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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (8296)	12/3/2000 11:26:38 PM
From: Czechsinthemail	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10042

Ron, The problem with counting counties, states or electoral votes is that they are abstractions, artificial legal fictions with no tangible existence. In that regard, they are different from human beings. When they are treated as if they were the same, a kind of unfairness or injustice occurs. Examples of this are references to "the People" used to invoke support for a position. Politicians do this all the time, claiming the People have expressed support for them and their programs when they can't even get a majority of eligible voters to say OK. In your case, you maintain states or counties have have voted for Bush, but what in fact has occurred is that some of the people living in those states or counties have voted for Bush, others have voted for Gore. Claiming that counties or states have chosen Bush or Gore as if those counties were people who can make choices misses the boat. What happens is that some of the people prefer one candidate, some prefer another. Your approach is to arbitrarily categorize people by states, counties or whatever, then count the categories. There is a long tradition of this kind of artificial and unfair process known as gerrymandering. One reason for direct election is that it counts the votes of real people and measures their preference simply by comparing the number of them voting for one candidate with the number voting for another. The fairness comes through the principle of one person, one vote. The significant common denominator among the voters is that they are citizens of the United States. Direct popular election counts citizens equally and does not weight their votes unequally. There is less likelihood of distortion or manipulation through abstractions or petty fiefdoms. There are many other problems like an apathetic and generally underinformed electorate, domination of campaigns by monied interests, media coverage that addresses political campaigns as if they were sporting events while generally ignoring or glossing substantial issues and policy differences, a general tendency for candidates to attack one another through labels, one-liners and smears rather than promoting coherent discussion of positions that voters can understand and decide upon. But getting a fairer election structure is a start.