10-25-2011, 04:59 PM
rjmacs wrote:
[quote=Ted King]
[quote=rjmacs]
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.
Earlier in this thread:
Ted King
Can anyone provide a good argument for retaining the Electoral College?
How about: it's worked for 235 years, and all in all, that's a pretty good record.
Sure looks like an argument for retaining the Electoral College in direct response to the question about providing a good argument for retaining it. When I said I thought you were kidding, you said you weren't. Then you switched to arguing that it wasn't worth trying to change it. Then you brought up that there is another way to do it without doing a Constitutional amendment, a method you argued - in the old thread you linked to - that won't ever happen. Perhaps all that had something to do with why I had a problem keeping track of what you were trying to do in this thread.
Wow, it seems i really got under your skin!
You asked for an argument for retaining the Electoral College, and i suggested one. I don't think it's a particularly compelling argument, but you asked for an argument and i gave one. Sorry! Perhaps i should have disavowed the argument before i listed it. I didn't mean that this was my argument, just an argument.
What i was emphasizing was that it's enormously difficult to change the Constitution, by design. It takes a huge amount of political effort and capital to do it. Passing laws state-by-state is usually easier (the NPV route, in this case). You're right that i don't think that the NPV effort will succeed; i think the political establishment will resist this taking effect when it seems like it might actually happen. I could be wrong about this - it's my own personal assessment of the climate. But i suspect that the parties would greatly dislike the complications of having to run 50 state races and worry much more about third party candidates. That doesn't mean that i don't think NPV is a better approach than amending the Constitution.
Since you seem interested in my personal opinion/position, i think that we'd be better off with a popular vote rule for electing the president. However, I don't think the system we have is terribly broken, or contravenes the will of the people regularly. I know not everyone agrees with me - no need for a chorus of dissent. (I've been reading the thread. I know how people feel about this by now.) As it happens, the NPV bill has become law in my state, so there's that. I won't gripe if the National Popular Vote system comes into effect. But i'm skeptical. People keep harping on the "we're halfway there!" point, but getting a law passed in a handful of states isn't so hard. Getting 270 electoral votes will be a LOT tougher. I look forward to seeing it all unfold.
I try to be a careful thinker and so when I seemed to have missed the boat in this thread I thought I'd go back through the exchanges and see what happened so I might avoid doing something similar in the future. That's when I noticed what I noted in the post you quoted here.
I agree that changing the way presidents are elected is very, very tough now. But I definitely don't agree that it's not that much of a problem. Bush II will probably go down as one of the worst presidents the US has had and the comparison between what he did and what Gore probably would have done is HUGE. Kerry came very close to beating Bush II in the Electoral College even though he had fewer votes (and I'm not convinced that if it weren't for ethical and probably illegal sheenanigans that he would have gotten Ohio's Electoral votes). There is a very distinct possibility that Obama may get a plurality of votes and lose in the Electoral College. With the increasing polarization of politics in the country, that swing in presidency due to the Electoral College has and can make tremendous differences in outcomes for the country. If Obama wins a plurality but loses in the Electoral College I think that the NPV will gain a LOT of momentum.
