[EM] In defense of the Electoral College (was Re: Making a Bad Thing Worse)

[Markus Schulze]

Dear Jonathan Lundell,

I wrote (7 Nov 2008):

> Second: It makes it possible that the elections
> are run by the governments of the individual
> states and don't have to be run by the central
> government.
>
> [Currently, to guarantee that the Equal Protection
> Clause is fulfilled, it is only necessary to
> guarantee that all the voters within the same
> state are treated equally.
>
> A popular vote would make it necessary that also
> all the voters across the USA are treated equally.
> This would mean that also the regulations on
> eligibility, absentee ballots, early voting,
> voting machines, opening hours of the polling
> stations etc. would have to be harmonized across
> the USA.]

You wrote (7 Nov 2008):

> And this would be, on balance, a bad thing because...?

First of all: There are many people in the USA
who argue that the central government should pass
regulations only where absolutely necessary and
that the individual states should have as much
say as possible.

Furthermore: Currently, there are always also many
elections on the state level and on the local level
parallel to the presidential elections. The states
would either have to run the presidential elections
separately from the state elections and the local
elections (which would increase the costs) or they
would have to apply the same regulations for the
presidential, the state, and the local elections
(which would increase the power of the central
government even further).

Markus Schulze