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I honestly don't follow why you believe our legislative system is proof of a 'tyranny of the majority.' If our legislatures are put there by a majority of the people and vote in accordance with their constituents, they are following the will of the people. I'd rather they follow the will of a majority rather than, say, ten of their old frat buddies. If they don't represent the people who put them there, the people need to vote them out.

Judicial activism is a good example of the tyranny of the minority, which is the only true type of tyranny there is. (Democracy arose in Attic Greece to fight against tyranny, much to Aristophanes' annoyance, who did believe that democracies were a barbarian form of mob rule. In The Knights, he anticipates Alexander Tyler's observations that all democracies are bound to fail economically when the voting populace realizes they can vote themselves gifts from the public coffers.) We certainly need to fix the flaw that allows judicial activism in our system. I believe Robert Bork offers a good solution in "Coercing Virtue."

While I completely agree with you about homeowner associations being a form of tyranny, I classify that as a Constitutional violation of a property-rights issue, and not an electoral issue. That is, I believe that 'majority' has no more right to control what another person does with his property than they have to outlaw his free speech. You won't see the tides turn against HA's until there is a racial or religious discrimination issue that reaches national attention.

As the article puts it, without the Electoral College, the plurality of the vote situated in the cities, which tend to attract leftists, would determine all national elections.

If the leftists had their way and got rid of the EC and instituted pure democracy (replacing our form of government which is not a democracy but a democratic republic), then a plurality of the voters in the major cities could hold referendums for such issues as banning tractors nationwide. This could cause just a bit of heartache in the Midwest. This is just one extreme example of what could happen if the two were combined.

As far as third parties are concerned, I would very much like to see a more conservative party have a fair shot (which means splitting the total votes into thirds....17% just ain't gonna cut it let alone 3 or 4) at winning the presidency. When enough of the voting population supports such a contender, the EC will not eliminate them as a voice, but will give them as equal say as the other two parties. The problem is not the EC, rather that there simply is not a serious third-party contender out there with enough support to put a candidate in the running. What would you like to see, the name of every person who can come up with 10 supporters put on the national ballot? No, then what number, 1000? I'm not being snide, I'm just not sure what percentage of support is reasonable to put someone on a ballot, but I do think it needs to be closer to an even split with the existing number of parties.

Our system helps to thin the field so that national elections don't become so complicated with a hundred micro-parties that the people ignore them. But I agree with your implication that the two parties cooperate to keep out third parties, and I'd like to see that control broken down. But I really don't want to see a hundred parties on every national ballot (and local ballot for that matter). Talk about further fracturing our sense of nationhood! We're having enough problems with unity in this country.

My liberal friend a couple of years ago also supported the idea of proportional representation. According to his scheme, the vote of each minority would count more than a single vote, whatever the "proportion" would be needed to match the majority. He didn't like me pointing out that it was simply a new application of the 3/5 rule from the days of slavery and that it was equally dehumanizing. His scheme also meant that if enough people (again, what number, who knows?) identified themselves as, say, Zoroastrians (no offense to any Zoroastrians out there, I just plucked a name out of the air) and they felt that they were not being represented and wanted to be, then the electorate would be forced to allow them to have their own representative, outside the number of representatives apportioned by the population and districting established by our national census.

My point is that this leftist friend of mine knows the politicians he supports are backed by an UNDERwhelming minority of the voting populace...yet he wants to get them elected. This is the true form of tyranny...an underwhelming percentage of the populace ruling the overwhelming majority.

Until someone comes up with a better idea of sorting out the riffraff from those who a substantial percentage of the people want to be represented by, I'll support the EC.

You make my point for me. Show me where in the Constitution it gives Congress the authority to GIVE the taxpayers money away. Just because Congress gets a majority doesn't make it right yet every year they pass dozens of laws that do not meet constitutional muster. So what if the majority of people support it?

What if the "will of the people" was to kill all blacks? Hey, the majority of people support it, so what is the problem?

What we are rapidly degenerating to is a democracy instead of a Constitutional Republic. The difference is this: A democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. A Constitutional Republic is where the sheep is armed and willing to contest the validity of the vote.

Right now in our nation about half of the people pay 97% of the income taxes. We are rapidly moving towards a system of those who pay the taxes and those who are paid off by the taxes. Once the number of people who suck off the system reaches 51%, they will start voting larger and larger chunks of money from the treasury (i.e. the taxpayers) to themselves. But that won't matter to you because it is the will of the people! Right?

Tyranny of a large group of people is still tyranny.