Preaching to the choir

For some reason having different parties works in many of the state leadership roles. We have a dem governor and a rep lt governor here and they seem to work together and get the state assembly to work together better that way. John McCain has shown himself to be bipartisan in many instances which is a good thing. I'm not sure that Obama has been around long enough to have that experience but that doesn't mean he couldn't be.

eldermike said:

http://uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/INFORMATION/electcollege_procon.php
This is a good article on the EC and the conclusion is correct IMO.
The EC today solves a set of problems that were unseen at the time it was created by our founding fathers which to me shows a higher power than man in it's creation.

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It was an interesting article. Thanks for posting it. We'll just have to agree to disagree. Whatever over-representation the EC ensures for small states IMO is outweighed by the fact that it also effectively disenfranchises many voters in Presidential elections. What happens to the votes of Republicans in New York, or Illinois? Or to Democrats in Texas? The point of the OP was to encourage people to vote. If the votes of 2.3 million Bush voters in Michigan in 2004 were essentially worthless, then that is a major problem with the system.

I suppose what we really differ on are our views of federalism. The founders established the EC to reflect the view that the states should elect the President. I believe in today's world that's anachronistic and anti-democratic. We're just not a nation of individual states anymore--like it or not, those days are gone forever. I think the President should represent the people, and should be elected by the people--not by middlemen under the direction of state legislatures. The founders themselves were quite smart, but hardly infallible. They never intended the Constitution to be immutable. They incorporated an amendment process to fix it's flaws as times and circumstances changed. This would be a good use for it.

Are you familiar with Henry Brands? He's a history professor at Univ. Of Texas. He made a good point about the EC. He says a real test of any institution is if it would be created if it didn't already exist. If, we the people, had been directly electing the President all along, would we have changed it to something like the EC? Think about it.

jayem said:

It was an interesting article. Thanks for posting it. We'll just have to agree to disagree. Whatever over-representation the EC ensures for small states IMO is outweighed by the fact that it also effectively disenfranchises many voters in Presidential elections. What happens to the votes of Republicans in New York, or Illinois? Or to Democrats in Texas? The point of the OP was to encourage people to vote. If the votes of 2.3 million Bush voters in Michigan in 2004 were essentially worthless, then that is a major problem with the system.

I suppose what we really differ on are our views of federalism. The founders established the EC to reflect the view that the states should elect the President. I believe in today's world that's anachronistic and anti-democratic. We're just not a nation of individual states anymore--like it or not, those days are gone forever. I think the President should represent the people, and should be elected by the people--not by middlemen under the direction of state legislatures. The founders themselves were quite smart, but hardly infallible. They never intended the Constitution to be immutable. They incorporated an amendment process to fix it's flaws as times and circumstances changed. This would be a good use for it.

Are you familiar with Henry Brands? He's a history professor at Univ. Of Texas. He made a good point about the EC. He says a real test of any institution is if it would be created if it didn't already exist. If, we the people, had been directly electing the President all along, would we have changed it to something like the EC? Think about it.

Click to expand...

It would be an intresting but dangerous experiment to remove the EC, IMHO.

Thanks for the civil discussion

Billnew said:

That is all we ask.


I don't have a problem except with this.
There will be no benefit to have 2 people that can't work together. The Vp would be constantly cutting down the preisident, and we would have the same bickering we have in Congress in the White house. Of course the President could sign any bill he wishes since the President allows the VP to handle some issues, but the Vp really has no authority until the President is incapacitated or killed.

If someone is thinking third party, I support your vote. I don't believe they have a chance, but I support your vote. So long as we get as many
involved people voting.(not just pulling a random vote for someone they don't know.)

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VP is also president of the senate if I'm not mistaken. Having potentially opposing POV's in the whitehouse might seem like it would cause problems, but we have numerous other bipartisan relationships outside of that one building that work.

Getting rid of the scattered primaries and allowing for one day of voting would also reduce the political scheming that evolves over the course of a campaign and makes folks vote based on history, not sound bytes and staged appearances for the media.