[EM] Re: electoral college
Rob LeGrand
honky1998 at yahoo.com
Fri Sep 17 08:27:40 PDT 2004
James Green-Armytage wrote:
> 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.
I think that misses the point. It's true that the writers of the
Constitution were not democrats, in the sense that they distrusted
pure democracy, but I believe it's because they were concerned
about protecting the rights of minorities and individuals, not
because they trusted some citizens less than others. They
carefully chose the methods of selection for the branches of the
federal government to have different electorates. Senators were
chosen by the state legislatures, two to each state, and meant to
serve the states themselves. Representatives were elected by the
people in proportion to the state populations and were the people's
representatives. Presidential electors, allocated intermediately,
were chosen in a manner left to each state. The president was
never supposed to be an ultra-Congressman, elected by the people
directly. He was supposed to be responsible to both the people and
the states. These different electorates for a while did a good job
of restraining federal power over the states and minorities of the
people, but the balance was destroyed first by popular election of
presidential electors and then by the 17th Amendment. The result
today is a giant, unwieldy, often tyrannical federal government
that reigns supreme over the states. As much as I dislike George
W. Bush, I'm glad we still have the Electoral College. But that's
just my opinion.
I'm most interested in working to promote the use of Approval in
each state, not to make national elections more democratic.
=====
Rob LeGrand, psephologist
rob at approvalvoting.com
Citizens for Approval Voting
http://www.approvalvoting.org/
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