Third Party & Independents: Archives

I completely agree with the Constitutional Amendment. Whether we get rid of the Electoral College or overhaul it, we must move closer to a democracy and further from a republic, if we hope to keep from alienating and disenfranchising half or more of the potential voting public.

A large number of potential voters don’t vote because of the Republic which dictates they have no vote on issues, and their vote for President does not count either, unless they live in a handful of swing states.

This country was founded on a revolution against a government that was unresponsive and gave no redress for our grievances. That is rapidly becoming the case once again.

The Electoral College provides a way to break a tie. We had a statistical tie in 2000 and we may have one again in 2004. If you think the Florida recount was a farce, Imagine having to do that in all fifty states and District of Columbia. The 2000 margin was so slim we would have been forced into a nationwide recount. What a mess. Each time you recount that many votes, you come up with a different number, even when you are honest. I suspect some might not be honest.

There is really nothing magical about voting. It is a statistical way to determine the consent of the governed. There is no truth beyond the ballots we have. There could be many different ways to determine consent. Experts on strategy have proposed multiple votes, proportional representations, statistical models etc. It resembles a championship contest in sports. The Boston Red Sox just won the World Series. They did this by winning the most games. Which team got the highest total number of home runs? We could well determine the outcome that way. It might be fairer, but it would be really confusing and maybe would create greater incentives to cheat. There is also little reason to believe it would produce a better champion.

As long as we all know the rules going live with them AFTER the election, it is good. The American system has produced stability over a long period. Other, more elegant, systems have come and gone. Systems long established should not be changed for light or transient reasons. The fact that the Electoral College offends some of us, might not be enough. I would be reluctant to tamper with it.

The problem is, Jack, that your entire argument falls apart on this simple sentence: “There is really nothing magical about voting. It is a statistical way to determine the consent of the governed.”

The problem is states are NOT the governed, the American people are. Our federal government governs the people for certain limited ends, and the people should be presented. As james wilson, one of our greatest founders pointed out at the constitutional convention: “General Government is not an assemblage of States, but of individuals for certain political purposes… the individuals therefore not the States, ought to be represented in it.”

To stick with your analogy- the electoral college would be like if the winner of the regular season title was settled by “most divisions defeated during the regular season.” That is, if the red sox had a winning record against the AL east AL central, AL west, NL east, NL central and NL West, they would get the nod of the Yankees, even if the yankees had a better overall record (i hope you followed that)! “Winning” a state by a couple hundred votes is nothing special- winning the majority of the american voters is what determines whether you have the “consent of the governed.”

Misha

That is great when we can determine the majority. In the 2000 election there was no clear majority. I don’t think it would have been any better to award the election to Al Gore. We could have recounted several times, but it was just too close. Beyond that, why do we think that a simple majority should rule? Actually, no candidate since George Bush in 1988 has received even that much. Clinton won with (what?) 42% in 1992. Should we have a run off? And the will of the people – over what period should we measure it? There are a lot of fundamental questions that we could ask if we decide to change the system.

I was brought up with Thucydides and the classics. I distrust democracy that is too direct. We need institutions, and some intermediaries to help stabilize the will of the people. Without stabilizers democracy deteriorates into anarchy and then into tyranny. Our republic has endured well beyond the lifetime of most democracies. One reason, I think, is the built in stabilizers of the states.

Really wonder why people think Bush can save from terrorism. If that is the case, Osama would have been killed by now. We would not have diverted our attention to Iraq. What a big myth. Anyone else would have done a better job on war on terrorism. The current administration has been a disaster as far as war on terrorism is concerned. What have we achieved so far!!!!!

Jack- I agree with you on your distrust of democracy that is too direct. I have no idea, however, how the apportionment of votes in the electoral college has anything to do with that OR ANY OTHER legit concern.

There is nothing stabalizing the system under the apportionment of the electoral college- it is simply putting the “votes” of people in some states and using an arbitrary factor to weigh them more than the votes of people in other states (just think in mathamatical terms). I do not see what end this accomplishes other than some sort of perverse “affirmative action” for people in small states…

There are a lot of ways to improve how we elect presidents. But I think if we took or current system apart, we would never get it back together again. It was a miracle that we got the Constitution we did. The Electoral College works to stabilize, spread power and break ties. But if we opened the can of worms, we almost certainly would end up with direct election with no stabilization. We might even get proportional representation. In theory, this would be great. In practice it would make us prey to the demagogue-corruption- anarchy-tyranny trap endemic in republics.

I was with ya, Misha until the last sentence.

