For all practical intents and purposes – modulo the rounding problem that I mentioned – it is an election directly proportional to the wishes of the people, which is the intention behind direct voting.

It would still not be "direct popular election of a president", which is what I was addressing in the quote.

Feel free to PM or email me if you wish to discuss this further.

He's been trying to get you to drop this inane argument for 2 pages now.. I wouldn't hold my breath.

Personally I think we should let dead votes play. Just figure out what our fore-fathers would have voted for. Then let the dead cast votes in that manor.

Dead and alive alike all get 1 vote. Whichever president gets the most votes wins.

Oh, and we also just need to figure out what people who are too lazy or incompetent to vote would have voted for and cast them too.

That gets rid of the sham we call an election system in this country. And no more voter suppression!

edit: Another option is always taking the more literal meaning to the "Vote or Die" campaign….

Within a state perhaps, but not on a national level. A Wyoming vote counts a lot more than a California vote.
It's also not direct in that an elector can vote for a candidate they weren't pledged to, and the Congress can refuse to seat a state's electors.

Not quite, you appear to desire to discuss the constitution, and treat it as if written in stone. In practice the government ignores the constitution and does whatever it wants, from what I've gathered the invasion of Iraq wasn't exactly constitutional either. Supreme court judges are apparently also expected to interpret the constitution in their own little biased way, depending on who elected them. If for some reason the government was to be forced to uphold the constitution they'd probably start actively altering it right away and turn it into a 400 page document that dictates the right to conditional free speech to the right to enforce that a restaurant knows how many knives and forks it has at any given time.

Fine – so change the attribution of electors to be exactly proportional to state population. Not exactly against the constitution either. As for electors voting for somebody they weren't pledged to, well, recall that we are talking about electoral votes being attributed according to new state laws, that would presumably prevent such things from happening. (Note that while this is a technical possibility now, it's not exactly very plausible.)

Incidentally, just for grins, let's look at numbers.

Wyoming: 3 EC votes, population 522,830.
California: 55 EC votes, population 36,553,215.
(Source: Wikipedia for population, CNN for EC votes.)

That means that:
- each Wyoming EC vote represents 174,276 people.
- each California EC vote represents 664,603 people.

Note that obviously these numbers do not take into account such things as eligibility to vote. It is extremely likely, for example, that there are far more foreign nationals in CA than in WY, and hence the absolute population does not accurately reflect the voting population. There are also questions of age etc. that need to be taken into account.

Even with this disparity, having the EC vote be proportional, instead of winner-takes-all, means that individual votes actually matter when they are in the minority. In NY and CA, to name just two states, voting for a Republican president is all but useless. In TX, it's the other way around. If the EC vote were proportional, voting against the winner would actually matter. It still might not change the final outcome, unless there's another mismatch between the EC and popular votes, but at least you're contributing toward the tally that matters.

Forgive me, perhaps I am missing something, but
isn't direct proportionality a red herring? If
the point is that a national plurality selects
the president, having states mandate their
electors to reflect the plurality unanimously
effectively makes the issue moot. Constitutional
and disposes of rounding.

The issue implied by Tyche I'd consider a
more serious threat is faithless electors. Perhaps
one or two would not threaten a "national winner
take all" system, but if the electors were to
cahoot in the same manner as the states but to
implement the old system, the irony and poetic
justice would be great in measure equal to the
subversion of the will of the states.

But really, wow, that's pretty farfetched.

I think a national winner take all system would be
pretty hard to undermine, and though it might
strain the semantics of "direct election", it satisfies
the intent.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

PS Hopefully that made sense, I'm a bit tired. If
I reread this tomorrow and it doesn't, I'll just
delete my post, like Mabus deleted his last one.

Winner-takes-all systems do not reflect the plurality of voters on a national level. It's possible to have the national popular vote disagree with the national electoral college vote.

No, I mean each state totals the votes, these
are added up between all the states, and a
winner is determined. Then whoever that is
gets all the electoral votes of all the states.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

Oh. Sure, that would work too. I'd misunderstood your first post.

A state can use almost any method to allocate its electors under the Federal constitution, as states can and have done it. Mabus pointed out Nebraska and Maine. Colorado tried to amend their constitution in 2004. Up until the civil war many states legislatures voted the elector slate. One state even uses a coin toss as a tie breaker.

Changing the number of electors a state gets would require amendment to the Constitution. Until then that means the 5-1 or 6-1 disparity between the California/Wyoming example will continue.



