The Electorial College

This is in answer to the question, "There ought to be a better way [of selecting a president] then the electorial college." Written July 22, 2003.

True, but but the Constitutional Convention couldn't find it. Personally, I think there are problems with the current system, but the problems I see don't deal with it being anti-democracy, rather with the manipulation that is possible.

I used to live in North Dakota, which was admitted to the Union at exactly the same time South Dakota was admitted. The question could be asked, "Why North and South Dakota, not just Dakota?" The true reason is the congress at the time was Republican, and they wanted four Senators rather than two. Similarly, the "Missouri compromise" is exactly the same sort of thing, only slight differences to my view.

One could also talk about the idea of voting as a block rather than proportional representation. This is a flaw.

One better way I saw proposed (I believe it was in the book "The Third Wave") was the one used in Greece. That is, rather than voting, all the candidates (and I believe this included all people) had their names put in the proverbial hat, and the representatives were selected at random. This would be much cheaper than this voting idea, and would probably always result in a more representative government. Consider race, one would expect to see proportional representation in congress that exactly match the proportions in the population. In all respects this would result in a more representative congress.

It was also pointed out that this is exactly what we do currently when it comes to selecting a jury.

Another solution would be to limit the power of the federal government. (State too, for that matter.) This is the proposed solution of the Libertarian Party, except in my opinion they go too far. If the federal government were limited to the point that it was as irrelevant to the life of the average person as it was in 1870, then I don't think we would be talking about such trivial thing as representation. What would have solved a lot of this difficulty would be if Jefferson's idea had been accepted. That is, his idea that there should be no standing army, that is, no federal army except when there was a declared war. I believe that was the case until 1940 even without it being written into the constitution. (Reading his comments on this reminded me of Ike's Military-Industrial complex.)

Currently the population has been brainwashed into thinking the State is not relevant.

I've thought there is some justification to having representation by land area. That is, each state be given representation based on the amount of land the state has. States like New York and Rhode Island would yell about that, but I'll bet it would be hard to find much opposition in Alaska.

Why is it more relevant to say that a person has more power because they decide to live in a clump? It would be harder to manipulate the vote, it is hard to move land.

I remember (I believe it was during the 80's) when New York city needed to be bailed out. That is, the city could not justify its existence in terms of the economic activity, so the Federal government had to take money from the countryside to bail them out. This is still the case when the federal government bails out the cities by supplying money for police officers. This is a different form or tyranny. Why should these people have more rights than people who choose to live by themselves.

Another solution that could be proposed is to do away with the Federal Government. Why do we need this? I set up a WEB site (somewhat tongue in cheek) to push this solution (see http://www.secession.forkansas.org/). This would save us a lot of money, at least $5000 per person, even assuming the state picked up all federal programs. Carried to the extreme, this would result in anarchy, but there is something to be said for anarchy as a governmental structure as well.

One could point out that monarchy would also be a solution, but I would be willing to bet there wouldn't be any supporters for this on this list. I have read where there are supporters in the United States. This would probably require an even bigger army than we have now, however.

The real ultimate problem deals with truth, however. It has been said that, "The majority of people usually choose that which is right." This is the justification for democracy, not that the majority of always right, but they as a group are more likely to choose the right than the wrong. It is possible for the majority of people that which is not right. This is recognized in the Bill of Rights, the 14th amendment, etc. If the majority were always right there would be no need for any restriction such as the bill of rights.