> Behalf Of J. van Baardwijk
> First, the EU is not "the rest of the world". Second, your
> current system
> was introduced long ago by the British -- and even they have by now
> abandonded that system because it was outdated and undemocratic.
>
>
> Jeroen
Jeroen, I have no idea where you got that idea, but it's certainly not
the case. The Electoral College was an entirely original invention on
the part of the Founding Fathers, a product of their attempts to
balance the competing interests of large and small states, rural and
urban areas, and create a clear winner in elections that they expected
to be contested by multiple, solely regional candidates (this is, of
course, what would happen were the electoral college to be abolished,
but the law of unintended consequences seems to be entirely ignored by
reform advocates). The American system certainly was not introduced
by the British - it was created, largely out of whole cloth, by a
group of people meeting (in secret) for a summer in Philadelphia.
Although certain elements of the system were inspired by the British,
others were inspired by the structures of the Roman Republic, others
by Democratic Athens, and large parts by the political philosophy of
Locke and Montesquieu. In no sense was it "created" by the British,
who held no meaningful elections in their American colonies and were
not in any sense a "democratic" country back in the home country
either. In fact, it's worth pointing out that the standard political
science datasets don't classify Great Britain as a "democratic"
country until well into the 19th century.
********************Gautam "Ulysses" Mukunda**********************
* Harvard College Class of '01 *He either fears his fate too much*
* www.fas.harvard.edu/~mukunda * Or his deserts are small, *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Who dares not put it to the touch*
* "Freedom is not Free" * To win or lose it all. *
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