Changes to the governmentFollow

My changes:

1) Eliminate the 2-term rule for presidents
2) Get rid of Bush
3) Get out of Iraq (Let them handle their own ****)
4) Stop FUNDING for Iraq and FINISH capturing Osama
5) Bring back Clinton

Eliminate federal and state income tax. All our country's problems would instantly be solved.

Totem

Do you honestly believe that? Seriously? Would you replace it with something, or does your idea of Utopia not need to be funded by government at all?

Grady

Tiny hook, big fishes.

Ok, seriously? Rape and pilage those countries we invade, cart off their Mesopotanian artifacts, sell tem to the highest bidder, use all their oil, enslave their women-- am I forgetting anything?

Totem

If you eliminate federal and state income tax the backbone of the country financially would unravel. You need taxes, as much as they suck when you have to pay them. Roads fall apart, no financial compensation for police or fire fighting services, it would be horrible.
The only way to avoid that chaos would be to take a note from certain British colonies who to this day don't have income tax... instead sales tax is something like 30% (not sure hwo it works out, just know a gallon of milk in Bermuda costs about 6 dollars), taxes on stamps, etc.

The elctoral college does need some heavy modification... I'm thinking along the lines that instead of getting all of the states votes based on the popular vote, they should get a representative number of votes from the college (ie, suppose florida has 10 college members. The popular vote is 60% Kerry, 40% Bush then Kerry would get 6 votes, and 4 votes for Bush, instead of the current system where Kerry would get all 10).

I’d like to see online voting. And before anyone says anything, yes I realize that this is a terrible idea because every hacker in the world would be trying to mess up presidential elections. But one of the main reasons my age group (college students) doesn’t vote is because we’re in school during the elections and don’t feel like going home to vote.

So someone should make a super unhackable program for lazy college kids to vote with, anyhow that’s just my opinion.

Kaiilyn

Ok. For you (and Singall since he made some comment about the Constitution calling for each and every vote and such):

That's not an issue for the federal government to determine. Surprised? Yup. Each state is given a number of electoral votes based on its population. So one vote per district and then 2 for its two senate seats. IIRC, the original idea was that the congress would simply vote and elect the president. Kinda blows the "everyone gets to vote" idea out of the water...


However, the federal government does not actually determine how those votes are cast. Any method may be used (except that they can't be alloted by an organization of religion -- go figure!). In practice, each state takes a vote and based on the results of those votes, casts its electoral college votes. There are, in fact, two states (don't ask me to name them, you can look it up yourself) that do it exactly as you describe. They cast their electoral votes by district, with the majority getting the two senate "state" votes. So if they had 10 districts, and it was 6-4, they would cast 8 votes for the first and 4 votes for the second.


There is *nothing* in federal law that prevents that. Write your state legistlature if you think that's a better way to do it. Ultimately, most states vote as a block simply because it's percieved to give the state more power on a federal level. It really does come down to campaigning. A candidate knows that campaigning can only affect votes by so much. Maybe 5 or 10 percent max. Now, if you can get those 5 or 10 percent in the right districts, you can swing all the votes in a state. However, if the state doesn't vote as a block, then you maybe bought yourself one or two more total votes. Look at this example:

You've got the state above, with 12 total votes (10 districts and two for being a state). Without serious campaigning, you think you can pull in 4 districts. You could maybe pick up 2 more if you spend a lot of time in the state and make a lot of promises. With a split vote system, you'd go from 4 out of 12 votes to 8 out of 12 by gaining those 2 votes. That's nice and all. You pickekd up 4 votes. However, if you'd spent that time in the neighboring, identical state, that votes as a block, by picking up that 4-6 majority, you end up with all 12 votes. That's 4 more votes for the same effort. Which state are you going to focus on?


This gets even more dramatic when we start looking at larger states where there are large population centers. You can visit just a few cities and potentially pick up 30+ votes. That's pretty huge.


Same problem occurs (and is in fact more exaggerated) if you just go by straight population vote. No one would bother to campaign anywhere but on the two coastlines. It's a "bang for the buck" issue, and you just get more play in larger cities.


The EC system is not perfect, but it does work. The most important thing is that it ensures a clear winner even when the popular vote is close. One of the things that people critisize it for is the recent election when the popular vote did not match the electoral vote. However, that's a clear indicator that it worked. We had a very close election. Remember all the re-counting and fingerpointing going on in Florida? Well, if we used popular vote, and the vote was that close, we'd be re-counting in all 50 states since every vote could potentially change the end value. That's a horrible idea. It's because of the EC system that we *only* needed to look at one state.


