U.S. Democracy in need of Upgrade?

[Arwin]

While following the election, it struck me that the U.S. Democracy (not to mention the U.K.'s) is a slightly old-fashioned one, that when it was instated, didn't quite trust the commoners' right to vote. A lot of compromises were made to get it instated, and I am wondering if some of them aren't a bit out of date now. Things that struck me most are that only two parties have a reasonable chance of winning any decent amount of political influence, and that a voter in one state has 35 times the influence of a voter in another state.

I would like to collect all arguments for and against the current system collected here in this thread and discuss them.

 

[Ev0]

I think the electoral college is a joke. It is ridiculous that one vote in one state is worth more than one vote in other states. One vote should be worth exactly what it is, one vote. And, if the electoral college is done away with, we would never have a repeat of 2000, where the candidate who recieved the most votes loses the election...

And the two party system is a result of the majority of Americans being unable to accept an alternative to the Republicans or the Democrats. Yes, a two party system sucks, but it is a choice the people make.

 

[Duke]

While following the election, it struck me that the U.S. Democracy (not to mention the U.K.'s) is a slightly old-fashioned one, that when it was instated, didn't quite trust the commoners' right to vote. A lot of compromises were made to get it instated, and I am wondering if some of them aren't a bit out of date now. Things that struck me most are that only two parties have a reasonable chance of winning any decent amount of political influence, and that a voter in one state has 35 times the influence of a voter in another state.

I would like to collect all arguments for and against the current system collected here in this thread and discuss them.

You guys still don't quite grasp what the electoral college does. It in fact levels out the playing field a little bit, but nothing like "35 times" as you say above.

The electoral college votes are alotted based on relative populations, and they are changed from election to election to allow for shifts in population. In addition, each state is allotted a small, fixed allowance just for being a state. This does in fact marginally shade the value of an individual vote in small-population states slightly higher than in large-population ones, but not to any great effect. Just enough to make sure that candidates can't afford to ignore any particular state completely.

Each state gets a number of electors equal to the number of its members of the House of Representatives plus the number of its senators, always two. A state’s population determines the number of its House members. Missouri, for instance, has nine members of the House and therefore has 11 electoral votes.

No matter how small a state’s population, it gets at least three electoral votes.

Wyoming, with a voting age population of 370,000, has three electors. California, with a voting age population of 24.4 million, 66 times bigger than Wyoming’s, has 55 electors, only 18 times as many electors as Wyoming has.

This bonus for small states was one of the compromises made at the constitutional convention in 1787 in order to persuade the states with smaller populations to join the Union.

 

[ledhed]

Arwin you still do not grasp the fact of the size and complexity of the US nor do you understand the roll the States in the United States play. It would be much easier to explain things if you did. Try for example looking at each individual state at its own little soveriegn country with the federal government and the president as the UN. also consider the fact that you are trying to govern 260 to 300 million people over the majority of a continent. It may be the hieght of folly to imagine that because a system works in a homogeneous country of 30 to 80 million it can be extrapolated here. You also do not take into account that the system of government in use in the US was ment to evolve and has done so since its inception. It was designed to cope with the many different cultures and religions of the immigrants who make it up . The US democracy is unique in the world because the US itself is unique. Anyway why fix something that is not broken ?
for a better understanding study/ google ; States rights in the US and the cause of the civil war - events leading up to the US civil war also The rights of the individual States in America.

 

[Famine]

Yet, in theory, an Electoral College representative for any given state could go against the wishes of the electorate in that state. This has, I believe, happened in the past.

Surely a system whereby each person got an equal vote - or each state got an equal vote - would be fairer? Each state having a equal vote would in fact "level the playing field" totally and, with 51 voting states (including D.C.) there would be no chance of a tie in a two party system.

 

[Tacet_Blue]

The direct election sounds like the obvious choice but does have its problems, the current Electoral Vote system is apparently a compromise created by the founding fathers.

History of Electoral College:
One idea was to have the Congress choose the president. This idea
was rejected, however, because some felt that making such a choice would
be too divisive an issue and leave too many hard feelings in the Congress.
Others felt that such a procedure would invite unseemly political
bargaining, corruption, and perhaps even interference from foreign
powers. Still others felt that such an arrangement would upset the balance
of power between the legislative and executive branches of the federal
government.

A second idea was to have the State legislatures select the president.
This idea, too, was rejected out of fears that a president so beholden to the
State legislatures might permit them to erode federal authority and thus
undermine the whole idea of a federation.

