[EM] electoral college

[James Green-Armytage]

James G-A here, replying to Eric Gorr
>
>>>
>>>Not sure why Colorado is doing this,
>>
>>	Because the electoral college is widely recognized to be an
>>anti-democratic antique, left over from the time that ordinary people
>were
>>not trusted with the decision of electing the president.
>
><topic police>
>This discussion is Off-topic...take it off list if you find it an 
>interesting topic.
></topic police>

	Dude, what are you talking about? We're supposed to be evaluating
election systems, right? Well, the electoral college is an election
system, and I'm saying that it's not a good one, because it's
anti-democratic. That is, the idea of democracy is that people should be
able to participate in collective decisions on a relatively equal basis,
and the electoral college is an impediment to that. I've got a real
system, I've got a criterion, and I'm evaluating the system with respect
to the criterion. That's not off-topic at all. You know what's off-topic?
Vegetarian cooking, Martin Heidegger, and The TV show "Saved by the
Bell"... just for example.

>Democracy is _NOT_ a good system of government.
>When various founders unambiguously stated that Democracy is to be 
>abhorred, they knew what they were talking about.

	Huh. Not something that I expected to see on this list, but I guess
you're entitled to your opinion.	
>
>Republics are good things (which we are). Democracies are not (which 
>we are not).

>At a minimum, it 
 [democracy]
>
>requires that every voter be educated, respect each and every right 
>of their fellow citizens and a bunch of other things that simply will 
>never happen.

	No, democracy doesn't require those conditions, but it means that
problems will arise to the extent that they are not satisfied. If your
definition of democracy excludes a constitution which guarantees minority
rights, then I wouldn't want it either... but my definition of democracy
is compatible with a constitution, with guaranteed rights, and with a lot
of other things that aren't just pure majority rule.
	As for voters being uneducated, that's a problem in a Republic too.
Elected officials can (and do) use the ignorance of the voters to allow
them to carry on criminal acts that would shock and disgust the majority
if they knew about them.
	So, citizen education is important for both a democracy and a republic.
In a full-on direct democracy, voter ignorance would arguably be much less
tolerable. However, I think that a proxy DD system neutralizes this
concern to a large degree.
>
>Let's hope that the EC stays right where it is.

	Actually, I'm not exactly sure how the EC helps solve any of the problems
of democracy that you raise. It just gives a rather arbitrary group of
voters a great deal of extra weight in choosing the president.

James