“I do not see what end this accomplishes other than some sort of perverse “affirmative action” for people in small states…”

Why is affirmative action perverse, or why do you discount the value of people in small states?

jack, your defense does not work. The proposition is set forth that the current system is not working, it cancels out, ignores, or otherwise eliminates millions upon millions of American’s votes. Thus, we have one of the poorest showings at the polls for federal election than that of most other modern democracies in the world. Our system does not support the belief that a citizen’s vote makes any difference. And with the Electoral College, that belief is far too often justified.

So, you would choose to keep to the system we have rather than messing around with the Constitution to try to improve upon it. That is indeed a truly conservative position. Our Constitution has been amemnded a number of times, and the world did not end. Even when we amended it and realized a few years later we’d made a mistake, we just amended it again by repealing prohibition.

We have been moving away from the original Republic in steps and stages ever since the early 1800’s. The Republic was established for times when the majority of the nation’s people could not cast an informed vote. Slaves, American Indians, women, even white males who did not own land, were regarded as unfit to vote.

Over the centuries, everyone in America except the mentally infirm, and illegal immigrants, have demonstrated the their capability of casting an informed vote. And in this way American has been moving further and further away from the Republic and toward a more direct democracy, despite the naysayers toward the Black vote, or women’s suffrage. We have, and we should continue to move in incremental steps toward direct elections of our representatives. There simply is no valid justification for not doing so anymore.

The conservative argument that we will open a can of worms, or somehow fail to improve what is already shown to be not working, has been proven wrong time and again historically by the number of amendments that have been enacted despite the conservative naysayers.

Affirmative action is perverse because it discards a universal principle- nondiscrimination- to achieve a particular desired ends. AA is the quitensential example of attempting to use ends to justify means.

In this case, the “ends” are hoping to keep small states from being ignored (which I think is a rather silly ends, as we should only care about PEOPLE, not states, and 140,000 people in Wyoming being ingnored is no worse than 140,000 in northern california being ignored), and the means is abandoning the concept that every person’s vote should count the same. I want to count everyone’s value the same- I think every person should have the same voting power in choosing the president. For example, I think that if I change my mind and decide to vote for candidate X, that change should have the same effect on the result of the election as if a person in a small state or a “swing” state change their minds and decided to vote for X.

The problem is states are NOT the governed, the American people are.

Misha, being from California, I’m pretty gun-shy about direct democracy (our referendum system is constantly abused by those with the money to hire signature takers and fund an ad campaign). How do you keep the majority from trampling the minority?

Hmm… Unless you’re actually talking about abolishing the concept of ‘states’. That’s going to take a lot of convincing on your part.

I’d consider apportioning a state’s electoral votes to the candidates proportionally. I think most states are headed in that direction eventually, anyhow.

AP- several responses:

(1) My proposal would not make democracy any less or more direct- it would just be about re-apportioning voting power upon the principle that every person’s vote should count the same to the final result. As a result, our republican mode of government, checks and balances ect. would be unaffected.

(2) apportioning each states votes proportionally solves only the smaller problem. The larger problem is that small states should not be overrepresented in choosing the president.

(3) on the “states” thing, believe it or not I am actually a big proponent of giving the states more power and the federal government less. I have a grand plan that I have thought up to rationalize constitutional law once again, and this is only one step of the project. This is what it would look like: basically we would establish the principle that our national government is truely national in that it represents the people- but by re-establishing this concept by getting rid of the electoral college and reapportioning the Senate to reflect population, we would ALSO recognize once again that we only have the national government to accomplish certain, limited ends. Those listed in Article I, Section VII, some in article II, and the 14th amendment. That would be the extent of the federal government’s power.

The reason that these changes are linked is pretty complicated, and its going to be the topic of a book I am currently working on (long term project). Basically, what I think is that the people set up the federal government to accomplish a particular list of things- so the people, each one equally, should have a say in how the federal government should do those things. The state governments are set up to take care of everything else, and the federal government has no right to overstep its list of enumerated powers to mess with what the people of each state have delegated to their STATE rather than federal government.

People think that the electoral college and the Senate protect states from federal encroachment. This is a chimera. In reality, they over-represent the views of small or swing states, giving those people more power than they should have in a country based on the principle of one man, one vote. Sorry for going off to left field on this, but this is something I really have thought a lot about and care about.

Misha, Actually the effect of your position on AA is that you reward discrimination. By pretending that discrimination over time has no cumulative effects is rewarding those that discriminate. Very principled(in a perverse sort of way), but inpracticle. Results do matter, Misha.

Also a response to reaportioning the Senate would mean no roads would ever be built in Rhode Island. Those states would become second class with no legislative power. As far as apportioning electoral votes or even abolishing the electoral college I think would be a good idea.