A third idea was to have the president elected by a direct popular vote.
Direct election was rejected not because the Framers of the Constitution
doubted public intelligence but rather because they feared that without
sufficient information about candidates from outside their State, people
would naturally vote for a "favorite son" from their own State or region. At
worst, no president would emerge with a popular majority sufficient to
govern the whole country. At best, the choice of president would always be
decided by the largest, most populous States with little regard for the
smaller ones.Finally, a so-called "Committee of Eleven" in the Constitutional
Convention proposed an indirect election of the president through a College
of Electors.

The function of the College of Electors in choosing the president can
be likened to that in the Roman Catholic Church of the College of Cardinals
selecting the Pope. The original idea was for the most knowledgeable and
informed individuals from each State to select the president based solely on
merit and without regard to State of origin or political party.

The structure of the Electoral College can be traced to the Centurial
Assembly system of the Roman Republic. Under that system, the adult
male citizens of Rome were divided, according to their wealth, into groups
of 100 (called Centuries). Each group of 100 was entitled to cast only one vote
either in favor or against proposals submitted to them by the Roman Senate.
In the Electoral College system, the States serve as the Centurial groups
(though they are not, of course, based on wealth), and the number of votes
per State is determined by the size of each State's Congressional delegation.
Still, the two systems are similar in design and share many of the same
advantages and disadvantages.
The similarities between the Electoral College and classical
institutions are not accidental. Many of the Founding Fathers were well
schooled in ancient history and its lessons.

Source: Federal Election Commission. www.fec.gov

 

[livemusic]

Anyway why fix something that is not broken ?

Well if it´s true that Gore got more votes than Bush in the 2000(?) election than I think it is broken.

I like the direct election more, it´s the system used here in Brazil and it works great. A vote is a vote, it doesn´t matter your state´s population.

 

[Tacet_Blue]

Well if it´s true that Gore got more votes than Bush in the 2000(?) election than I think it is broken.

I like the direct election more, it´s the system used here in Brazil and it works great. A vote is a vote, it doesn´t matter your state´s population.

Yes its a fact, Gore did win the popular vote, but you need to win the influential states like New York, Florida and Ohio to win the presidency. This has happened before in 19th Century (its late, I can't be more accurate than that )

Are you sure about the Brazilian system. It seems to me that you have the same system as the UK with seats being won. You have a Chamber of Deputies (and Federal Senate) like our House of Commons and there are 513 seats available. I'm not sure how you divide up your jurisdictions (are they like counties as they are in the UK?) but it will be the result of these county votes that win seats, so there will still be more influential counties...ie: it's not a direct vote

 

[Famine]

Electoral Regions (or constituencies) are not divided up on county lines in the UK. There are 659 constituencies (only 86 counties), each of which returns a single MP to the House of Commons. The party which returns the largest number of MPs to the Commons forms the government, with its leader (usually elected by the party members or its MPs) becoming Prime Minister.

It is still possible for a Prime Minister to be elected yet have no control in the Commons - by returning the majority of MPs, but less than 50% in total (we usually have a majoruty of either Labour or Conservative MPs, currently Labour, with the other party in second, a decent number of Liberal Democrat MPs and the odd one or two from the Green Party, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, Sinn Fein (although they never attend), the UUP and the occasional Independant), but it generally doesn't happen. The last Government to have less than 50% of MPs was John Major's, just before the 1997 General Election. It's also possible, on this basis, to return the majority of MPs but receive less overall votes than the second place party, but I don't recall this EVER happening.


Each constituency is relatively small, with the effect that each person's vote is roughly equivalent to one vote. It's not truely 1 person, 1 vote, but generally speaking it's close enough. No constituency gets more than one returned MP because it has more people in it than another - they all get just the one.

 

[Tacet_Blue]

Thanks Famine, thats a better explanation

...but a landslide victory in one constituency doesn't carry over to another, so there could be a chance that one party has more votes but doesn't secure victory, although like you said, I don't think this has ever happened.

 

[livemusic]

That´s how it works here:

The powers of the Union, as defined within the Constitution, are the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary, which are independent and harmonious amongst themselves. The head of the Executive is the President of the Republic, which is both the Chief of State and the Head of Government and is directly elected by the citizens. The Legislative, embedded in the form of National Congress and consists of two houses: The Chamber of Deputies (lower house) and the Federal Senate (upper house), both constituted by representatives who are elected by the citizens. The Judicial powers are vested upon the Federal Supreme Court, the Superior Court of Justice, the Regional Federal Courts and Federal Judges. There are also specialized courts to deal with electoral, labor and military disputes.

