Either way, the vote in Florida was so innaccurate due to various ingredients
such as political agendas by those deciding on voting machine defects, sizable
population credited for voting for Pat Buchanan, when they would never have,
Supreme court getting to influence who they want in office, etc. This is what
gave the electoral votes to the moron Bush, and is not related to the faults or
benefits of the electoral system itself. Again, it is just a sleazy manipulation
of the system by the sleazy politicians in Florida at the time making agenda'd
decisions about the discrepancies.
Larry
"John A. Lind" wrote:
> At 09:20 PM 7/1/04, Earl Dunbar wrote:
>
> >And guess what, no Electoral "College" (haven't any of those clowns earned
> >their degrees yet?) to ensconce a President that the people didn't vote for.
>
> At the risk of starting something . . . I will state the caveat up
> front. This is simply a statement of the arguments, not a defense for them.
>
> The Electoral College is intended (by the Constitution) to have a balance
> similar to that which is reflected by the two legislative houses. The
> House of Representatives is based upon a "one man one vote" principle to
> represent voters more directly. It's based on population and each
> Congressional District is supposed to have approximately the same
> population. OTOH, the Senate is intended to represent the states equally
> without regard to population distribution or land area. Overtly, it was
> intended to prevent the few largest, most populous states exerting complete
> control unchecked, at least partially reining them in.
>
> Largely unstated publicly when the Constitution was written, it was also
> the Deep South's method for protecting slavery from being abolished by the
> more populous North. The Constitution would never have been ratified
> without these compromises that give some weight to each state and its
> interest on an equal basis with all the other staes. Slavery was a hot
> issue from the get-go.
>
> Various compromises were made during the first 80+ years regarding state
> admissions including Mason-Dixon and the Missouri Compromise . . . Kansas
> "Free" and Missouri "Slave" notwithstanding the Mason-Dixon Line; for quite
> a few years a northern state could not be admitted without a new Deep South
> state also being admitted at the same time; the Deep South Senators would
> block the admission.
>
> In the original Constitution, Senators were elected to the Senate by the
> state legislature. Whoever controlled the state legislature sent their boy
> to the Senate when a seat was due to be filled for another 6-year
> term. This changed to direct popular vote with the 17th Amendment in
> 1912. In the event of a vacancy before the end of the 6-year term (death,
> resignation, etc.), the state's governor appoints a Senator to fill that
> vacancy until an election is held for that seat (in accordance with the
> state's method for doing so).
>
> The number of Electors each state has for the Electoral College matches the
> number of Congressmen *and* Senators the state has. This carries into it
> the same overt purpose cited above for the U.S. Senate . . . to provide at
> least some counterbalance to the few large and most populous states. Thus
> the makeup of the Electoral College. Two additional nuances about having
> an Electoral College versus simply gathering together the Congressmen and
> Senators. Senate seats are 6-year terms with 1/3rd re-elected every two
> years and both seats from a single state must be staggered. The Electoral
> College is elected every four years allowing the state's voters to make a
> decision that might be different from that which would be made by a Senator
> (originally chosen by the state's legislature) who was seated four years
> previously. In addition, from a practical political strategy the President
> and Vice President will likely *never* be from the same state. The ballots
> for President and Vice President are cast by the Electoral College
> separately and the Electors *must* cast at least one of these ballots for
> someone that is *not* from their own state (read the 12th Amendment).
>
> Is it complex? Most certainly. The underlying reasons, right or wrong,
> aren't understood very well by most voters, especially the basic philosophy
> reaching back into the original Constitutional Convention that wrote it,
> that the Federal Government should represent not only the individual
> voters' interests, but the states' (and in some aspects the states' elected
> governments) as a whole also. For Good or Ill, and all its warts and
> imperfections, it does that with (oft imperfect) balance. The occasions in
> which the popular vote has a majority for one "ticket" and the Electoral
> College balloting results in a majority for the another are relatively
> rare. If you study these "upside down" election results, you will find
> they were close in popular vote and ended up that way due to the slight
> extra weight given to the smaller, less populous states with fewer
> Congressional seats that were carried in larger number by the winnning
> "ticket." Again, right or wrong, I believe the Founding Fathers
> deliberately set it up that way, so that in a very, very close popular
> vote, the States' interests with each state having parity with all the
> others without regard to population size, would prevail.
>
> Again, I'm not trying to defend this one way or the other . . . simply to
> explain *why* it's the way it is today. I have my opinions about the
> matter but won't express them here.
>
> BTW, if the U.S. Congress and Senate are set up in a manner that
> individuals' intrests are at lest partially balanced by states' interests,
> I belive there is a similar parallel in British Parliament's bicameral
> structure. Its two houses are intended to strike a balance between the
> individual Commoners' interests and that of the Crown and his/her landed
> and titled "cronies" (a bad word for it but I'm going to leave it that
> way). The difference is what the bicameral structures are intended to
> better balance.
>
> -- John Lind
>
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