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Grex > Agora35 > #18: The 2000 presidential campaign item | |
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| 25 new of 406 responses total. |
rcurl
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response 107 of 406:
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Sep 27 18:05 UTC 2000 |
The parliamentary system also has some very big negatives, which include
having to form coalitions of numerous parties, the defection of some
of which can bring down a government. It is a question of the respective
merits of that kind of chaos, which is actually more representive,
versus a stable but time-limited, "winner take almost all", government,
such as we have. Maybe it is a matter of whether the people want to be
entertained as well as served by their government. 8^}
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polygon
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response 108 of 406:
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Sep 27 18:08 UTC 2000 |
Re 107. The winner in the parliamentary system is MUCH more powerful
than the winner in the presidential system, since the winning party
controls both the legislative and executive branches, and the minority
party is basically excluded from doing anything but heckle.
See James Q. Wilson's book "Bureaucracy" for many examples of how the
differences between parliamentary and presidential government shape
the behavior bureuacrats, right down to DMV clerks and OSHA inspectors.
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polygon
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response 109 of 406:
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Sep 27 18:09 UTC 2000 |
er, behavior *of* bureaucrats.
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richard
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response 110 of 406:
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Sep 27 21:19 UTC 2000 |
actually, its theoretically possible that gore could win the electoral
college vote but lose the popular vote, in a close contest. this is
presuming Bush wins by a wide margin in Texas and the mountain states
where he's way ahead and the votes are nailbitingly close everywhere
else. This would provoke a constitutional crisis, with some who would
surely say Gore shouldnt take office if he lost the popular vote.
I dont think anyone is quite sure what to do if such a scenario
occurred.
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mcnally
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response 111 of 406:
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Sep 27 21:27 UTC 2000 |
I wouldn't worry about it.
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brighn
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response 112 of 406:
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Sep 27 21:54 UTC 2000 |
Other presidents have lost the popular vote and won the electoral vote.
I thought Clinton was one of them (but maybe he got the plurality each time,
just not the majority).
I am sure people know what to do in this scenario. The winner of the electoral
college becomes the next president. Technically, the popular vote is
irrelevant (what's relevant, more properly speaking, is the popular vote in
each state).
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brighn
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response 113 of 406:
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Sep 27 22:17 UTC 2000 |
Clinton got pluralities each time.
The last time a presidential candidate won the electoral vote and lost the
popular vote was Harrison (over Cleveland) in 1888. Harrisson lost by 90,596
votes (he was 0.8% behind Cleveland), but received 58.1% of the electoral
vote.
Source: http://uselectionatlas.org/poltextj.html
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scg
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response 114 of 406:
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Sep 28 00:25 UTC 2000 |
The Constitution is pretty clear on that. It woudln't be a crisis.
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richard
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response 115 of 406:
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Sep 28 00:58 UTC 2000 |
clinton wonthe popular voteboth times, he just didnt get over 50%. I
think if I was Gore and I won the electoral vote but lostthepopular
vote, I might feel ethically bound to ask my electors to vote for Bush.
They really should do away with the electoral collegeanyway.
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polygon
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response 116 of 406:
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Sep 28 01:33 UTC 2000 |
It wouldn't be a constitutional crisis. It would be a political crisis.
I don't think it is likely, but if it happened, it would be a problem.
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richard
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response 117 of 406:
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Sep 28 02:39 UTC 2000 |
Okay, if you are interested, Ralph Nader's runningmate is Winona LaDuke,
a half-jewish/half-native american activist. Her pet causeis to forcethe
american government to give back land stolen from the Anishinabeg tribe
and make reparations. She is also a practicing jewjust like Leiberman, so
shewouldnt work on Rosh Hashana either.
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rcurl
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response 118 of 406:
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Sep 28 04:26 UTC 2000 |
I think the Electoral College is an important even if unlikely check on an
improbable but not impossible event of some wild eyed demagogue arousing
the populace to vote in a tyrant. The Electoral College can decide to vote
for someone that didn't even run. Some people want to "bear arms" for this
purpose. The Electoral College serves a similar but bloodless purpose.
