?". You might TRY to answer that.
To the extent your lengthy digressions have addressed that topic at all, they've taken the following structure:
1. The Founding Fathers were really smart.
2. Way smarter than any of you jokers.
3. They set up the Constitution to work this way.
4. Therefore, it's best this way.
5. Now be quiet unless you can refute these 3 totally separate issues that I care about.
Holes in that "reasoning" are almost too apparent to bear mentioning, which is prehaps why we haven't said very much about them.
Most of the documents and rationalizations you provided have ignored the fact that states can choose the assignment of electors however they wish. Indeed, it seems quite plausible that the "Founders" did not consider the implications of that permission- because what arose is a form of Tryanny of the Majority, taking place in each of the 50 states upon every election.
Certainly, Texas COULD divide its electors proportionally, and send out 20 Bush supporters alongside 14 of Kerry's men. But as Republicans have the majority power, they won't do this. The rights of the minority Texan Democrats are trampled by the dominant GOP. (The reverse problem happens to the Massachusett GOP)
One might argue that this inequity is the fault of the states... but one would be wrong. The circumstance was the result of systems created by the USA Constitution, and only that Constitution has the power to alter them.
The system for electing the President has been subverted by the practise of not placing the electors' names on the ballot, but those of the Presidential candidates themselves
Printing ballots with the elector's names would be
(a) dishonest, because it implies they have ANY power beyond saying "Aye" to the man (or party) they were sworn to, when they really don't.
(b) waste a lot of paper, because the DNC and GOP would need to hand out reference-sheet listing their electors outside every polling spot.
(c) make "exit polls" more reliable, because the media could just count the color of each pamphlet voters grab on the way in. (Voters could obfuscate their choice by taking both hint-sheets, but that'd be anti-environmental)
avoid it in the hopes they would, with some rationality, choose based on the merity of a candidate and not because of political affiliation or any like consideration.
You keep expounding the remarkable forsight of the "Founding Fathers"... but to assume for one minute that the electors would be anything but pawns serving one interest or the other is not just ignorant, but unimaginative.
How could we possibly fix any of this with a direct popular vote?
Again, you're flying far away from the topic. As a reminder, that topic is: "Why is it good for the candidate with the most votes to loose the election?" Most of your voluminous verbiage relates to entirely separate problems.
These people aren't trying to banish the "media circus" from political coverage- they're just looking out for themselves, and trying to maximize the power of their own vote. The plurality was disappointed to lose to a smaller number of Bush voters, and became inclined to seek a change.
PS. Spelling of "loose" intentional, per standards of Simplified Internet English.
The entire thing was about the rationale for the indirect method of electing the President
Yes, that's exactly what it is. But we're not talking about INDIRECT elections- the topic here is NONPROPORTIONAL electoral power. Specificially, why should it be possible for someone with more citizens voting for him than anyone else to lose the election? Why should all the electoral votes from a state go to just one candidate? And why should states get 2 votes added to their electoral college votes, independent of their population?
It would be entirely possible to continue having indirect, electoral college elections, while drastically reducing the probability that the loser of the popular vote could become president.
You pointed to the Federalist Papers somehow supporting that the justice of the lesser number of total votes winning the election. I'm aware of a few arguments in favor of that idea- some of them even makes a little sense- but the FP doesn't contain any of those.
So if you could point out a few lines that you feel directly support your position, it'd be quite nice. (Feel free to elide the colonialist legalese)
you should really know better what you're talking about
That's a good idea, you should give it a try! Although, I do understand it can be tough to remember what the topic is when you're posting in 5 different sub-threads at once.
Your vote won't count unless you live in the North East, Los Angeles, and a few other places
Wrong. Your vote would count just as much as anyone else's did- there just happen to be more people in those places.
Do you know why $10 from me buys just as much as $10 from Bill Gates?
And as a side effect the views of rural America won't be represented at all,
So you claim that rural people deserve more power than city people? Why is that? Does the country lifestyle make them inherently more moral?
Arguments like yours are terribly vulnerable to parody:
Your vote won't count unless you live in the North East, Los Angeles, and a few other places. And as a side effect the views of rural America won't be represented at all
See the pattern? You need to explain why one kind of minority deserves a boost to it's power, but not any of those others.
So if disenfranchising 40% or more of the population is your goal
Only 40%? The existing system has disenfranchised the 75% of voters who don't live in swing states, so that'll be an improvement.
Of course, according to your argument, 49% of the population is ALWAYS disenfranchised by the other 51%. From one point of view, that is true- but still meaningless.
Once a significant number of states embrace the idea, then we can reasonably talk about making a sweeping constitutional amendment that has a prayer of being passed and quickly ratified.
Wrong. The only feasible way to make this change is as an Amendment. We CANNOT expect states to voluntarily do it to themselves first.
Just look at California, for the strongest example. 35 electoral votes, which always go Democrat, and a solidly Democrat legislature. If CA changed to proportional allocation, then instead of giving the Democratic nominee 35 votes, he'd only get 20. That's equivalent to 30 points shifting over- which in terms of the current campaign, would be absolutely fatal for Kerry.
Or you could make the same argument regarding Texas and Republicans. Given that states are controlled (at least marginally) by one party or the other, any state deciding to switch to proportional allocation will be hurting it's own dominant party on the national level.
In conclusion, switching to proportional allocation means voluntarily giving up power. We can't expect anyone to do this, unless they were assured that everyone else would be making the same change at the same time. CA and TX might agree to a universal amendment, but they would never implement it piecewise.
