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From: mjc@cmu-cs-cad.ARPA (Monica Cellio)
Newsgroups: net.legal
Subject: Re: Electoral college
Message-ID: <204@cmu-cs-cad.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 9-Dec-84 23:47:28 EST
Article-I.D.: cmu-cs-c.204
Posted: Sun Dec  9 23:47:28 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Dec-84 03:23:41 EST
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 33

I was taught that the Electoral College was originally created because:
	-1- it would have taken too long to gather up the popular vote
	-2- the founding fathers didn't really trust the people to make an
	    intelligent choice.

Now that communications are better and people are theoretically more aware of
the issues, what the candidates are saying, etc., the system seems to be
pretty outdated/bogus.  I don't buy the argument that the Electoral College
protects minorities by making sure people in states with low populations have
a say; either their 3 electoral votes don't really matter (and so the system
doesn't really help them) or they are getting more than their fair share of
the vote.  My vote should count as much as yours regardless of where we each
live; I shouldn't have a bigger say because I live in Utah or something.
(Yes, I realize this is only a small difference with regard to the grand
scheme of things, since part of the electoral share is roughly based on 
population.)

Two hundred years ago people were broken up along geographical lines, so
(say) all the people in Virginia were likely to feel the same way about a
given issue while all the people in Vermont were likely to feel exactly the
opposite way.  Now, however, people are broken up along a number of lines;
why protect geographical minorities if we aren't going to protect any other
minorities?  What makes them so special?  We could just as easily break
things up along, say, religous grounds; the Campus Crusade for Cthulhu will
gladly take its 3 votes.  Doesn't make much sense to do this, though.

						-Dragon



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