10-24-2011, 10:24 PM
rjmacs wrote:
[quote=Ted King]
[quote=rjmacs]
I'm not interested in 'comparing the merits' of constitutional amendments, Ted. I understand what you are asking, but i don't think going at it from this angle moves the argument forward. It's an argumentative parry to get me to defend or condemn the 12th Amendment, which is wholly off point.
The present question is: does the imperfection of the Electoral College process merit amending the Constitution. Nobody here is arguing that the process is perfect or optimized as it is. I have argued that it does not rise to the level of constitutional amendment, and you have argued otherwise. I think it's fine if we disagree on that point.
That is the question I was pursuing. You say that the Electoral College process isn't flawed enough to merit amendment to the Constitution and I was providing you with an example of when the Electoral College has already been deemed as flawed enough to merit an amendment as a way to illustrate that your claim is questionable.
Whether a constitutional amendment is merited is not simply a question of the flaw, but of the proper use of political resources in the time the flaw is being addressed. Perhaps in 1804 it was an appropriate time to spend the time and resources on changing the Constitution. I don't thing that in 2011, the cost-benefit argument favors an amendment. We have more pressing issues to address.
Ted King wrote:
[quote=rjmacs]
As noted above, passage of the National Popular Vote bill in a sufficient number of states would fix this problem.
Well, as long as the Electoral College is made irrelevant then I don't care about whether there is a Constitutional Amendment or not. But the problem certainly is significant enough that the Electoral College does need to be made irrelevant by some means.
Was i ever defending the Electoral College? I'm not a fan of it - at all. I've just been arguing against amending the Constitution.
I guess I wasn't quick enough to make this edit to my post above, "You said, "We don't change the Constitution simply because we've figured out a better way to do things. We change the Constitution to remedy serious flaws, to guarantee specific rights, occasionally to change the powers of government." So either what happened with the 12th Amendment was serious enough to warrant a change or your claim isn't true. If it was serious enough, then why aren't the issues I'm bringing up serious enough?"