The Electoral College

[Rainbowfied Mouse]

Well... if Area 51 is what a lot of "insane" people believe it is... the yes, I agree, because I am 100% sure the government is hiding tons and tons of crap from the average joe... or is the average joe now that stupid plumber?

By the way Emily... I forget her last name, she's a famous poet, says those who question society are considered by society to be insane, but actually they may be the sane. So don't take Whacko as an offense, because I'm one of the "whackos"  

[Othello_ollehtO]

Rainbowfied Mouse

Well... if Area 51 is what a lot of "insane" people believe it is... the yes, I agree, because I am 100% sure the government is hiding tons and tons of crap from the average joe... or is the average joe now that stupid plumber?

By the way Emily... I forget her last name, she's a famous poet, says those who question society are considered by society to be insane, but actually they may be the sane. So don't take Whacko as an offense, because I'm one of the "whackos"

Lol, I'm proud to be a "whacko" but in any matter what makes someone sane or insane? What logic does one follow to determine such. Is the insane person the one who goes against the grain? OR are they really the sane ones and the insane ones are the people going with the grain only thinking the others are insane???

Anyway, yes, of course the government is hiding a bunch of crap from us. It's a system based on lies and false beliefs (as in it was set on true beliefs but those beliefs became lies as the years progressed, like "Every man is created Equal" and "Freedom of speech, freedom of blah blah"
So, if the system is based on lies, of course we hear only the tip of the iceberg, of course we only hear little truths which might very well be lies. We might very well be a communism and just not know it because of things they drill in our heads. Lol, okay I'm trailing off...  

[Rainbowfied Mouse]

So in all actuality our government may just be a pseudo-government?! Just some kind of false sense of democracy that does not exist.  

[Othello_ollehtO]

Rainbowfied Mouse

So in all actuality our government may just be a pseudo-government?! Just some kind of false sense of democracy that does not exist.

Exactly.  

[Othello_ollehtO]

I would only hope that our government is not what my logic suspects it to be. Because if you put two and two together it seems much too secretive to be real....  

[Rainbowfied Mouse]

What do you mean?  

[Kira84]

Rainbowfied Mouse

@Kira84 --- People may be ignorant... but even looking at today, a lot of the ignorant people are much much different from the ignorant people of the 1700s... today word travels fast... faster than lightning now. So even though it may be biased towards one side, and not all media is liberal,

in fact I think it's opposite, I notice it being more conservative... which makes me believe that it's just an issue of humanity. You hear something liberal over something conservative because you are against the liberal standpoints (for the most part I'm assuming).

Word travels fast, but people still have to take the initiative to find the facts, and too many don't. Regardless of which side the bias is towards, I don't think people who are politically uninformed should decide things. You can't get your news from one source and expect to get the whole story, regardless of what the source is. They all leave facts out, depending on what they think is more relevant. You have to do a little independent research to get the facts, and people just... don't.

I do tend to think that news media is liberal. I say news media, because radio talk show commentators tend to be more conservative. And from what I've heard so do the tv commentators, although based on the few times I've watched them I'm not terribly sure that's accurate. But news is supposed to be unbiased facts, whereas commentators are very clear about the fact that they are expressing their own views. I would also say that anyone who relies on commentators alone for news shouldn't be voting.

About the electoral college secrecy... the electors' names appear on the ballot under the candidates names (I've heard you're not actually voting for the candidates, but for the electors who are expected to vote for the candidate their name is under), and you hear about the electoral votes when a state goes one way or another in a presidential election--I think the 'secrecy' is sort of a result of lack of interest on the part of the media and the general public. I don't think there's anything malevolent in it.

You all went and got all philosophical, but anyway... Othello made a good point several posts back. In particular--we always hear about how much freedom we have so we believe it... yet everything you can think of has to be government approved. I think it's fairly outrageous that you need to pay the government money to obtain "permission" to remodel your house, for example. And pay taxes on things you already own/have paid for.  

[Latopazora]

I'm going to have to disagree with you Kira84 on saying that some people shouldn't vote. If we were to create a system where some people can vote based on their intelligence, what would legally constitute as being intelligent enought to vote? IQ? Certification? Beliefs? Once you create a system, you cut off a number of people from voting and take away their right. And who are we to say who is informed? A lot of people will tell you that they consider themselves as informed. A lot of people have different oppinions on who is uninformed. Liberals think conservatives are misinformed and vice versa. You do realized that many people in the bible belt are considered stupid red necks and people on the coasts are considered drugged up hippies? A person can't know everything that is important. I'm still rather confused as to what the electoral college is, but if its a tool to override the vote of the people because the elite felt the people were too ignorant, then I say do away with the electoral college. Democracy depends on everyone voting and having their vote count.
I don't want my right taken away from me because someone higher up felt I was too dumb to vote. And I don't want to be ruled by a select elite few. The consititution was written as By the People For the People.
Though I will have to agree with your though on having to get government permission and pay taxes on things we own. Once we own something, we shouldn't have to keep paying for it. I also think the government can servive on a few less taxes.  

[Othello_ollehtO]

Rainbowfied Mouse

What do you mean?

What I mean by "I would only hope that our government is not what my logic suspects it to be. Because if you put two and two together it seems much too secretive to be real...."
What I mean is that it's too secretive to be what we actually believe it as. This is just a hypothetical example. Say that the government told us that Area 51 was a government official get together, when in actuallity it was a building for the paranormal reasearches and items (which basically it is,right?) We'd think that it was the government official get together and not even suspect of what it really is. AKA Too secretive to be real. So the "Government official get together" area is way secretive because really it is "Area 51" Sorry if this confuses you.  

