that may have been among it's few positivesDoes this apply to all systems? Or do you pick and choose your frustrating systems? After all, communism obviously frustrated the ambitions of a wide range of people.
that may have been among it's few positivesDoes this apply to all systems? Or do you pick and choose your frustrating systems? After all, communism obviously frustrated the ambitions of a wide range of people.
Trees don't grow on money
In the case of the Electoral College, it mitigates against one or two populous regions from dominating the others. Does that violate a strict one-man-one-vote principle? Yes it does.Originally Posted by jp1
Except that that isn't really what it does. At least not any more. What it does is insure that the only states that receive attention from presidential candidates are those that have roughly equal numbers of conservatives and progressives.
Wouldn't that be the case whether we had an EC or not? Campaigns would go where they could shift the most undecided votes into their column.
Not necessarily. Just because a state leans solidly one way or the other doesn't mean there will be less undecideds. Just that there aren't enough undecideds to tip the balance in a winner take all situation. California is solidly blue, but 21% of voters are in the middle. Ohio is more equally split between republican and democrat but has only 18% undecided. In a one person one vote situation 21% of California is a whole lot more people than 18% of Ohio. But both states, and in fact pretty much all the states, have enough undecideds that candidates would likely care about the whole country if they were planning to run in a one person one vote presidential election.
http://www.pewforum.org/religious-la...tion/by/state/
As a legal concept, one person one vote has never applied to Presidential contests due to the Electoral College and it is not used in the Senate due to it's limit of two representatives per state. The concept is only used as a means to ensure adequate representation in the House of Representatives where districts are drawn and re-drawn to represent the changes in population.
I suppose in a pure Democracy, one person one vote would rule the day in all contests, but by remarkable foresight, we are not that.
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." ~ Albert Einstein
They share :-) Don't know about you, but both "sides" are more likely to sit down to dinner with each other than to sit down and socialize with someone like me.
I see your logic, and it makes a lot of sense. Even a solid blue state could have some stubbornly GOP counties.
Absent an EC, clever campaigns would probably focus on media markets with the highest proportions of historically switchable votes.
Yes, so important it is to have a small random subset of states be more important than all the others for purposes of electing the president, including the three most populous ones that have over 25% of the nations population. It must be nice for the voters of Indiana and Ohio and so forth to know that unlike their fellow citizens in CA and TX and NY their votes actually matter and could possibly affect the outcome of the election.
Your vote mattered in California, mine mattered in Ohio. California delivered 20% of the electoral votes Clinton needed to win the election while Ohio delivered 6% of the electoral votes she needed to lose. California's out-sized influence dwarfed Ohio's and she still lost, maybe she should have paid more attention to the smaller states.
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." ~ Albert Einstein
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