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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (123700)	11/1/2016 4:24:24 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	1 Recommendation Recommended By Alex MG Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217786

The Electoral College was created partly to deal with the slow modes of horse and carriage transportation which existed in America 200 years ago. While transportation and methods of communication have changed, the Electoral College is not the real problem. More to the point, the Founding Fathers foresaw instances when a direct democratic vote for the Presidency was more susceptible to nefarious schemes than the Electoral College. The underlying issue is redistricting. While the census every ten years provides the data for redistricting, the political spin is performed by the party in power drawing political districts which create "safe political districts" by dividing-up large blocks of opposing voters into several surrounding districts where they become minority votes. The most recent redistricting was a Republican affair which is why the Congress members of the House are safely Republican and far to the right of 85% of all Americans. The Senate, with two members from each state was put into place for the same reasons as the Electoral College - states with large populated cities couldn't routinely outvote rural states. With no political redistricting taking place, it's not surprising that the Senate is currently more liberal than the House and currently more closely represents the opinions of the majority of Americans. The majority of House members led by Paul Ryan want to terminate Medicare and Social Security benefits for the elderly, even though an overwhelming percentage of Americans disagree with this. This is only possible because the Republican redistricting created a House which represents a small number of Republican donors and does not represent the majority of US voters. England faced a similar but far worse problem with "Rotten" or "Pocket Boroughs" which was not addressed until the Reform Act of 1832. Without census driven redistricting, formerly populous towns which now had as few as 7 or 20 voters routinely elected a Member of Parliament just as legitimately as a city of 500,000 voters did. - en.wikipedia.org The most infamous "Rotten Borough" was a district whose land was owned almost entirely by the Pitt family, whose 40 voters always elected a member of the Pitt family to Parliament. In 1802 the Pitt family sold their lands in that borough which were worth less than £700 -- but the sale price was £60,000 because the owner of that land elected a Member of Parliament. The Reform Act of 1932 was modeled after Census driven redistricting in the United States. We can strive to make the redistricting process less political in both the US and England, but each reform is always met with new gamesmanship which seems inexorably linked with humans.