<< The Electoral College makes Republicans in New York, and Democrats in Utah, superfluous. >>
Bull$hit!
The Electoral College ensures that the voters of every one of the fifty sovereign states that own operate and comprise these united STATES, gets his say in who will occupy the chief executive's office -- be, as it were, chairman of the federal board.
<< .... in 2000, when George Bush became president even though he lost the popular vote to Al Gore by more than 500,000 votes .... >>
More bull$hit!
The total number of votes cast for Gore by criminal aliens and other ineligible miscreants by far exceeded 500,000 -- and President Bush won where it counts -- and by 38 states to 12 and, geographically, in 81% of the country, populated by 143 million Americans, to Gore's 19% and 129 million.
The Electoral College is one of the Founding Fathers' very best ideas!
The Times' editorital does not answer the one critical question: why should American citizerns entrust the Presidency to the voters of the most populous states?
That would be the consequence of electing the President
by popular vote.
I would vote for keeping the Electoral Collage as it is - and as the founding fathers wished it to be. It is the last vestige of the concept of the united States of America as opposed to the United states of America. It was bad enough when our Senators were changed from representing the States to become nothing more than another House of Representatives.
The election of the President of the united States is too important to leave entirely up to the mob.
At least it would have spared us clinton, who won with 42 percent of the popular vote.
Then explain to the children that the electoral college makes every vote equally importatnt.
And how many of those 500,000 "votes" were actually fraudulent ballots, ballots by Deceased-Americans, ballots by Felonious-Americans, etc?
THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE MUST STAY!
Once again, another marginally educated New York Times pinhead who think s he's smarter than the Founding Fathers.
IIRC, the NYT favored this when they thought their boy OwlGore was going to win the EC and lose the popular vote. Besides the fact that we'll never know the true vote count nationwide for 2000, due to the dead and other DNC repeat voters, etc.
The small states are already significantly overrepresented in the Senate, which more than looks out for their interests.
Who has the graphic of the BS meter? Repeal the 17th Amendment.
And there is no interest higher than making every vote count.
Bwahaha! Stop it! You're killing me!
The only place the Times can go with this argument is total and forced franchise for all humans - hell, why not include dogs? (cats no!) -- who inhabit not just the States but the territories, of the United States. By its argument, the Times has democracy, that is, majority vote, the goal of government.
It is not. The purpose of government is to secure happiness for the individual. History has shown over and over that pure democracies do not secure this end. Our Founders were very, very clear on history.
We do not have a democracy. As stands, half or less the registered voters vote in national elections. That means, even with the 14th and 15th amendments, making citizens of the former slaves and securing their rights to vote, even with the 19th amendment, giving womins the vote, even with the 23rd amendment giving electoral college representation to the District of Columbia, even with the 24th amendment and the abolishment of polling taxes, and even with the 26th amendment, which lowered the age of the right to vote to 18, even with all these extensions of democracy, we have no majority rule. A majority of the minority yet decide national affairs.
Now, the Times, thinks it's unfair and unbecoming of a democracy that the electoral college splits this majority into historically-defined geogrphic divisions. Why draw the line there? For true, pure democracy, we must not just allow, we must require human resident of the country (and dogs!) to vote. There must not be a single national decision that is not approved by the people.
Temporal representation, such as the 4-year presidential, 2-year House, and 6-year Senate terms, is another barrier to pure democracy. This, too, must not stand. Democratic government must respond to the people's will -- a majority of all of them, or it fails.
Such nonsense.
Back in 1912, when these stupid ideas of direct democracy were rampant, pushed ahead by the wildly popular and wildly-dangerous ex-President, Theodore Roosevelt, his Republican opponent, William Howard Taft had to argue against the same sort of stupidity as the Times is giving us today. Taft said,
It was long ago recognized that direct action of a temporary majority of the existing electorate must be limited by fundamental law; that is by a Constitution intended to protect the individual and the minority of the electorate and the non-voting majority of the people against the unjust or the arbitrary action of the majority of the electorate.He wasn't speaking of the electoral college, but it yet stands as a bulwark against precisely those dangers.
These libs can whine for abolishing the EC all they want. It's never going to happen.
Abolishing the EC will require a Constitutional Amendment, which requires the support of the very states they wish to disenfranchise through their action. It's a pipe dream.
The events of September 11, 2001 are seared in my memory. On that day, feeling the attack on all that I love, I began to study WHAT IT IS which I cherish so much. I began reading the lives of the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers,... to Rusell Kirk... to Hayek, and lots more. Naievely, I believed this would be a time of Americans deepening their understanding of the American genius. The NYT etc. in their pure ignorance have no desire to understand the reasons America is the exception in the world and in history. But (naievely again) I believe the debate over the Electoral College system can educate us in the core American principles, and how it differs from inferior models such as the EU, France, the Ottomans, etc.
The Electoral College caused our guy to lose last time and we don't want that to happen again. Abolish the Electoral College. It just makes sense to us.
I wouldn't oppose scrapping the Electoral College if it were part of a package of reforms that included 1) national propositions and referenda, 2) legislative and popular review of judicial decisions and 3) term limits.
When you start out with a false premise, every thing else that follows is just crap.
One thing that needs to be understood is that we live in a republic, not a democracy. The rights of all people need to be considered, not just rights of the majority. The Electorial college is aimed towards preventing the larger states from abusing the smaller ones.
By the logic of the NYT we should have a world government with one person one vote. What would that be like?
The electoral college has worked for over 200 years. Don't mess with it.
It's not a change to the electoral college that is needed. What is needed, is that the people of this country need to understand how it works and why it was set up this way.