[Winona Online Democracy]
Gene,
I don't think i made the point, inadvertently or otherwise FOR the electoral
college. I
tried to summarize in a few paragraphs a much larger paper i wrote on the
subject
for a class at WSU which addressed all the pros and cons of the EC, and then
laid
out a Constitutional Amendment that would rid of us it, and assure that the
winning
candidate had a majority of the popular vote, not just a plurality.
Regarding your other point about a republic rather than a pure democracy you
are
right.
But we aren't discussing here a popular vote on all issues that come before
the
nation. Simply a popular election for the President like we have for every
other office
in the land.
We would still have the built-in checks and balances, including two houses of
Congress and an independent court.
Of course the Constitution is hard to amend, as it should be. We certainly
don't want
to end up like Italy which has had some 40 governments (at least) since the
end of
W.W.II. But hard does not mean impossible. We have amended it only 27 times
(17 if you count the Bill of Rights as part of the original constitution) in
213 years. I
don't think an amendment of this type now would greatly threaten our
constitutional
system. Certainly not any more than the current debacle in Florida could.
And, hey, i'd like to see the type of constitution that would have come out
of the
sixties. I think it would have been at least as awesome as the one we do have
is.
Dean Lanz
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