Full text about the Brazilian legal system: http://www.oas.org/juridico/mla_folder/en/bra/en_bra-int-des-ordrjur.html

Edit: Presidential elections occur every four years. You also vote for senators, federal deputies, state deputies, and your state governor. If you are between 16 and 18 years old or over 70 years old vote is facultative. Between 18 and 70 years old voting is mandatory.

Tacet: I didn´t understand what you mean by countyes. Are you talking about states? Brazil is divided into 26 states if that´s the case.

 

[cardude2004]

I don't think it is a bad thing to have the electoral college. Plus, it would be hard to ammend the constitution. 75% of the states have to approve of the ammendment.

 

[Tacet_Blue]

Tacet: I didn´t understand what you mean by countyes. Are you talking about states? Brazil is divided into 26 states if that´s the case.

Yes...but counties are much smaller than states, and Famine has explained to me that actually they are then subdivided into constituencies

 

[Arwin]

Arwin you still do not grasp the fact of the size and complexity of the US nor do you understand the roll the States in the United States play. It would be much easier to explain things if you did. Try for example looking at each individual state at its own little soveriegn country with the federal government and the president as the UN. also consider the fact that you are trying to govern 260 to 300 million people over the majority of a continent. It may be the hieght of folly to imagine that because a system works in a homogeneous country of 30 to 80 million it can be extrapolated here. You also do not take into account that the system of government in use in the US was ment to evolve and has done so since its inception. It was designed to cope with the many different cultures and religions of the immigrants who make it up . The US democracy is unique in the world because the US itself is unique. Anyway why fix something that is not broken ?
for a better understanding study/ google ; States rights in the US and the cause of the civil war - events leading up to the US civil war also The rights of the individual States in America.

I am aware of this Ledhed. The EU is becoming a 'United States of Europe' quite quickly and we're dab in the middle of the whole process. Of course the smaller countries were protected more initially and got relatively many votes also depending on their influence and so on. It has then started to evolve towards a more equal representation, we already have a European Parliament and so on that we can vote people into, but it still has limited rights compaired to the European Commission and so on. It is an evolving thing.

However, when you say the U.S. system was meant to evolve, I would like to ask 'has it?'. The two major problems I recognise are that the current system basically results in the U.S. having a two party system in which other parties have no real chance, and I am quite certain that someone in Montana has a 35 times more powerful vote than someone in another state, but I'll go and dig up the details.

 

[okoj]

The electoral college dates back to the abolishment of slavery, it was created to allow white people to maintain power. Although blacks were now eligible to vote they were not deemed as equals, thus one white vote was the equivalent of five black votes.
Of course this isn't the case now but the system still gives preference to what were, and probably still are, the richer states.
If America really wants a true, democratically elected President then they will need to incorporate a system such as Belgiums where each 'district' is given a number of seats in the 'chamber of representatives' proportional to it's actual population.

 

[ledhed]

Its called the house of representitives . Its been there since the country was founded...most people notice that.

 

[Tacet_Blue]

, it was created to allow white people to maintain power.

Wow...master of the conspiracy. What must it be like to see through your tainted eyes.

You just make stuff up, the Electoral College was in place for more than a hundred years before black people were given equal voting rights. Don't you read anything?

 

[okoj]

Wow...master of the conspiracy. What must it be like to see through your tainted eyes.

You just make stuff up, the Electoral College was in place for more than a hundred years before black people were given equal voting rights. Don't you read anything?

If you read my post properly you have answered yourself. It was made so as not to give blacks equal voting rights. That was the point.

And yes I do read, although maybe not the same literature you do.

 

[Tacet_Blue]

Ok, it was the second design of the electoral college that was created to allow white people to maintain power.

If you read my post properly you have answered yourself. It was made so as not to give blacks equal voting rights. That was the point.

And yes I do read, although maybe not the same literature you do.

Stop digging The second design was in 1800.

Blacks were discriminated against, not by some 5 - 1 voting system that you made up, they were simply prevented from voting at all. The constitution didn't prevent discrimination based on race when it came to voting, so each state could make up its own laws on voting...

If I read your post properly....hmmm...do you mean before or after you edited it

 

[okoj]

Stop digging The second design was in 1800.

