Sell your tired out conservatism somewhere else, eh? Times change, and
the people want to elect their president directly...and they should be
able to do so.
Do you understand how easy it is to change if the people want it to be
changed?
The problem with doing away with the electoral college is that we would then
have something we don't have right now: a federal election.
We will have 50 separate state elections on Tuesday. Each state will "advise"
its electors whether to vote for Kerry or Bush- but the electors aren't
actually bound to vote in concert with the popular vote in their state. (In
reality, they do reflect their state's popular vote 99.9% of the time).
If we have a federal election, we will have to have national voting
registration standards and procedures to comply with the "equal protection"
principles.
I don't think the majority of Americans are ready to give up local control of
registration and polling to the federal government. When a contry is polarized,
as we are now, and when an administration is as brazenly partisan as the one we
have now....(whether democrat or republican)...dissenting voters would feel
more confident that their votes are actually being counted if they are counted
at the local level.
The federal government does not recognize the popular vote because there is no
federal election. The electoral college provides a means by which the federal
government can combine the results of 50 separate state-wide elections and
calculate a result. It was never intended to reflect the combined, national,
popular vote.
Let's hope that if Bush rides in with a minority of the vote yet again that he
won't interpret that as a "madate" to take the country even farther to the
right than he already has. Same with Kerry. If he gets in with a slim or no
pop-vote majority, he needs to remember on Inauguration Day that about half the
country hates his guts, and he has some work to do.
Let's hope the next president concentrates on uniting the country instead of
solidifying his "base".
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