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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: michael97123 who wrote (181954)	2/16/2006 4:06:56 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi michael97123; Re: "The EC can never be fair and i suspect we will have more and more of these unsure finishes." If the world were perfect, I'd agree with you. What we have, instead, is a world where there are many states that are held in the power of completely corrupt political parties. Any nationwide election determined by total popular vote is subject to voter fraud in one state influencing the total vote. As it is, voter fraud is concentrated in states that always vote for one side or the other anyway, so there is no need to stuff the ballot box in those states. The electoral college is an amplification device. Candidates separated by 5% in the popular vote will usually have their electoral college votes separated by far more than 5%. For example, if one candidate gets 66% of the popular vote, he typically gets close to 100% of the electoral vote. That means that having a 1% election in the electoral college is far less likely than having a 1% election in the popular vote. When we do have an election that is truly close, there is bound to be some arbitrariness in how the President is selected. As it is, the arbitrariness is in how the electoral college worked out. With a popular vote, the arbitrariness would occur far more frequently, and would depend on who managed to steal more votes. The fact that presidential votes have recently been very close to equal is not due to a problem with the electoral college, but instead has been due to the two parties becoming very competitive with each other in the fight over swing votes. This is a good thing as it keeps radical opinions out of the political parties. -- Carl