Text 1344, 173 rader
Skriven 2004-08-18 07:27:12 av John Hull (1:379/1.99)
Kommentar till en text av Alan Hess
Ärende: ditch the Electoral College?
====================================
17 Aug 04 14:09, Alan Hess wrote to all:
AH> This columnist thinks we should.
AH> ******
AH> http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-op.chapman17aug17,1,7
AH> 127518.story ?coll=bal-pe-opinion
AH> The crumbling case for the Electoral College
AH> By Steve Chapman
This ditchcarp is an idiot.
AH> August 17, 2004
AH> CHICAGO -- In the last days of the 2000 presidential campaign, the
AH> prospect loomed that one candidate would win the popular vote but
AH> lose the Electoral College, and some people were ready. "One thing
AH> we don't do is roll over," said a campaign aide. "We fight."
AH> The plan was a massive blitz urging members of the Electoral
AH> College to vote with the will of the majority. That was what
AH> Republicans had in mind if George W. Bush won with the people but
AH> lost the presidency.
AH> Things didn't turn out quite that way. But Republicans were onto
AH> something that only later dawned on Democrats: There is something
AH> wrong with a system that lets the second-place vote-getter claim
AH> victory.
The system was DESIGNED this way, specifically to keep the election of the
president from becoming a popularity contest. It's worked just fine for over
200 years.
AH> As Al Gore jokes, "You win some, you lose some. And then there's
AH> that little-known third category." Mr. Bush was the first
AH> president since 1888 to lose the popular vote. That's one reason
AH> he entered office with only 51 percent of Americans considering
AH> his victory legitimate.
That's because most Americans don't know squat about how the system works.
AH> The 36-day fight over Florida was just a symptom of the underlying
AH> problem. "If we selected presidents like we select governors,
AH> senators, representatives, and virtually every elected official in
AH> the United States, Al Gore would have been elected president -- no
AH> matter which chads were counted in Florida," notes George C.
AH> Edwards III in his new book, Why the Electoral College Is Bad for
AH> America.
Except that three independant counts of all the votes cast took place AFTER the
election, and all three confirmed that Bush won Florida, chads or no chads. So
he WAS the legitimate winner of the election. It only took the Supreme Court
reaffirming the process because of the criminal attempts to hijack the election
by the Democrats.
AH> But we don't select presidents by a simple vote of the people. We
AH> conduct elections in all 50 states and the District of Columbia,
AH> and typically award candidates electoral votes only if they win an
AH> entire state. The overall popular vote is irrelevant. All that
AH> counts is the Electoral College, in which each state gets as many
AH> votes as it has members of Congress.
AH> I wrote in defense of the Electoral College in 2000, but Mr.
AH> Edwards, a political scientist at Texas A&M University, has forced
AH> me to reconsider. Upon reconsideration, I think the critics have
AH> the better argument.
AH> The rationales for the status quo don't stand up well to scrutiny.
AH> One is that we shouldn't mutilate the Framers' sacred design. But
AH> they had no real clue what they were doing.
Yeah, they're just a bunch of old dead white guys, right? What could they
possibly know?
AH> Stanford historian Jack Rakove, the premier scholar of the
AH> Constitutional Convention, describes the Electoral College as a
AH> "hastily sketched system" that "was obsolete within a bare decade
AH> of its inauguration." The Founders rejected direct election
AH> because they thought voters would know very little about the
AH> candidates -- one of many expectations that was wrong.
No it isn't wrong. The average voter can't tell you who his representatives in
Congress are, who his senators are, and usually doesn't know beans about who's
running until a few days before the election - IF THEN!
AH> Another claim is that this system upholds federalism and
AH> decentralization. In fact, no state government would find itself
AH> weaker without the Electoral College, because it confers no
AH> meaningful authority on state governments.
AH> Nor does it protect small states, which are granted proportionally
AH> more votes than large ones. Residents of Delaware and Idaho have
AH> no discernible common interests merely because they live in small
AH> states. New York and Texas are both big states, but trust me, they
AH> don't feel a deep and special bond because of that. Americans vote
AH> on the basis of ideology, religion, race, economic concerns and
AH> the personal appeal of the candidates, not on some hazy "state"
AH> interest.
Stupid. It has nothing to do with whether or not individual states have mutual
common interest. It has to do with each state's votes having the same weight
regardless of economic status or population or political interest. It is
precisely to PREVENT the large populous states from running roughshod over the
rest of the country simply by virtue of having better weather or because
they're a business mecca, etc.
AH> Most small states, in fact, get zero attention. During the 2000
AH> general election campaign, says Mr. Edwards, only six of the 17
AH> smallest states were visited by either presidential candidate.
AH> Many bigger ones also got shortchanged -- and are getting similar
AH> treatment this year.
AH> Why? Because of the Electoral College. John Kerry will get
AH> millions of votes in Texas, but none of its electoral votes. No
AH> matter what Mr. Kerry does in California, he's almost guaranteed
AH> its electoral votes. Neither he nor Mr. Bush has any incentive to
AH> waste much time in those places. They focus instead on the few
AH> states where the outcome is in doubt. Under a direct election, by
AH> contrast, candidates would go where the votes are, giving most
AH> Americans actual exposure to the campaign.
Now the light begins to escape from under this guy's basket. Kerry doesn't
automatically benefit from the Electoral College, so its got to go! I got it
now.
AH> If the Electoral College didn't exist, no one would invent it. It
AH> violates the central principle of our election system -- that
AH> every vote should count equally and that victory should go to the
AH> person with the most votes. And it produces no obvious
AH> compensating benefit.
This jerk just doesn't get it. There is only one elective office that uses the
Electoral College - the presidency. Every other election in the country is
based on simple majority wins. We HAVE one man-one vote, and always have had.
But the office of president is so important the Founders felt that the votes of
each state should have equivalent value when it came to choosing the man to
hold that office.
AH> We keep the Electoral College only because it doesn't frustrate
AH> majority will very often. If it did, we would get rid of it.
AH> But if the will of the majority is what truly matters, we
AH> shouldn't elect the president under a system whose only function
AH> is to periodically rise up and deny the people their choice. After
AH> 2000, Democrats understand that. Republicans might want to
AH> consider a change before they get their own hard lesson.
Only twice in our history has anyone been elected who supposedly didn't also
wins the raw popular vote, and that may not be accurate for the most recent
one. In any case, we've elected forty-odd presidents, so that means that less
than about one in 22, about 3%, weren't also the popular vote winner. In all
that time we've had no coups, no revolutions, no governments overthrown. The
system works, in spite of guys like these.
AH> Steve Chapman is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, a Tribune
AH> Publishing newspaper. His column appears Tuesdays and Fridays in
AH> The Sun.
AH> Copyright + 2004, The Baltimore Sun
This guy lives and works in Chicago, a city owned and operated by Democrats and
liberals, a city famous for the number of dead people that vote every election.
John
America: First, Last, and Always!
Go to www.madgorilla.us for all your Domain Name Services at the lowest rates.
--- Msged/386 TE 05
* Origin: (1:379/1.99)
|