It's not just about "making every vote count". It's about making a system that results in a clear winner. It's "fair" as long as the rules are applied evenly to everyone (which they are). The exact process is irrelevant. What matters is that it does work, except when people assume that we should be using popular vote instead and think that the EC not matching the popular vote is a falure of some kind. It's not. Really!

I'll point out again that a popular vote result that doesn't match the EC vote result is only a failure if you think that popular vote is the way we should be doing things from the get-go.

Why use the EC, but then phase it out if the popular vote is close? IMO, that's exactly backwards. The whole point of the EC is to ensure a clear winner even when the popular vote is very close. The worst time to use popular vote is when it's very very close. That's when you'll get tons of recounts, and finger pointing, and allegations of ballot stuffing and other such stuff that cripples an election process. Heck. We had all that stuff this last time and we *don't* use popular voting! If we did use it, things would have been much much worse.

The key to remember is that we elect representatives. We don't generally vote directly for anyone. You elect your congressmen, and they vote for you in the legistlature. Should we dissolve that system, since if you happen to live in a district where the other party won the election, your "vote" on that issue isn't being counted? Should we do a nationwide popular vote on every piece of legistlature that comes before congress instead? Your arguing the same case really.


You don't actually vote for the president in the election. You vote for the "party". Each party appoints an electoral college representative for each district. It's that person you are "electing" to cast your vote for you. It's a technicality because it's assumed that that parties representative will vote for that party's candidate. But nontheless, you don't actually vote for the president. You vote for who will cast your districts vote for you, in exactly the same way you vote for who will represent your district/state in congress and vote on laws that come before that body. That person then casts his/her vote, and depending on the state you are in, that determines how the whole states votes are cast.


This is not that odd of a system. We use it all the time in almost all types of competitions. Sports in particular. When we determine the champion of a particular division or league or whatever, do we add up all the points that team scored over the season? Or do we add up the number of games they won? We do the second. You win a game by getting the most points in the game. You win a season by getting the most winning games.


Ever watch the world series? Same thing. It's the team with the most wins that wins the series, not the team with the most total points. We could just keep a tally of points (and wouldn't that be a better representation of who did better during the whole series?), but we don't do it that way. Each game is like an electoral vote. The idea is to give each one equal weight in the final determination of a winner. So a victory by 1 point is just as valuable as a victory by 20 points. Just as a single vote gives the entire district to one party, and a single electoral vote can give the entire states votes to a party as well. It's only "incorrect" if you assume that we should be electing presidents based on pure popular vote. The flaw in that thinking is that the president doesn't just represent 51% of the people in the country. He represents all of the states and districts. So each has weight regardless of how their populations may be distributed. Again. A popular vote would result in only a particular set of the population ever getting any attention from the federal government. That's a bad thing...

The Native Americans seemed to be doing fine.

just sayin'

seemed

now Shut the **** up and go back to Sanford and Son beeoTch..


..called me a conservative.. ******

yor dum
http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/ShowMainServlet/showid-13172/Grady/




Edited, Mon Jun 28 21:10:09 2004 by Kelvyquayo

Ack as a anthropologist and a little bit of a historian with more than a vested interest in Native American Studies from Iqualuit to Cape Horn i hate to see them idealized.

I love it when people take an interest but idealizing "Native Americans" into one culture or some egalitarian utopia is to turn a blind eye to what really was.

Its as bad as the idea of the warrior brave, indian princess or shaman/holy man ideal. These are concepts that are illusions that never were and when promoted put up ideals that people natives cant live up to.

They were people, they were a lot of people with a lot of different types of government. Ranging from Hunter/Gatherers to Empires. And no matter how simple to complex each government or power structure there was good and bad just like anything out there.

Anyways thats what i got to say, Kelvy you know i agree with you on most things but i think you have an idealized view on certain cultures.

Well they werent killing each other all the time but they werent living all happy free off the land.

While i dont agree with the view Kelvy took with using Native Americans as an example i find myself not agreeing with pretty much all the ***** you write Gbaji. Your a neo-con lap dog that doesnt have the balls to admit that your a neo con lap dog.



Edited, Mon Jun 28 22:18:15 2004 by bhodisattva