[Othello_ollehtO]

Latopazora

I'm going to have to disagree with you Kira84 on saying that some people shouldn't vote. If we were to create a system where some people can vote based on their intelligence, what would legally constitute as being intelligent enought to vote? IQ? Certification? Beliefs? Once you create a system, you cut off a number of people from voting and take away their right. And who are we to say who is informed? A lot of people will tell you that they consider themselves as informed. A lot of people have different oppinions on who is uninformed. Liberals think conservatives are misinformed and vice versa. You do realized that many people in the bible belt are considered stupid red necks and people on the coasts are considered drugged up hippies? A person can't know everything that is important. I'm still rather confused as to what the electoral college is, but if its a tool to override the vote of the people because the elite felt the people were too ignorant, then I say do away with the electoral college. Democracy depends on everyone voting and having their vote count.
I don't want my right taken away from me because someone higher up felt I was too dumb to vote. And I don't want to be ruled by a select elite few. The consititution was written as By the People For the People.
Though I will have to agree with your though on having to get government permission and pay taxes on things we own. Once we own something, we shouldn't have to keep paying for it. I also think the government can servive on a few less taxes.

I agree with you, ecspecially on the part I bolded. But that last part, sure we don't like the taxes and it seems to be going back to the colonial days where the English King tried to tax us on everything, but taxes are needed to sustain our economy. The government cannot just go off and print their own money because then the dollar would be useless.  

[Kira84]

@ Latopazora: 'Should not vote,' not 'should be actively/legally prevented from voting.' You're right, a test would never work. I'm speaking more from an ethical standpoint: having the right does not make it right.

For example: there was a section on the ballot with about twenty judges. I only knew about three of them. So I left the rest blank, because I was uninformed about them, and people shouldn't vote on things they don't know enough about.

The electoral college is supposed to be a buffer for ignorance I think... but the electoral vote rarely varies significantly from the popular vote, with Bush being the notable exception.

@Othello: I saw a very convincing political sign awhile ago. It used symbols: donkey symbol + elephant symbol = 700 billion reasons to vote Libertarian. (It should be noted here that, while I agree with some Libertarian views, I did not take the sign's advice.)

Taxes are needed--but within limits. And one of those limits should be that things that are already bought and paid for should be off limits for taxation. And here, I am talking about legally off limits, not morally.

I think they will print money to pay for the $700 billion and subsequent bail outs though. There's no way they just had that much money that they hadn't already committed to anything, and I haven't heard talk about any cuts. They can raise taxes some, but I don't know if that will cover all of it. And the value of the dollar will continue to decline.  

[Lord Bitememan]

K, addressing a few of the misconceptions here.

First: The electoral college did not split with the popular vote in 2004, though it did in 2000.

Second: The electoral college does not overrule your vote, at least insofar as your vote concurs with the majority vote in your state. You should bear in mind, though, there's winners and losers in every election, and even with a popular vote, if you vote with the loser your vote was essentially useless. The EC is MORE likely to make an individual vote count for something since even the losing candidate will win some states, and thus even some of the losers voters got to decide who some of the electors would be.

Third: The electoral college is not a secret institution. Every party has to submit a list to the secretary of state's office naming a number of electors equal to that state's electoral vote allocation. That list is available to the public. It's not just some number of random people who take the state's votes under advisement. Your vote actually determines a pledged electoral slate (usually chosen from some of the most known reliable members of the party), and many states have "faithless elector" laws to penalize any elector who backs out on his commitment to back the will of the state.

Fourth: We don't have a single national election for president, we have fifty state elections to determine the outcome. This, by design, means the system can produce a winner that more people nationwide voted for. A candidate for president is not obligated to win a national vote, he is obligated to appeal to areas accounting for a majority of the electoral total.

Five: The founding fathers did not feel the people were "ignorant." There were two schools of thought as to how to pick the president. Some, most notably James Wilson, favored a popular vote. The opposition camp didn't feel the voters were ignorant, but they feared rule by the rabble. They felt it would be dangerous, and possibly lead to leadership that was not acting in the best overall interests of the nation. This is not without precedent in history. Sometimes the voters of more democratic systems were prone to these sorts of bad calls (see the Athenian decision to invade Sicily during the Peloponnesian War).

All that said, I favor preserving the EC. It has advantages, and it has drawbacks. First and foremost, the EC forces candidates to campaign in places they would NEVER campaign without it. If we ran off a straight popular vote, why bother campaigning in New Mexico? On a good day you'd net 100,000 popular votes out of 130 million cast. Instead, the candidates will head to heavily populated friendly territory and just drive voter turnout like crazy, ignoring the less populous portions of this country. Think a Texas or California centered candidacy isn't going to have a myopic position on issues that impact places like Iowa or Montana? Broad-based campaigning forces the candidates to have a more national perspective.

A second benefit is what you might consider the Ross Perot argument. Third parties have more attainable thresholds of success under the EC than under a straight national vote. Under the EC the prospect of picking off a state is within reach for third parties. In 1992 Ross Perot finished ahead of George HW Bush in the state of Maine, and came very close to winning a district (Maine practices split disctrict elector apportionment). Various third parties in the 20th century were able to repeat this feat. In contrast, the benchmarks for a national vote are 5% nationally for matching funds, then no other attainable benchmark short of victory. That's going to crush the prospects for third parties.

So, all told, I'm more than happy to keep the EC around.  

[Latopazora]

wow, I never really understood what the EC was, you definitely cleared it up for me.