--- Jeroen van Baardwijk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> At Stardate 20030626.2044, Jan Coffey wrote:
>
> > > Exactly! What you propose for the ICC is representative governance, but
> you
> > > don't use that same system for your own country.
> >
> >What do you mean? We DO use representative governance!!! You are going to
> >have to clarify your point here becouse it looks to me like you are
> >calling white black and black white.
>
> Prime example is that of your presidential elections.
>
> I got the following from http://www.fec.gov/pages/ecworks.htm.
>
> "On the Tuesday following the first Monday of November in years divisible
> by four, the people in each State cast their ballots for the party slate of
>
> Electors representing their choice for president and vice president."
>
> "Whichever party slate wins the most popular votes in the State becomes
> that State's Electors-so that, in effect, whichever presidential ticket
> gets the most popular votes in a State wins all the Electors of that
> State."
>
> The above means that all votes for the other candidates in a state are
> essentially lost. In a true representative system (as we have in The
> Netherlands) you would simply tally all the votes (nationwide) for each
> candidate and declare winner the candidate who got the most votes.
>
> Over here we feel that this is far more democratic and far more resembles
> representative governance than your electoral college. (And it also costs a
>
> lot less time and money, and is a lot more efficient.)
>
> Of course, you could bring this up on That Other List; no doubt JDG will
> then explain to you that the US doesn't use the democratic principle of
> representative government because the US isn't a democracy...
>
Whatever about the other list and JDG..whatever..
But the point is that in elections within a state it is democratic. Think of
it as a buch of countries each signing a treaty of federal governance. Each
state elects an electorate to vote for them the way they request. That
electorate is reponsible for the treaty of election for a president.
Governers and the like are elected by popular vote.
If Europe feeralized do you think the smallest of states with the lowest
population would allow a simple -per vote- election. Probably not, becouse
this small country would constatnly get shafted. The United -States- we could
have called ourselves the "United Countries of American" UCA. Each state has
autonomy, (although less than they use to.)
The electoral collage exists to ~normalize~ the process so that the little
states are not -as- uninportant.
That said, many americans, especialy the ones that live in big states, don't
much care for the electoral collage.
=====
_________________________________________________
Jan William Coffey
_________________________________________________
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com
[Sponsored by:]
_____________________________________________________________________________
The newest lyrics on the Net!
http://lyrics.astraweb.com
Click NOW!
