Very very sad news
- Thread starter Napoleon
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And Greece was not a true democracy. No country has ever had a true democracy. America, like the Greeks of long ago were a Republic. First of all, Citizens were only rich males, women nor slaves got to vote (except for maybe Sparta, I think women could vote there but I may be wrong). A true Democracy would involve everyone eligible for voting to vote on any matter that concerned them. Instead we have a Republic where the people vote for those that they want to represent them. And we vote for those leaders democratically, but we do not have a Democracy.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Hmm... somehow I don't think Sparta is really a part of this discussion 
. They were, if anything, an oligarchy ruled by a few hundred elders, whose power stemmed neither from appointment nor election, but simply from the fact that they were there. Actually, in theory Sparta was a monarchy (or rather a biarchy, since apparently they had two kings/king-like figures), but ne'er mind that.
As for your government, I agree that it's a republic rather than a democracy. I'm not sure if you can call it democratically-elected though. I mean, there's too many steps along the way - the people elect the electors (or whatever they're called), and sometimes not even that. Only then do the electors elect the president, who creates the government. So, it's really an oligarchically-elected government.
Oh, that reminds me. During the election, I noticed that several news updates talked about how Bush & Gore's representatives were calling the various electors, wining and dining them, et cetera, to make sure that they haven't changed their minds. Is it just me, or does this amount to bribery? Weird system y'all have.
. They were, if anything, an oligarchy ruled by a few hundred elders, whose power stemmed neither from appointment nor election, but simply from the fact that they were there. Actually, in theory Sparta was a monarchy (or rather a biarchy, since apparently they had two kings/king-like figures), but ne'er mind that.As for your government, I agree that it's a republic rather than a democracy. I'm not sure if you can call it democratically-elected though. I mean, there's too many steps along the way - the people elect the electors (or whatever they're called), and sometimes not even that. Only then do the electors elect the president, who creates the government. So, it's really an oligarchically-elected government.
Oh, that reminds me. During the election, I noticed that several news updates talked about how Bush & Gore's representatives were calling the various electors, wining and dining them, et cetera, to make sure that they haven't changed their minds. Is it just me, or does this amount to bribery? Weird system y'all have
.I won't argue with you there. YOu are very most likely right about Sparta, I think I'm getting confused with the fact that while women did have greater status there than just about anywhere else at that time, that didn't mean they could vote. And yes it is bribery. Unfort. the only guy that could really have changedthe way politics worked in America lost to the dumbest candidate in years who is apparently planning to run the country like it was during the cold war. And for those who don't know who I am referring to, I'm talking about McCain, not Gore. McCain is fighting to get rid of special interest monies and eliminate all the bribery going on in Washington. Unfort, that will never happen as Bush got elected because of all that soft money he brought in to buy the presidency.
Whether it’s a legal text such as the U.S. Constitution, a religious text such as the Koran, or even a great piece of literature such as Hamlet, in the end you’re talking about a writing or series of writings that are deemed by a good many people to be fundamental, in whole or in part, to their quality of life. So yes, the writers of such texts, including the Framers of the Constitution, inevitably acquire a certain "holier-than-thou" persona. (Besides, if one can’t stand in admiration of the people who helped found his or her country or otherwise worked to better the lot of future generations in that country, whom can one look up to?)
But the Constitution is not immutable. The Constitution allows amendments and has been amended many times. On another level, the Constitution also gets "amended" several times a year when the U.S. Supreme Court decides how to apply the document’s more general phrases, like "due process of law", to a particular case.
Today, the only real purpose or benefit of the Electoral College is to force Presidential candidates to spend some time campaigning in those states with the lowest populations, which of course the voters of those states like. One possible way to preserve the positive but eliminate the negative would be to change the "winner-take-all" laws that exist in most states to provide instead for a proportional award of electoral votes, based on the percentage of the popular vote each candidate receives in a state.
Supdon3
Kal-El
Actually the electoral college serves to make it so that every state does have an impact on the election. Every state gets at least 3 electoral votes and states like California and Texas get 8 or more because of their population numbers. So if a candidate gets three states it negates the votes from either of those two. Now if we went with the popular vote, states like California and Texas, which HAVE historically mostly voted in generally the same way, would override at least ten of the smaller states like Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Rhode Island and others. Just because most people in California, whose population is by far larger than all those states combined, vote Democratic (or Republican, im not sure but it IS one) all those states' votes would be for nothing and you would see candidates ignoring those states for the big ones. It might seem like they dont get much attention but it is alot more than they would otherwise. THe electoral college is actually a good idea, and had nothing to do with the mess up of our election (which i remind you was only in Florida, one of fifty states). The only outdated part of the electoral college is that we still have someone as a selected elector going to the state capitals to vote, where they can technically vote anyway they want to and only be penialized in 6 states if they dont vote the way their state did. IT should be automatic, whoever got the most votes in the state should get all the electoral votes there.
Supdon3
Kal-El
That would be saying the People in Montana dont count. There arnt that many people in Montana. Two counties in California have enough votes to make Monatana irrelevant. THat leaves a LOT more people in Califronia. The electoral college makes it so that if even everyone in Montana voted Republican, those two counties in California wont silence the votes of the people in Montana.
Basically if the vast majority of the people in Florida, Texas and California voted teh same way, then under popular vote, no vote from anywhere else in the country would matter. IF the votes in those three states were more evenly split it would make more sense but it isnt, in those states most of those people vote the same way.
[Edited by Supdon3 on 01-26-2001 at 23:25]
I think we can safely say that’s more of a problem in theory than practice; electors who renege on their pledges have been rare, and if ever there was a situation ripe for "rebellion", it was certainly this past election where only a few electoral votes separated the loser and winner. Yet, there were no turncoats, proving once again just how rubber-stamped the process has become (though it helps that most of the people who serve as electors are diehard party members anyway).
I too like the incentive that Presidential candidates have under the current system to seek votes in the less populated or "less powerful" states, but I also agree with Vondoom and others that the Electoral College undermines the right to vote, both in theory and practice. I'd prefer not to have someone elected President who did not win the popular vote; the original anti-majoritarian function of the College is no longer needed (if it ever really was). And I abhor the disincentive to vote that a winner-take-all system creates; a proportional award of electoral votes would counteract that (and help to prevent the other problem too).
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Hmm... interesting. You mean, you actually consider it a bad thing that the elector can change his/her mind? That's just plain dumb... I mean, that's essentially complaining about the only advantage your silly system has.
As for the possibility of a candidate ignoring small-population states if there were no electoral college system, I don't see how that's a problem. If you mean that s/he might not visit a state... good! Maybe then this candidate would have more time to explain why s/he is the right person for the job. Remember, the situation now is much different to what it was two hundred years ago when this system was developed - you no longer need to go somewhere to communicate with the people there.
The closeness of last year's election just proves my point - in spite of all the campaign trips and rallies, neither candidate had managed to prove to the people that he deserves to be president. Even if we only look at the results of the popular vote... 150,000 votes in a country where at least 100,000,000 voted is nothing. Gore didn't win the popular vote, he merely didn't lose it.
As for the possibility of a candidate ignoring small-population states if there were no electoral college system, I don't see how that's a problem. If you mean that s/he might not visit a state... good! Maybe then this candidate would have more time to explain why s/he is the right person for the job. Remember, the situation now is much different to what it was two hundred years ago when this system was developed - you no longer need to go somewhere to communicate with the people there.
The closeness of last year's election just proves my point - in spite of all the campaign trips and rallies, neither candidate had managed to prove to the people that he deserves to be president. Even if we only look at the results of the popular vote... 150,000 votes in a country where at least 100,000,000 voted is nothing. Gore didn't win the popular vote, he merely didn't lose it.
Supdon3
Kal-El
THe electors voting isnt like when every one else goes to vote. Basically the electors job is to vote for whoever won the most votes in that state. NOt to choose whoever they want and vote for that person. That literally is what the job is.
Also the candidates have more than enough time to tell what their positions on topics are and their ideas of what they want to do for the country AND to visit the smaller states. It only takes a couple of small states to make a difference either way especially when the election was as close as this one was.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
But if the elector's job is just to vote for whoever won the most votes, then how exactly is s/he a safeguard against "the tyranny of the majority", which is one of the goals of this system?
At any rate, the electors are human. That in itself implies that they are supposed to think. Why else would you appoint humans? You don't need to waste time appointing humans who'll just nod at the right time. A system with 'electoral points' instead of electors (who according to you are basically 'electoral points') would have been much easier. So why humans?