Blacks were discriminated against, not by some 5 - 1 voting system that you made up, they were simply prevented from voting at all. The constitution didn't prevent discrimination based on race when it came to voting, so each state could make up its own laws on voting...

If I read your post properly....hmmm...do you mean before or after you edited it

Yes I edited my second post, that's what the 'edit' button is for yes?

The electoral college was designed to give white land owners more say in elections and the ratio of one white vote to five black votes was used.

 

[Tacet_Blue]

Yes I edited my second post, that's what the 'edit' button is for yes?

The electoral college was designed to give white land owners more say in elections and the ratio of one white vote to five black votes was used.

Do you have a source for that accusation?

Since the Electoral College was in place for a hundred years before blacks could actually vote, I don't know how you can reach that conclusion. Maybe they were planning for the future.

 

[okoj]

Do you have a source for that accusation?

Since the Electoral College was in place for a hundred years before blacks could actually vote, I don't know how you can reach that conclusion. Maybe they were planning for the future.

That was in the south, the US used to be split into two factions.

 

[Duke]

Yes I edited my second post, that's what the 'edit' button is for yes?

The electoral college was designed to give white land owners more say in elections and the ratio of one white vote to five black votes was used.

Ummmmmmm, no, you can keep repeating this as often as you wish, but it's going to be just as wrong every time.

The electoral college was established around 1800 - in fact before - and about 80 years before anybody even considered giving slaves freedom or the vote. And it was not 1/5th as you claim.

For the purposes of establishing a state's population - and therefore its number of seats in the House of Representatives, and in part its number of electoral votes - each slave adult counted as 3/5ths of a person. But at that time they could not vote at all. So the electoral system was not designed to 'protect rich white men's power', no matter what your revisionist history book may say or how your teachers may try to portray it.

There was never a time when slaves had a 1/5th vote. Ever. Learn what you're talking about.

 

[okoj]

Ummmmmmm, no, you can keep repeating this as often as you wish, but it's going to be just as wrong every time.

The electoral college was established around 1800 - in fact before - and about 80 years before anybody even considered giving slaves freedom or the vote. And it was not 1/5th as you claim.

For the purposes of establishing a state's population - and therefore its number of seats in the House of Representatives, and in part its number of electoral votes - each slave adult counted as 3/5ths of a person.

There was never a time when slaves had a 1/5th vote. Ever. Learn what you're talking about.

Ok, it was three fifths. How nice.
It (the electoral college) was and still is an unfair system.

 

[Duke]

Ok, it was three fifths. How nice.
It (the electoral college) was and still is an unfair system.

Stimulus - response - stimulus - response. Try thinking once in a while.

 

[okoj]

Stimulus - response - stimulus - response. Try thinking once in a while.

Oh I'm cut, you really got me there.

The question was does the USA need to change it's electoral system, my answer is yes. That's what I think. Is that nice and clear for you?

 

[Duke]

Sure, it's nice and clear for me. I understood that from your first post. But considering that you're basing your premise on completely incorrect assumptions and a misunderstanding of the facts, I doubt that it's particularly clear to you.

 

[Tacet_Blue]

Ok, it was three fifths. How nice.
It (the electoral college) was and still is an unfair system.

So what is a fair system of voting , oh mountain of knowledge.

The direct vote? Where all the Presidents would come from the largest states and the smaller ones would never be heard.

If you bothered reading this thread you'd see the the EC is there to protect smaller states, what if a presidential candidate said he would turn New Hampshire into a nuclear dumping site, they could all vote against it but because he is from a much larger state it doesn't matter, small state ignored...

 

[okoj]

Sure, it's nice and clear for me. I understood that from your first post. But considering that you're basing your premise on completely incorrect assumptions and a misunderstanding of the facts, I doubt that it's particularly clear to you.

Another biting remark from the neon_duke.
The fact that more people can vote for the loser of an election than vote for the winner, as in 2000, is as blindingly obvious a reason as any I can think of. It doesn't need a rocket scientist to work that one out.

 

[okoj]

So what is a fair system of voting , oh mountain of knowledge.

The direct vote? Where all the Presidents would come from the largest states and the smaller ones would never be heard.

If you bothered reading this thread you'd see the the EC is there to protect smaller states, what if a presidential candidate said he would turn New Hampshire into a nuclear dumping site, they could all vote against it but because he is from a much larger state it doesn't matter, small state ignored...

That may have been necessary a hundred years ago but that arguement is out-dated. I believe they have television, radio, newspapers and the internet in America now...