Because their needs are different, and without giving them some voting weight, their needs will never be attended to. A farmer in rural arkansas will be far more concerned about issues of, oh, let's say riparian rights, than someone who lives in a 1-br loft on the upper east side. And a farmer will certainly have different views on issues of immigration than an urban factory worker. To completely ignore one just because the other's vote is all you need to worry about is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Excellent point!

But it ignores the fact that the federal gov't has grabbed more than its fair share of power since the system was designed, and so we may already be past a point of being able to pretend that the states are so autonomous - the power has already shifted.

Different, but more important? Because a farmer's vote carrying more weight (through a skewed Electorate system) than a city dweller's vote is putting more importance on his opinions than the city dweller. How can that be democratic? Do people who live in urban lofts not deserve the same and equal say in guiding their nation's political processes as farm folk out in the country? And we're talking about electing the Commander in Chief here, not voting on specific legislation concerning the farmer. He has state representatives to do that for him. So nobody is going to be silenced, because individual matters like farm subsidies, land use rights, etc. are all being handled by state and local reps.

Smilie aside, this is a stupid and inane post.

Who ever said we live in a democracy?

The point of the electoral college is that without it, those in sparsely populated areas have no voice. If a candidate can get 51% of the popular vote by catering only to the largest population centers, they will.

I don't know that I have a completely clear opinion on the matter myself, but mostly I fall with Alex on this. The current system isn't particularly effective as it has mostly shifted where the disproportionate representation is rather than mitigated it. But I think the solution is to fix the system, not do away with it. I just don't have a particularly good idea as to how to fix it.

And I think the states have every right to do an end run to do away with it, just as the Feds have been doing end runs around states rights for a couple of centuries.

It's within states' rights to do what they want with their electoral votes, including the rights to band together with other states to make the Constitution irrelevant on this point.

It may not be the most direct or ethical way to get to an ethical result ... but this is politics we're talking. And I find this solution to be among the least politically sleazy solutions ever proposed.

I want to be clear in saying that I don't think that switching to a straight popular vote for president would lead to our nation's downfall. But I still think it isn't a good idea.

I don't think it is so much a matter of a vote in one area being more important than a vote in another area. An opinion on Colorado River water policy is not more important simply because it is held by a Coloradan than a New Hampshirite.

The important effect of the electoral college is not that it gives more weight to individual votes in rural states but that it forces candidates to national office to at least pretend interest in the issues of rural states and balance those interests against the interest of urban states.

To continue using the Colorado River as an example, if all a presidential candidate cared about were raw votes when Los Angeles and Denver are fighting over water access and allocations then it is a slam dunk that you promise LA whatever they want to gain 3 million votes and lose 1 million in Colorado. The sensibleness of Colorado objections doesn't matter at all. Instead, ideally, the candidate is stuck trying to find a third way that will perhaps get him both LA and Colorado.

But this is a setting of priorities. Arguing that all votes should be 100% equal in value is a reasonable point of view and I don't disparage anybody who holds it and if it can be achieved through the democratic process I don't think it is really all that horrible. Just not, in my opinion, ideal.

Now, as I've said, the current system is tilted too heavily in giving geographic weight, but this is a byproduct of Congress having calcified at 435 members not something inherent in the electoral college. Reforming that would do a lot to balance things out.


That said, if Kerry had received a few thousand more votes in Ohio, how many of the currently anti-electoral crowd would be thanking their lucky stars that Kerry is president despite clear popular vote victory by Bush?

Seriously. You don't consider the U.S. a democracy. I really can't offer any response here because I have no idea how to discuss that issue. It's like denying that a horse has four feet. So, yeah...

I'm not convinced that in today's world that would happen because I don't think it's that simple. If a candidate were to do that in today's society of instant news coverage and independent blogs, his promise to L.A. would go out over the airwaves and most likely piss off more than just the Coloradoans (Is that how you collectively refer to Colorado residents?) since everyone nowadays has an opinion on everything. There'd be concerned citizens everywhere who would look at that and say, "Well, he's just making false promises." Or, "If he'll write off Colorado that easily, then he probably doesn't care about us either" and vote for the other guy. The general public is more informed today than in the past, and I think that even with a popular vote a national candidate would still have to tread lightly for fear of losing the votes of the like-minded. Maybe I’m wrong and only those directly involved in the issue would let it change their minds, but after the national outcry over Katrina or other localized events like it, I just don’t believe that we live in a world anymore where people are that attached to just their own state, county, city or whatever. We’ve been taught for years now to “think globally,” and I think candidates would have to contend with that.

Of course, we could easily solve the problem with one season every four years of "Presidential Idol." Seacrest could host, Simon could rip on their domestic agendas, Randy could compliment their Brooks Brothers suits and Paula could drool on them. It'd be awesome, and Only On Fox!

;)

Note: I added a question mark at the end of the first sentence as I believe that was a question, not a statement. If I have done this incorrectly, I apologize.

It's splitting hairs in my opinion (saying that we do not live in a democracy).

Technically, the basis of our political system is a representative democracy - we elect leaders to make decisions for us on the majority of the issues (some issues, such as Constitutional amendments do require a vote of the people, but the majority of the decisions are made by the elected officials). We elect these leaders based on the perception that they will make the decisions that we expect them to make. Unless a government representative is elected by a unanimous vote (as highly unlikely a scenario as one could ever find), that elected representative is by nature not voting on behalf of all his or her constituents (i.e. - that representative is not acting on behalf of the people who voted for his or her opponent). This is the basis for the argument that we do not live in a democracy.

A "true democracy" has all of the affected persons (you and I) voting on each and every issue that comes to hand - a logistically impossible scenario in all but the smallest of entities.