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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ManyMoose who wrote (67540)	5/21/2008 8:21:18 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542785

>>The Electoral College is important because it ensures that smaller states get a portion of the attention from national politicians. << MM - As things stand, politicians pay much more attention to the states where a lot of electoral votes are at stake. If the president were to be elected by a majority of the popular vote, nationwide, then each voter in every state would have exactly the same influence on the outcome. That might make the candidates pay more attention to the voters in the smaller states. A candidate with widespread rural appeal might do very well against one who had only campaigned in a few big cities. - Allen

To: ManyMoose who wrote (67540)	5/21/2008 9:41:10 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 542785

I didn't say anything about a watchman state. My apologies, MM. I was thinking about something else as I typed that and didn't explain it well enough. There is a political theory of what a proper state should do called the Night watchman state. en.wikipedia.org. Your list of things the state should do fit fairly closely with that theory so I used the term as a shorthand. You apparently want cities to call the shots. I don't. No, but I would like to do something about the lack of resources given to cities. An illustration. You may recall the several initial waves of homeland security including funding for states and locales which had no threat basis. The power of small states. That power appears, disproportionately in the electoral college as well as the Senate. Freedom in cities sucks. I stay away from them for that reason. One of the reasons, of course, why I love them.