Posted by lil' jimi on November 10, 2006, at 10:34:51
In reply to Re: And now, while the iron is cold » madeline, posted by Dinah on November 8, 2006, at 20:32:26
per normal, there are more than two sides to this issue.
lately the electoral college has been determinative in presidential elections.
case in point, without the electoral college bush loses to gore in 2000.on the down side, there are more voters in the suburbs of san antonio than the whole state of montana.
so i see there being a balancing between the franchise of every individual voter (excellent principle we may not abandon) versus the electoral college enfranchising the representation of every state (really not such a bad idea) in the selecting of the president and vice president.
the electoral college’s effect of disenfranchising of individual voters in favor of state representation is exacerbated by the ‘winner-take-all the state electors’ rule at the state level. eliminating this rule would go a long way toward a more acceptable balance between state versus voter representation. i believe that nebraska has such a rule as part of state law.
a federal law could mandate every u.s. house of representative’s congressional district be allowed to select their electors autonomously with no state-wide presidential winner-takes-all.
this would still hit the montanas pretty hard and as a consolation we could have the states’ u.s. senators have their own electors represent the states’ elector majorities.
the upside: bush still loses in 2000.
and the elections without popular vote become much less likely.another worthy reason to not eliminate the EC altogether is that presidential campaigns would be free to ignore completely the sparsely populated regions: alaska, utah, vermont, south dakota ... and this could effectively disenfranchise even more individual voters. and my proposed federal law would have the effect of prohibiting that since every candidate would have to run in every district to have a chance to win.
but, of course, as always, i could be wrong.
~ a pro-democracy democrat of the democratic wing of the democratic party
poster:lil' jimi
thread:701735
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20061009/msgs/702255.html