I'd prefer to see it phrased "proportianal voting system". that includes approval, ranked, condorcet, party list
No. First off, "proportianal" is not a word.
Secondly, "proportional representation" is a completely separate question from election methods. Changes to election methods will only matter as the election is going on (or as candidates are planning for elections, etc). Going to proportional representation would impact the daily running of government even long after the inaugerations are done.
the burden is on advocates of change
That's appeal to tradition, which I already said is invalid. The burden of proof falls on him with the outwardly more complex or less plausible argument.
My argument is simple: equal people should have equal power.
If you believe that's wrong, and that people should actually have unequal power, then you have the less-intuitive position, and must defend it.
Or, from another perspective, whoever wants to change someone's mind always has the burden of proof. Since the anti-equality people are the latecomers to this thread, it falls to them to advocate their own position. But they haven't; they
Gore had a plurality of the popular vote and probably would have won any of the alternative methods like IRV, Condorcet, or PR.
Not quite. If there had been any other voting system in place, then the Republican party wouldn't have selected Bush. McCain would've been on the national ballot, and he'd definitely have beaten Bush, and probably Gore too.
The parties wouldn't even need primaries if we had a more flexible voting system. They'd have no incentive not to run Dean and Kerry and Edwards and everyone else.
AC: Why is "Democracy" considered such an ideal.
If only there was a question mark on the end, that'd be an excellent question- especially for George Bush.
Why does he consider democracy so important that 100s of Americans and 1000s of Iraqis should die to bring it to the Middle East?
you have to campaign the whole state
No you don't.... you can still just campaign the cities. Just this way it's Portland and Orlando instead of Frisco and Manhattan.
The electoral college would prevent this sort of thing from deciding the election.
No, it couldn't prevent it at all. Suppose that the faked anti-Bush memo on CBS hadn't happened until the week of the election, and suppose that they actually dug up an old typewriter to fake it on, so it took more than 20 minutes to discover the forgery.
If that contributed to Kerry winning the election, do you actually think that any of his electors will say to himself "Well, I'm a lifelong Democrat, and the people of Florida selected me to pick the President. But- they might have been unfairly influenced by that fake scandal. I suppose I'll go and vote for Bush, just to keep things fair"
Actually the literacy rates were much higher during the 1700's than todays. If you want some insight into why do a
That's a total lie. The literacy rate in 1700 was less than 1/40th of what it is today. Even in the USA, literacy has increased by more than 5x in the past 300 years.
Maybe you're confused, and meant 1800 instead of 1700. North America experienced a huge literacy growth across that time.
google for John Gatto
Fortunately for him, Gatto is too smart to talk about literacy back before 1850. Note that many historical literacty statistics you find will often be biased to sample men only. And do you think they included the 12% slave population in those figures? Doubtful!
And unless every citizen gets to vote on every bill its not a true democracy.
Why do these people continue to argue against the dictionary? I can understand disagreeing with a word of recent coinage, like "piracy", "decimate" or "disconnect", but the definition of "democracy" has been set in stone for 1200 years. If you don't like it, get another word.
Fun fact: Even IF every citizen gets to vote on every bill, it STILL might not be a democracy! Consider France in 1721... there was one citizen, and he voted on each bill.
If the federal government were to try to provide legislation for every circumstance in every location across the country
You sure about that? Do you really think that having one single law against wiretapping (for example) would be more messy than 53 separate laws*, with different penalties and even different definitions of what a "wiretap" is? And remember, some states might not even outlaw it at all. (Then multiply the complexity to 52*52 if you're wiretapping an inter-state message...)
There's also a question of fairness. There's nothing magical about state boundaries that says it's OK to possess recreational fireworks on one side, and reckless endangerment to innocent lives on the other. Given that some laws shouldn't be universally applicable, it'd still be possible to turn them on and off without relying on state boundaries. We do it with speed limits...
* Yes, I said 53, not 50. There's also DC, Puerto Rico, Indian Reservations, and other places outside state jurisdiction that still need laws.
That's 1 electoral vote per every 262,000 people.
Those numbers are correct, but they don't tell the whole story. You're focusing on the ratio between population and electoral votes (which helps small states), but there's another important factor: winner-take-all allocation of those electoral votes.
WTA creates unfairness too, but it helps larger states. The math on it is harder to work through, but think about probabilities. The power of one person's vote is equal to the chance her single vote will tip the balance in that state, multiplied by the number of votes that state has. George Bush has a low chance of winning CA, but he still campaigns there, because if he were to somehow make it over the top, the Kerry campaign would be DEAD. There's no way they could come back from that 70-point hit.
All things considered, California votes have the most power, and Nevada the least, with Montana and Kansas down in the bottom 20%. That math is from Electoral College Primer 2000, although I'm copying the data from a Microsoft article.
Some of the drafters of the Constitution worried that the populace would just vote for whoever was popular in their state
Irrelevant. The question was about "mob rule", but your answer was about "sectionalism".
You seem to be laboring under the assumption that the electoral college was put into place because a direct popular vote would have been impractical. That had nothing to do with it at all
Funny, because that's exactly what the Federalist Papers are all about. The majority of the text is spent discussing the trustworthiness of the electors, and how they will be chosen to represent neither their personal interests, nor those of a monied club or foreign empire.
Since your claims about the contents of that document are so at-odds against the actual text you linked to, prehaps you'd care to paste in a few of the bits that shore up your position?
(And just to make it more of a challenge, you're not allowed to choose sentences beginning with the word "Talents". I've already read that one line, and it's insufficient)