Goobieman said:
0.5% margins are enough to trigger automatic recounts in many places; your assertion that 0.5% margin across the entire country is insurmountable is baseless. 500k votes isnt much compared to the 100M+ votes they came from.
And, again: regardless of the change of finding the votes, BOTH parties would have recounted every state, looking for every vote they could get. Why would you want that?
It's just not going to happen because the chances of a national election being that close are very very very small. See below.
Goobieman said:
Likewise.
SOME people have debated it, but it hasnt been anywhere close to the forefront of political issuedom until after the 2000 election - and had Gore won, no one would have said a thing.
Well I for one have been discussing it since before then. Just because you and your buddies haven't ever discussed a political point unless it's currently in the news, doesn't mean that we're all like that. Don't project your own faults onto the rest of America.
Goobieman said:
Out of how many votes, total?
Expalin to me why you can potentially find 0.5% votes over 100k votes, but not over 100M votes.
You almost never can find 0.5% in a single state either; recounts at that margin are mostly just a formality, and it takes a much slimmer margin than that to trigger any kind of serious investigation.
But there's a reason that it'd be easier in a state than a country: Take the difficulty of finding enough wrongdoing in a single state, and multiply that by the difficulty of doing the same thing in EVERY state.
Let's suppose, for example, that George Bush had won the popular vote in 2000 by approximately the same margin that he won Florida. Now let's assume that Al Gore was going to challenge that. He'd still have to come up with his margin in Florida (which he was unable to do)...but he'd have to also do it in EVERY OTHER STATE! He could find more in some states and less in others, of course.
Now let's look at it the other way...what would have been easier than trying to find enough votes in Florida to erase a margin of defeat? Trying to do the same in New Hampshire. If the 2000 election had hinged on New Hampshire instead of Florida (and assume that the margin of defeat was the same), the loser would've only had to find a couple missing ballot boxes to change the results.
The more votes that are cast in an election, the slimmer the margin of victory has to be for the loser to have any credible chance of overturning it.
Goobieman said:
1876 1888 2000.
It is. Hardly anyone cared until 2000 - and you dont see Republicans whining about it. What's that tell you?
Debates about the electoral college have been mostly nonpartisan from my experience, with both Democrats and Republicans arguing both sides. The only one who has tried to make it a partisan issue is you.
Goobieman said:
Same question back at you -- are the 'values' of ME MD DE VT RI a product of their smallness or their location?
Their location obviously, and that's exactly the point. Rhode Island has a lot more in common with New York than it does with Wyoming. The small state vs big state dichotomy is no longer an accurate model of American politics.
Goobieman said:
And in any event -- Who cares? Point is small states do often share a common set of values opposite those of large states. Why should the small states suffer?
Perhaps you could enlighten me as to what some of those small state values are.
Goobieman said:
The --states-- elect the President, and so there needs to be some level of parity between the states. Thats what the EC does.
So the states should elect the president because the states elect the president. Makes sense... :roll: