The Electoral system
 

wrote in message
...
In article ,
lid says...
On 09 Nov 2004 21:18:30 GMT, ojunk (George Adams)
wrote:

If the real purpose of the electoral college was as "Sarge" posted - to
keep
everyone from only voting for favorite sons since they had no good way of
learning about other candidates - then I think it has outlived its
usefulness.

Why does it matter what the intention was? Shouldn't the argument to
change be based on what it currently does?

Good point. At the moment, it doesn't appear to be doing anything.

Wolfgang
who would be delighted to get paid for doing nothing useful once every four
years.......and nothing the rest of the time.

The Electoral system
 

From: Charlie Choc

My electoral vote went to Bush - so yes I did - and the only contested races
on my ballot were for president and US senate. All other candidates,
including
US rep, were republicans. You probably voted for more democrats than I did.
g

Actually, I did. We don't get a lot of viable Republican contenders for local
offices hereabouts.


George Adams

"All good fishermen stay young until they die, for fishing is the only dream of
youth that doth not grow stale with age."
---- J.W Muller

The Electoral system
 

On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 13:00:06 -0700, rw
wrote:

As it stands, the President, no matter who
he is or of which party, is 4.5 times the President of a person in
Wyoming compared to a person in California.


That's cause they tend to be very short in Wyoming.

The Electoral system
 

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 21:39:58 GMT, Tom G wrote:


As it turns out, G-Dub won the popular vote and would still be the prez
under your fantasy system. Had he won the election and lost the popular
vote, it'd be easy to argue that the 'red states' had plainly benefited
from the present system.


Actually, the point with which rw started this thread was the
opposite: that with a swing of 140K votes in Ohio, Kerry would
have won the presidency with a shortfall of ~3M votes. And
the majority of the Wyomings would have been on the losing
end.

The Electoral system
 

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 15:42:30 -0700, rw
wrote:


I agree with you, Ken. In my opinion, it's totally ****ed up and
archaic, serves no useful purpose whatsoever, and is divisive,
undemocratic, and tends to throw the election to the courts, which we
saw in 2000.

It serves two purposes. First, it makes things more interesting.
Just sitting back and watching a counter to tell us who wins just
isn't much fun or engaging. Sitting there trying to figure out which
way states are going and the combination that will result in a
tie, etc, makes this systemworth its weight in gold, in years where
the elections are close, as opposed to Regan/Mondale or
Nixon/McGovern. The other purpose it serves is that those of
us in the solid reds and blues aren't swamped with endless
commercials for the presidency. That's worth it's weight in
titanium.