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senna
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response 119 of 406:
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Sep 28 04:49 UTC 2000 |
I'd go out and say it wouldn't even be much of a political crisis, but if Gore
wins electorally and loses popularly, you just know the Republicans will gripe
about it. Ah well. I don't think it's too big of a deal. Everyone is taught
in high school that this is a possibility.
Since we're never told anything about the actual electoral college, i'm not
sure how much of a check that is, but it's nice that some states can't
completely run roughshod over others.
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mdw
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response 120 of 406:
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Sep 28 06:22 UTC 2000 |
It seems to me the Candadians have done quite a bit of "giving land back
to the indians" - so perhaps giving that land back to the Anishinabegs
would be a good prelude to joining Canada, eh? Seriously, though, the
VP has very little authority to override federal and local law, seize
land from one group of private land owners, and transfer that land
ownership to another group of owners. In fact, the VP has very little
authority to do anything.
I went to a school district that was at least 50% jewish. If LaDuke
wants to make Rosh Hashana a natural holiday (say, like Christmas), I
have no problem with that. Or if she wants to take a personal day off
instead, more power to her. If she doesn't want to take motorized
transportation on saturdays, and prefers instead to walk to the local
synagogue, that's fine too - good exercise and a chance to humanize the
political process. I don't see any real incompatibility between being a
US politician and being a jew. To the extent that religion is an issue
at all, I'd rather see a jew than a roman-catholic, only because I don't
like the official RC position on abortion.
If that's the worst you can say about her, she doesn't sound very scary
at all. She might even make a better president than Ford, who is
actually my favorite of our recent republican presidents.
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danr
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response 121 of 406:
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Sep 28 12:42 UTC 2000 |
I rather like the idea of a parliamentary system. As for it creating upheaval,
well what's wrong with a little upheaval now and then? Keeps fat cats on their
toes. As for being less stable, all I can say is that the parliamentary system
is in place in many countries, such as the UK and Canada, which seem pretty
stable to me.
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bru
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response 122 of 406:
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Sep 28 12:45 UTC 2000 |
Its just as possible for Bush to win the electoral and gore the majority.
With a race this tight, it could go either way. But I am counting on the
people seeing thru this shenanigans with Gore Lieberman and go with Bush
Cheney at the end.
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mooncat
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response 123 of 406:
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Sep 28 13:58 UTC 2000 |
Okay, could someone please explain the electoral college to me?
Because I really don't understand what the point of it is. Why do we
really need it? I think a vote should be a vote, each individual
person counting and whoever gets the most wins. This is my rather
uneducated opinion on it (I know the electoral college was explained to
me when I was in high school but I didn't understand it then and I
don't understand it now.)
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polygon
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response 124 of 406:
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Sep 28 14:09 UTC 2000 |
Re 123. The point? When this was all set up, they wanted each state
to have a set amount of say in the process, regardless of how many (or
how few) people actually voted in each state.
There was also no experience with mass democracy, and no expectation
that national parties would emerge. They expected each state or region
to come up with its own candidate or candidates, and that normally the
election would be settled in the House of Representatives.
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brighn
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response 125 of 406:
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Sep 28 14:28 UTC 2000 |
I'd been taught that the point of the electoral college was to reinforce that
we're the United State*S*, not the United State. To do this, the President
is determined by the popular vote in each STATE, rather than the popular vote
in the the whole country. Win the popular vote in enough states, you win.
I'm confused as to why something that's happened at least twice in history
(someone who lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote became
president) would consistute a modern "problem." Regardless of who wins, it's
almost a guarantee that they'll receive a larger percentage of the popular
vote than Clinton did in '88 (when Perot got 18%, I beleive -- Nader won't
even come close to that). So they'll receive more of the popular vote than
Clinton (even if they don't win it), they'll have support of a larger
percentage of Americans, and it's already happened twice... big deal.
I'm more concerned that, yet again, the winner of the election will have less
than 50% of the vote (Nader probably WILL be that much of a spoiler). We keep
putting in leaders that the majority of us don't even agree on.
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jp2
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response 126 of 406:
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Sep 28 14:31 UTC 2000 |
This response has been erased.
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brighn
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response 127 of 406:
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Sep 28 17:07 UTC 2000 |
I'm not sure what a coalition government is.
