Quote:Original post by Mantear
It's not irrelevant. My point was that if it's a good idea for how to run Congress, it's probably a good idea when electing a president.

Unless the reasons for existence and the goals of each (President vs. Senate) are different... (Sneak preview: They are.) That answer smacks of "everything can be solved with a hammer".

Quote:The problem is that without the electoral college, it'll always be the small states that get slighted over the big states.

Explain to me how this wholesale slighting of all small states would go down?

I guess I'm not seeing it, but I admit I haven't invested a ton of time on it; before anyone thinks I'm baiting a flame-fest.

Correct me if I am wrong, but generally a pro-EC individual thinks that "big states" would all vote in lock-step for a "big-stater" President, and by carrying more popular vote, would assuredly win. This "big-stater" President would then tend to approve "pro-big-state" policies and veto all "pro-small-state" policies.

Okay, what are a few examples of policies that would favor the majority of small states and/or penalize the majority big states? I am asking an honest question here, because if there's a lot of these, then I'll jump ship just as easily as I've argued against the EC.

Or, alternatively, describe a situation whereby the Electoral College played a role in preventing an unfair outcome for small states?

Quote:Original post by Mantear

Quote:What's best for the nation (from the President's POV) may be to slight the small states, or the big states, or the red ones, or the blue ones, or the plaid ones or the ones with a cherry on top. The Senate would be the place that the one "state with a cherry on top" gets to exercise its equal weight.

The problem is that without the electoral college, it'll always be the small states that get slighted over the big states.

It beats what happens now. Look at Florida on that electoral map--it has a good share of votes, but not even close to CA, and less than NY or TX. But somehow Florida gets a silly amount of attention at election time from the major candidates because it's a close race. Just because of where in the U.S. they live geographically, 500 people in FL carry a lot more weight in the national election than the same 500 people would carry in CA.

And if you don't think that it's that big of a deal, or that it affects things that much, check out how much special treatment Cuban immigrants gets in our legislature, because they generally live in Florida. As an example, check out the form I-485, the application for permanent U.S. residency. There are 8 types of applications listed on the first page of that form. Two of them are exclusively for Cuban immigrants, and they are far more liberal than is granted to any other nationality. If you showed up in the U.S. as a Cuban citizen at least a year ago and stayed here (legally or no) for a year, you're eligible to get permanent residence. That's less trouble than my wife has, having lived here almost two years and having come and stayed here legally, and having married a citizen. But she's from Peru, not Cuba. So no dice.

That's the biggest WTF I've ever seen. Filling out all the immigration papers for my wife, I've found that about 15% of all immigration forms are exceptions from requirements for Cubans.

</offtopic>

Quote:Original post by Sneftel

Quote:Original post by Sirisian
Yeah. One of the changes I was going to say would be to make voting results public. No one has anything to hide right? Just throw the whole database up online for people to view. Then right after you vote you can go and check if everything is correct. This would solve a lot of problems. You can't slip one past anyone if everyone can look at the results.

Things actually used to work that way (minus the database, of course.) omg im lessbreading

I'd say you're about two links short of a lessbread post.

Something to point out. Congress represents people from each state's government basically or the citizens of each state. The president doesn't represent any state. The president represents the united states as whole and should be elected by the whole US.

I don't see the point of it I guess. Say I'm letting 10 people decide between chocolate ice cream and vanilla ice cream (we'll leave the independent party out, mmm swirl) for a party. What makes more sense. Have them all hand in a ballot and we take the majority's decision or split them up into groups and have them elect one person who they think believes what their small group believes.

The first option is obvious since the majority will get what they want and that sounds fair.

The other option you'd end up with groups of 8,10,2 people each. Hey look joe the plumber, sally the schoolteacher, and Bob the baker choose in their group to get 2 chocolate and 1 vanilla, so that group decided chocolate. Lets say each group has electoral votes 1 to 1 and it's a black and white decision about which side gets the vote. So chocolate gets 3 votes when in fact it only go 2 out of the 3 popular votes. Just because sally was in the wrong group her vote doesn't matter. Hey I wonder if the groups aren't made fair then you could sway the votes? (I'm sure most people are familiar with this concept).

group 1 (7 members) 6 chocolate 1 vanilla 7 electoral for chocolate
group 2 (10 members) 4 chocolate 6 vanilla 10 electoral for vanilla
group 3 (3 members) 1 chocolate 2 vanilla 3 electoral for vanilla
11 votes for chocolate, 9 votes vanilla, 13/20 electoral votes for vanilla
Yeah now they get to have what they want! Vanilla... oh wait that's not right...

How would you like it if people used this kind of voting system for more than just voting for president? You're probably thinking, "but we'd make it fair. Each group would be distributed so that it works out and isn't unfair." Then wtf is the point of having the complicated voting system?