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… The President should represent the people, not the states.
If your guy loses, your president is always chosen by other people.
The electoral college was a horrible idea.
Your state, on the other hand, by virtue of having joined the Union, has a right to help choose the President. Perhaps you don't care for states' rights.
You can imagine that smaller states, upon realizing that they would never have any influence over a presidential election, might have been more reluctant to play along. Hence the electoral college.
I think it is just misunderstood.
Sorry, you've got that backwards.
If it wasn't for the electoral college, smaller states would be utterly ignored in the Prez elections, because their lack of voters would make them of little value.
As it is, since most small states give all their electoral votes to the candidate who wins their majority of voters, small states do matter.
We are not a democracy and were not intended to be a democracy. We're a Republic, with built-in measures intended to prevent a tyranny of the majority.
If anyone takes a good close look at the popular vote parliaments of Europe, they'll see how nutters those guys can be.
No way in the world would I want an only popular vote government.
And how does the electoral college guarantee the best guy wins? There really are only two choices. Popular vote is the only fair and sensible way to elect someone. Everyones vote matters.
Popular vote to me is chaos.
A crazy attempt at an egalitarian utopia.
This makes no sense to me. One of the libertarian ideals is that all men are created equal. If that is true, why would the popular vote be a bad thing?
I take my page on this from the Libertarian Socialists and the worker owned collectives.
In a worker owned collective, you don't get a say unless you contribute(work) to the group.
Essentially, you have to give before you can get.
We want some amount of regulation on most parts of society, these regulations only exist because men operate the businesses, pollute the environment etc, which can all have effects on other people.
Voting is one of those things that can have an effect on other people.
Popular vote has proven to be chaotic and lets a lot of the crazies (Bachman and Pelosi) take office.
Something that shouldn't happen.
To keep men equal under the law, you have to restrain some of them.
What would constitute earning the right to vote? Would it be military service? Paying taxes? Or something else?
Something, although I'm not so sure about military service.
That would limit too many people and possibly create another Sparta situation.
It would have to be something that most people would be able to do.
I think community is very important but I think you should show it before getting the privileges.
Personally, I can't think of particular task that would filter out crazy people such as Bachmann.
Yea, I'm not sure how to deal with people like her.
Taxation is probably the easiest way to do it but I think volunteer labor instead of taxes might be ok.
The military participation leaves it too far open for abuse.
Income and crazy are not inversely correlated, so taxes probably wouldn't work.
That's true as well, I'm not sure.
Will have to think on that one.
Basically though, we should all have to contribute something of value.
It shows that you put your willing to walk how you talk.
I think even that would backfire. I can easily imagine political organizations putting their members through whatever program/contribution to get more votes. It would be an arms race.
A nationwide recount would never happen, we'd still vote state by state. Each state would manage its own election as it does now. If something went wrong in one state we wouldn't have to do the entire thing over.
I think the electoral college is one of the hidden geniuses of the American constitution. It creates 50 individual state elections within the single presidential election. As such, the unique issues of each state must be addressed by each candidate if they wish to compete in that state. Consistent with American ideal, the rights / issues of the few are not trampled on my the issues of the majority. This concept is also consistent with the concept of states rights and the republic.
OTH, without an electoral college, presidential elections can be won by only appealing to the majority. Do you really want a president that is elected only addressing the issues of major media markets? whose agenda and solutions affect only those in major urban/suburban areas?
Then there is the practical issue: a re-count in a single state is not that big a deal; a national recount is a disaster. Our elections are generally decided within 4 percentage points. It would be very easy to have an election decided within 1/2 of 1%, which is re-count territory. Contested elections are never decisive.... even the 2000 election was not exactly decisive (a large % of the population did not agree that the winner actually won).
I believe in personal rights over states rights.
Most votes are thrown away with the electoral college. If the majority of Americans want someone to be president, that person should be president. Just my opinion. My vote means nothing the way it's set up.
I've already addressed this...voting indicates the general political atmosphere of your state. If your state is too liberal or conservative for you, move. Your state is far more efficient than the federal government when it comes to understanding the majority of issues facing its constituents.
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