No what that is saying is that the people in Montana don't count more than the people in California. The electoral system reduces the value of the votes in the states with a higher population. I find that unacceptable. I live in NY the state with the third most electoral votes and I know that if I lived in Vermont my vote would count more than it does now.
BTW the people in florida did not vote the same way, that was the problem with the election, out of 6 million total votes there were only 500 separating the candidates.
Finally the electoral system was made because the framers did not trust the common man. They thought of him as being stupid and uneducatted, so they made the electoral system to allow highly educated intelligent people control who gets to be president with simply an understanding of who the people wanted.
The problem with this system is that it does not account for partisan politics. With partisan politics the electors since they are of the same party as the candidate they are supposed to be voting for, will almost never change their vote and thus won't protect government from the common man. Case in Point: Bush, who fits the bill as who the framers didn't even want voting, I mean stupid and even though he went to yale, poorly educated.
THat is it and if you are thinging of disagreeing with me just read my signature to see what I think of that!
Yes you do. Federalism is alive and well in America, and always has been. Each state has its own economy and its own set of "issues" that it wants the federal government to pay attention to. Having a candidate "on the ground" can make a real difference. Case in point: the 1960 Presidential election, which JFK won mostly due to his having won the primary in the "small" state of West Virginia (whose economy was then as it is today dependent on coal mining). Given the state’s relative insignificance politically, Kennedy could have safely ignored it thereafter, but during his short time in office he remained so struck by the poverty he had seen in the state that he directed around $100 million of federal funds there (not a bad sum then), much of it for the needy.
S/he’s not. That function quickly fell into “disfavor” once political parties became established, and has since essentially evolved into passivity. Anyway, to change it would require amending the U.S. Constitution, which has been eschewed in order to "let sleeping dogs lie".
Your point’s a good one. But the simple reason is that an "Elector" is clearly a human being under the U.S. Constitution, and so again, an amendment would be needed.
True. But what concerns many Americans about that is not so much the dilution of votes you describe but what can result from the fact, namely the election of a President who fails to win the popular vote. (And that has now happened for the third time in U.S. history.)
The reason the argument isn’t often phrased as you’ve done is because the "dilution" is a natural aspect of federalism. If we take the political subdivision of America into "states" seriously (and American history, law, and politics do), then the consequence is that the "voice" of a citizen in a less populated state will be "amplified" relative to a citizen in a more populated state (or the latter’s voice "muted" relative to the former). Probably the best example of this (far and away beyond the electoral college) is the U.S. Senate. Each and every state, no matter its population, has just two senators to represent it in the Congress. Now if you’re a citizen of New York, California, or Texas, that’s dilution! (At least in the case of Presidential elections, states with greater populations have more electoral votes.) But I know of no one who has been clamoring to "reform" senatorial elections on that score. In short, the debate about the electoral college is not over federalism, only whether and how to except Presidential elections from federalism.
If by chance you were looking for another example . . .
As a general matter, not a thing; it’s been done many times. But the process does require a hefty amount of political energy, and more importantly, the approval of three-fourths of the states. Since most if not all of the "smaller" states would oppose abolishing or substantially changing the electoral college, any such proposed amendment would have only a slim chance from the get-go. (And if the comments in this and other threads are any indication, the campaign would be highly contentious, the recent brouhaha over the Florida vote being mere prologue.)
Maybe we can compromise and agree there have been four times.
I was actually thinking of Presidential elections where a candidate won the electoral vote yet lost the popular vote, which happened in 1876, 1888, and 2000. But you're quite right to point out that John Quincy Adams was elected in 1824 even though Andrew Jackson had won the popular vote. The thing is, Jackson also had more electoral votes than Adams, but not a majority because two other candidates had run and gained electoral votes too. Consequently, the election ended up in the House of Representatives to be decided, where Adams won.
As for your No. 5, I'm at a loss.
I was actually thinking of Presidential elections where a candidate won the electoral vote yet lost the popular vote, which happened in 1876, 1888, and 2000. But you're quite right to point out that John Quincy Adams was elected in 1824 even though Andrew Jackson had won the popular vote. The thing is, Jackson also had more electoral votes than Adams, but not a majority because two other candidates had run and gained electoral votes too. Consequently, the election ended up in the House of Representatives to be decided, where Adams won.
As for your No. 5, I'm at a loss.