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mooncat
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response 128 of 406:
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Sep 28 18:04 UTC 2000 |
Okay that kinda makes sense... but is the Electoral College still
needed?
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brighn
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response 129 of 406:
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Sep 28 19:40 UTC 2000 |
I think it's still important to have the policy that the presidential
candidate selected by the popular vote in the most states win (as opposed to
the candidate selected by the national popular vote). Whether the "Electoral
college" continues to be the means to that end, I'm indifferent.
Note that the Electoral College is weighted -- it's the number of senators
+ the number of representatives, so that if state A has twice the population
of state B, it won't have twice the votes, but rather less than that (but more
than the same number of votes, usually). I believe this mechanism was put in
to keep the larger states from feeling threatened by a collusion of smaller
states (the purpose of the Senate's two-per-state) and to keep the smaller
states from feeling threatened by single huge states being bullies (the
purpose of the House's reps-per-population). (And reverse those parenthetical,
I got 'em backwards. =} ... the Senate makes all the states equal, the House
makesthe larger states more powerful).
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richard
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response 130 of 406:
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Sep 29 00:57 UTC 2000 |
The electoral college also served a function in theprevious century when
there was no ready technology to count all the votes everywhere all
at once. Before there telephones and computers it could take quite long
to count votes, and ratify theprocess. So you designate electors from
your area who travel to the electoralcollege meeting andthere you have
representation all in oneplace and you have an election that can be fully
recorded.
the electoral college also indirectly helps preserve the two party system.
This is because you dont actually vote for theperson running for President,
you are voting for his slate of "electors" who will gotothe meeting of the
electoral college a couple of weeks after election day, and actually
*they* will vote forthe president. And who are the electors you will
elect to represent your vote? why party leaders of course. And Gore
and Bush willhave slatesof electors you've heard of, locally elected
officials and .etc But third party candidates wont have that luxury.
Usually whoever they will have as electors wont be well known.
Similarto the primary electionprocess, where you are not voting for a
candidate but for his slate of delegates from your area, and the more
established candidates will have the mostwell known delegates. Gore had a
distinct advantage in the primaries over Bradley in that his delegate
slates included mostof the party heirarchy.
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mdw
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response 131 of 406:
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Sep 29 01:38 UTC 2000 |
It's pretty much a given whichever candidate wins won't have received
votes from the majority. I believe in recent presidential elections,
the # of eligible people who vote is about 60% - effectively, 40% voted
for "none of the above", & a candidate would have to receive over 80% of
the remaining votes in order to receive a true majority of the votes.
This has been true for ages and hasn't bothered the politicians any.
Someone above thought the electoral college was good protection against
demagogues. I don't think so, if anything, I think it makes the system
weaker against such folks. Certainly a Hitler or a S. Hussein would
have no trouble using the electoral college to his own ends. 600 people
are a lot easier to control than 250,000,000. If I remember right,
Hitler just burned down the legislative building. The people who were
left got the message loud & clear. There is, in existance, a video of
some Iraq legislative body, in session as Hussein was consolidating his
power. Every so often, he'd point to someone, and his soldiers would
hustle that person out of the chamber, and a short while later, a shot
would be heard. Sorry, but I still think the electoral college is
obselete and should be replaced. Either a straight popular vote, or a
popular vote weighted in part by state & population.
I think it was Larry, above, who was talking about how a parliamentary
system might impact OSHA or other gov't agencies. While I probably
ought to go visit that URL to entirely appreciate what he said, I do
have to say right away that it sounds like he's talking about the evils
that the civil service was created to address.
[ Once upon a time, in *this* country, every time the
administration changed party hands, that meant a complete
turnover affecting practically everyone in gov't office as
well, down to the county rat catcher (bubonic plague was
still fresh on people's minds.) This was back in the 19th
century, before the days of big gov't, but even so, people
were quick to notice that the plum jobs always went to the
party faithfuls, who often weren't very competent, and there
was a big learning process every changeover, as the new guys
learned the little they could without help from the old
guys. The civil service was invented to correct this
problem; now there is a civil service examination, which
guarantees at least a minimal level of competency, and only
the top level executive jobs change with the new party. As
everybody knows the peter principle guarantees they'd be
incompetent anyways, this doesn't bother anyone. ]
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