Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 07:04:09 12/02/00
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On December 01, 2000 at 23:54:32, David Rasmussen wrote: >On December 01, 2000 at 16:01:07, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >> >> >>Inside the states, it _is_ one person, one vote. At the federal level, the >>states are given an equal starting point in the electoral college (each state >>gets 2 votes regardless of the population, then a proportion of electoral >>votes matching their proportion of the total population.) >> >>The scheme makes perfect sense. And has stood the test of time for > 200 >>years. It works and isn't broken in the least... > >Well, as I've said, I don't think it works. It's a matter of what you call >democratic. You're just stating an opinion, you're not arguing WHY you think it >works. I've argued as to why I DON'T think it works. I haven't heard any >counterarguments. I don't know why you refuse to read, but here goes again. The US is a collection of 50 individual states, with individual state governments, with an overall federal authority sitting on top of them. When the framers of the constitution considered this authority, they felt (and rightly so) that popular vote would not work. At the time the constitution was drawn up, there were 13 original colonies that became states. 75% of the population was in 2 or 3 of the colonies. Which meant they would control _all_ federal government decisions. As a result, the senate and house were defined, with the house voting on popular vote lines, and the senate giving each state equal voice. To select the president, these were combined into the electoral college concept. Makes perfect sense. Has worked perfectly for > 200 years. Will probably work fine for another 200 years. People have rights. So do individual states. Without the electoral college, 35 out of the 50 states would have _no_ say-so in the presidential election process at all. Hence the need for the electoral college to give even sparsely populated states a say...
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