http://tinyurl.com/6kcrq9
- - - Aside from nice speeches from teleprompters, gaffe-prone off-the-cuff remarks, a global messianic vision and an uncanny political machine, Obama shares this dubious distinction with Dubya as well! Ann makes a good and relevant point in the middle of her usual blaze of caustic one-liners -- see if you can spot it: - - - When Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 election by half a percentage point, but lost the Electoral College -- or, for short, "the constitutionally prescribed method for choosing presidents" -- anyone who denied the sacred importance of the popular vote was either an idiot or a dangerous partisan. But now Hillary has won the popular vote in a Democratic primary, while Obambi has won under the rules. In a spectacular turnabout, media commentators are heaping sarcasm on our plucky Hillary for imagining the "popular vote" has any relevance whatsoever. ... Unbeknownst to liberals, who seem to imagine the Constitution is a treatise on gay marriage, our Constitution sets forth rules for the election of a president. Under the Constitution that has led to the greatest individual liberty, prosperity and security ever known to mankind, Americans have no constitutional right to vote for president, at all. (Don't fret Democrats: According to five liberals on the Supreme Court, you do have a right to sodomy and abortion!) Americans certainly have no right to demand that their vote prevail over the electors' vote. The Constitution states that electors from each state are to choose the president, and it is up to state legislatures to determine how those electors are selected. It is only by happenstance that most states use a popular vote to choose their electors. When you vote for president this fall, you will not be voting for Barack Obama or John McCain; you will be voting for an elector who pledges to cast his vote for Obama or McCain. (For those new Obama voters who may be reading, it's like voting for Paula, Randy or Simon to represent you, instead of texting your vote directly.) Any state could abolish general elections for president tomorrow and have the legislature pick the electors. States could also abolish their winner-take-all method of choosing presidential electors -- as Nebraska and Maine have already done, allowing their electors to be allocated in proportion to the popular vote. And of course there's always the option of voting electors off the island one by one. - - - I'd like to build on this idea ... I think that the closer we've gotten to "pure democracy"/popular vote rules, the more elections have been run like propaganda campaigns, sucking billions of dollars out of the economy for meaningless ads that play to voters prejudices and moods rather than address the issues. You want to "get the money out of politics"? Create more layers of indirection between voters and the elected officials at the highest levels, not less--that is to say, in our Founders' terms, have a more republican government. But no--McCain and friends would much prefer regulating free speech..... something to think about. - Bob _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