It's happened 156 times already.. http://www.fairvote.org/e_college/faithl...
Note that even though states could make it a crime to be a faithless elector, they still can't prevent the elector from committing it. ;-)

Just to toss my favorite modified voting scheme into the fire…. I always felt people should have 1 vote for each position on the ballot, but they should be able to specify either a positive OR a negative vote.

Many people vote "for" someone because they really want to ensure that someone else doesn't win. That isn't really a positive vote, it's a negative vote against somebody else. To win, the candidate has to have a positive total. So, if two people run, and they both end up negative, the position remains open and another election is called until someone who isn't hated runs.

Yes, it does.

The Constitution forms the foundation that the USA rests upon. Without this foundation we would not be the longest surviving republic in the history of humankind.

It is not "written in stone", as it provides a method for changing the document; amendments. That is the only method allowed by the document for changing it. Not some "living, breathing, reinterpretation" every few years, but that if we as a society feel the need to change the rules we do so through the process of amending the document.

From Article I, Section 8:
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

It does not spell out specifically how "To declare war", and some have stated that the Congressional actions "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002" and the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998" gave that approval. I believe that a formal declaration of war should have been enacted, and was against the invasion of Iraq. Now that we are there I am of the mind "we broke it, we have to fix it" to keep my view simple for discussion.


Article III spells out the Supreme Court, though its exact duties are not clarified. The closest to my views on the current court would be Scalia and Roberts.


That's the thing, they are charged to uphold the Constitution.

That they fail to do so at times is not the fault of the document, but of the fault of the people granted the powers and an uneducated and apathetic electorate that does not force them to accountability.

oh i voted all right

unfortunatly too many stupid sheeple countered my vote

all the little sheeple wanted there little sheeperd obaaaaaaama

A little brash to run around calling people here stupid, mm? :thinking:

Well, that's normal. In warfare, soldiers are taught to believe the "enemy" is less human than they are. In politics, those voting against you must be "stupid".

To quote a less stupid, but more silly man (Benny Hill):

Stick your fingers in your ears and go "Ting-a-ling-a-loo"!

It's not taught formally. It's a defense mechanism that
occurs naturally. It's an important thing to be able to
distance, but a smart leader will take pains to ensure
her people do not underestimate the opposition. A strong
and healthy respect for the abilities of people who are
able to defeat you is a wise thing to have. I'd suggest
it's stupid to do otherwise.

On the other hand, the use of the word enemy in this
context reminds me of the old joke…



It's a matter of perspective, but I think moreso
it's a matter of not losing your sense of proportion.

Neither the opposing party nor the opposite chamber
nor the counterbalancing branch of government is
the enemy. They're patriots trying to do what they
think is right for the country, and if one uses this
"sheeple" language just shows how weak one's measure
is of the system.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

im perpetualy surrounded by hundreds of people that were all gung ho obama supporters every last one of them u can present a well thought argument with facts and figures to prove your point and the response u get is
OMG at least obamas not 4 more years of bush

or OMG McCain will just die in office he's old

or as one interesting random instant messenger said to me in my responding to his random IM about voting for obama well McCain looks like a wrinkled iguana lol

the few ( and i do mean few) obama supporters that are intelligent and will argue there points calmly and with reason ive got nothing but respect for

but its not those people that elected him president it was the millions of sheeple that think he is some kinda combination rockstar /messiah without ever questioning anything about him and blindly ignoring any opposing viewpoints

personaly even IF i were to ignore his NUMEROUS questionalbe relationships
AND I was willing to ignore his rampant socialist agenda

AND i even managed to look past his blatant lies about reaching across the isle when he has never once opposed his party leaders and NEVER worked with republicans on anything

theres still teh simple fact that its proven economic folly to raise taxes in any way durring a ressesion and in spite of that and in spite of many many advisors strongly suggesting against it he still thinks it smart to hit the major buisnesses with higher taxes at a time like this ? it greatly explains why the day after the election the market plunged 600 points and numerous major companies annouced layoffs

That's a lot of people to be perpetually surrounded by.




Your well thought out argument to these hundreds of
people that included facts and figures did not persuade
them. I understand.

This does not change how ignorant you make yourself look
with "sheeple" hyperbole.

If the problem with democracy in this country is a lack of education,
then I suggest we concentrate on fixing the problems with the
education system in this country.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net/crat_100.jpg