At 09:28 17-12-00 -0800, Patrick Slichtenmyer wrote:
>On Sun, 17 Dec 2000 16:07:45 +0100 "J. van Baardwijk"
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >(hint: switch to electronic voting, ditch the two-party system, and get
>rid of that outdated
> > electoral college thingy).
>
> Leery about the first, absolutely agree with the second, and
> unless we
>develop a better governmental system, absolutely disagree with the third.
>
> Electronic voting sounds great at first, unless some talented
> snot-nosed
>hacker gets into the database and decides that who the American people
>*really* want for president is Jack I. Thebox!
That risk does exist, but it can be minimized by taking appropriate
security measures. This little bit of risk is outweighed by the benefits of
electronic voting over other methods: no chance for errors in counting, and
final results can be available within hours after the polling stations close.
BTW, if some hacker succeeds in tampering with the final results, the real
results can easily be regenerated by again gathering the information from
all the local databases.
>Here is the reason why I think we should keep the Electoral College.
>Both the east and west coasts are heavily populated, while the central
>states are not. Now if we voted only by the popular vote, then the
>presidency would be decided by the high population states, while the
>lower pop. states would not be represented.
As pointed out in a previous post, this is irrelevant because you're not
voting for representation in a larger body like Congress, but for a
position filled by *one person*. The president is a *single human being*,
not an organization made up from a three parts East Coast, two parts West
Coast and one part central states.
Jeroen
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