Posted on 08/28/2004 11:34:36 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
"My thoughts? Open this area of the Constitution up for actual change, and it'll be a disaster. I don't want to have any sort of bipartisan discussion about the EC issue until the Democrats lose this next election by a wide margin and realize they have to clean house. In fact, I will resist discussion of changes to the EC even if Democrats have won with it. The EC is one of our Founding Fathers' most brilliant ideas, and I am wary of anyone who wants to tinker with it."
-- what about the merits of the idea?
I can and I'd live with it. I'd hope that it inspires more grass-roots attention to local politics.
If California were to be split up, it would have to be into several viable states -- it can't just be split up. So, how do we split California into smaller states that can still survive on their own?
How about:
1. South California: Coastal San Diego, Los Angeles, north up to, but not including Monterey. They get the naval base and the entertainment business. Capital: Los Angeles. Political leaning: mixed.
2. North California: Coastal Monterey, San Francisco Bay Area, Napa, north to Redding and the Oregon Border. They get liberal fantasyland. Capital: Berkeley. Political leaning: Hard Left Democrat.
3. Sierra: Eastern mountainous region that runs up the entire eastern border of California. They get water, tourism, Yosemite, Tahoe, winter skiing. Capital: Sacramento. Political leaning: Conservative Republican.
-PJ
These are exciting ideas, fellow FReeper!
-PJ
Totally agree. California, taken alone, would be the fifth largest economy in the world. I do not think the founders of this country intended for a single state to have this much power over the rest of the nation. Splitting it into three states makes perfect sense. Of course, Texas and New York would need to be split in two to keep it consistent. Florida is getting close to needing to be split in two.
The Electoral College is great. Otherwise, candidates would be forced to campaign only in big cities, totally ignoring rural areas and sparsely populated states.
Yes, they would care less about the people who hold onto traditional values. But that's what the perfumed princes and the Boston brahmin want.
So who's going to violate a state's sovereignty and split the state in two? Only the state itself could decide that. But even that wouldn't work: it would encourage EVERY state to infinitely divide and increase their Senate representation.
<< 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!
See post #81: Alexander Hamilton's treatise on the Electoral College...
However one may think about the EC - it is definitely more important to get the voting procedure clean! It´s unbearable for the United States that still dead people votes count or that the list of people who are uneligible to vote (like criminals) is hidden from the public in many states. We don´t have these problems in Europe and therefore consider your voting procedure as inferior. You have too many posssibilities to manipulate elections (and I blame the blue and red side for that). I know you will dismiss it, but being registered from birth till death by the city you live in, and bearing a national ID with your address on it has advantages. We receive a notification a few weeks before our election by mail, then we can send it back and ask for a mail vote or we go to the ballots, show our ID or passport, our names on the voter list is marked and we get our vote. When the ballots close, the number of marked names is counted and must be identical with the number of votes. Then the helping hands in the office count the votes - and we take care that at least one of the two big parties is present. With that easy procedure, we never had any claims that there could be a fraud. Oh, and the right to vote can be taken away by a courts decision, but it must be said in the sentence, and for max. 5 years. This (our) system is different to the US -and ... that´s a point why many many people put the finger on you.
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.
California is insane, that monster needs to be split into three states.
Without the EC, candidates would just focus on NY, CA, TX, FL and a handful of coastal mega states.
At least it would have spared us clinton, who won with 42 percent of the popular vote.
Hello .30Carbine! We agree on something: the EC is a superb institution, and Hamilton does indeed explain it well, quoting Alexander Pope: "For forms of government let fools contest -- That which is best administered is best."
Hamilton was also a proponent of the right for individual citizens to keep and bear military-grade weapons.
He was also a defender of the state's neutrality with respect to religious beliefs writing in Federalist 51, " In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects."
Then explain to the children that the electoral college makes every vote equally importatnt.
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