charlie

my gut tells me if the election was reversed and Gore won this post would not exist.....

lig

Charlie - FYI - I didn't vote for Gore or Bush. Typically I vote Libertarian.

My candidates are doomed

Dallas

I thought that the difference between a "pure democracy" and our form of government was that, in a democracy, the citizens vote on issues of governmental function, and in our case, we vote on representatives who vote on issues of governmental function. If this is the case, then I am quite happy to stay with what we have. I do not believe that a "pure" democracy would be effective except in societies that did not change much over time and were relatively homogenous in their world view. I think it would be a disaster in a society like ours. We would be like a powerful boat with no rudder. We wouldn't keep going in the same direction long enough to get anywhere. Societies that can not change to respond to a changing environment face the same fate as species that cannot adapt. But societies that change with the vagaries of the wind travel much but do not move far.

OTOH, if we are talking about the electoral college, then I agree that it should be eliminated. I believe that the founding fathers put it in there as a sort of doomsday failsafe, wherein the hopefully more educated members of the college could take it upon themselves to save the country from itself, in the event the unwashed masses should elect somebody who was clearly going to be an unmitigated disaster. A previous post in this chain points out that this could still be a valuable service - perhaps prevent us from electing a Hitler. Today, I am not inclined to believe that exercising the "doomsday option", if that were ever to actually happen, would be any more likely to prevent such a disaster than it would be to cause one.

Rick Hesel

How so? I understand that the EC protects sparsely populated (and conservative) states. but given that minorities are concentrated in the most populated states (California, New York, Texas, Florida) the EC serves to further disenfranchise them, not protect them.

I say do away with the EC. It's a pathetic anachronism.

BTW, what we have today in the US is far from a democracy. It's more like a plutocracy. The real power is concentrated in a very few hands, and they work very hard to maintain the illusion of a democracy.

jankemi

At the time, the minorites were the small states, not gender or race.

--Mike

SDBrad

Am new to the board and to Vintage. Great conversation. The strength of this nation comes from the brilliance of Madison and others who forced moderation upon us. Our frontier spirit will always value the individual above the state. We need a counterweight to keep us from fragmenting into special interests, especially with the enormously democratizing force of technology and globalization. While there are tremendous advantages to empowering individuals and we need to promote and protect the full range of basic liberties, we can't be deluded into the fantasy of perfect libertarianism. We, in California, championing the initiative process ... which is basically a way of telling the government to buzz off (a throwback to the Progressive era in the early 20th century) are suffering from layer upon layer of popular laws that are coming close to paralyzing us. I am open to electoral reform and believe it's largely anachronistic ... as others have said ... but am not ready to turn this country into one large town hall with one person, one vote ... with few checks. The French Terror in the 1790s is the result of that direction, rather than the difficult, but healthier process of our own experience. Remember, 2000 was extremely abnormal and there's only been one instance to my knowledge (Hayes/Tilden) where an elector did not do what he was supposed to do. Anyway, just my ramblings. Good to read all of your opinions.

Rick Hesel

The way things work now the large states produce the lion's share of the tax revenues, but get a far lower proportion of federal spending, largely to the benefit of the smaller states. What we have now is more like the tyranny of the minority.

ralper

[QUOTE]Originally posted by SDBrad
Am new to the board and to Vintage.

Rick Hesel

Since only a small fraction of those eligible to vote actually cast a ballot, I think the only tyranny we actually face is what we already have -- the tyranny of special interests, who are lining the pockets and buying the favor of our elected-by-a-small-minority public "servants".

ralper

An interesting twist. The majority (population in general) needs protection from the minority (special interests). Unfortunately, I think you make a very valid point.