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Politics : Electoral College 2000 - Ahead of the Curve -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (6553)	12/24/2000 2:28:45 PM
From: Carolyn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6710

I wonder how soon Hillary and the Libs will begin their attack on the Electoral College.

To: Ilaine who wrote (6553)	12/24/2000 2:54:12 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6710

The Electoral College assures that each state, no matter how large or small, has exactly the same vote to elect the President. What are talking about? Under the electoral college system each state DOESN'T have "exactly the same vote to elect the President". Each state has a different number of electoral votes which are cast as a block for the winner of the Presidential election in that state. As a result the large population states have a much greater influence on the Presidential election than the small states precisely because they have all those large cities and large populations. Assume for the sake of the argument that of those, 36 million lived in the coastal SMSAs, e.g., New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Miami, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Detroit and Chicago SMSAs, and the rest lived in rural areas. If we did not have the Electoral College, the residents of a dozen or so cities would elect the President. Your example undercuts your argument. Actually because of the winner-take-all element of the electoral college system, what you describe in your example is exactly what can happen under the electoral college system and has happened from time to time. NYC determines the way New York's big electoral vote total goes, Philly determines the way PA's big electoral vote total goes, ditto for Miami and Florida, Chicago and IL, Detroit and MI, Minneapolis and MI, SF & LA for CA, and so on. Gore almost won the past election by getting a fairly small number of large population states. Other Presidents have done so in the past. I don't think you've given much thought to the logical implications of the electoral college system in modern Presidential elections. Moving on to the personal sections of your post: because you think like the people who live in large metropolitan areas Well, I live in a suburb of Houston and that's a large metropolitan area. Course, you also live in another large metropolitan area, I think. So what. and tend to vote Democrat. In my life, I've cast 3 votes for Republican Presidential candidates, 2 for Democratic Presidential candidates, and 1 for Anderson - I think, I might not have voted in 1980. I've not voted in a few elections. Your idea of American culture is formed by what you see on TV, what you see in the movies, what you read in the newspapers and what you read in mass market books. These all reflect the perspectives of people who live in large cities - or what people who live in large cities imagine the rest of the country to be. A President who identifies with that culture makes you feel comfortable. The rest of the country would not like it one bit. What you call "national unity" isn't. It's unity among those who live in large cities, and share a popular culture. The cultures of those who don't live in large cities are different, and they are not homogenous, either. I know you don't understand this. I expect that you can't understand this. Nevertheless, it's true, and it's as important today as it was 200 years ago. What a combination of arrogance and ignorance you display here. Presuming to read my mind and tell me what I think. (Gee, isn't that something those arrogant, elitist citified snobs tend to do?) Lady, I spent my first 32 years in mostly little burgs or cities in downstate Illinois, west Kentucky, and West Virginia. You don't need to lecture me on America as I am as every bit an AMERICAN as you. I suggest you get off your high horse and stop thinking in cliches so much. Well, despite our differing opinions, I hope you do have a merry Christmas.

To: Ilaine who wrote (6553)	12/26/2000 9:41:37 PM
From: Don Lloyd	Respond to of 6710

CB - I am in favor of retaining the Electoral College as both a matter of principle and as a matter of pragmatism. It is both a matter of logic and a lesson of history that democracy is a form of government that is unstable and certain to collapse. The only exception is a small country that does not control its own destiny, but merely is a participant in a global or regional political economy, with or without its express permission and agreement. The same exception is true of a socialist country. All socialist economies fail for the lack of pricing signals to allocate resources and the impossibility of the central planners having sufficient and appropriate knowledge to make their decisions. However, a socialist country can in part steal free market prices from capitalist economies to elongate its demise. The Electoral College, independent of the actual reasons for its creation, serves as one of many anti-democratic mechanisms built into the Constitution. Unfortunately, many of these mechanisms have been corrupted, making the remaining ones even more important. While the importance of the states in the Federalist structure is unquestionable, in fact they have been degraded to the point that they are little more than rubber stamps to ratify Federal mandates in exchange for funds. It was originally true that the state legislatures were a reasonable representation of the will of the people. Now the makeup of the state legislatures would be little changed by making random selections for legislators from all the ambulance-chasers who failed to earn enough to keep up their yellow page ads from one year to the next. In the end the Constitution, and any constitution, is anti-democratic on its face if it cannot be overruled by a simple and immediate majority vote. Regards, Don