BamaD
Posts: 20687
Joined: 2/27/2005
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: bounty44
quote:
ORIGINAL: MasterJaguar01
quote:
ORIGINAL: bounty44
quote:
ORIGINAL: MasterJaguar01
The Electoral College is outdated and no longer serves its purpose...
great, please state its original purpose such that you can subsequently make the argument as to how its outdated and no longer serves that purpose.
Gladly. The TRUE original purpose of the Electoral College, was to protect the institution of slavery in the southern states (under the guise of "states rights"). Slave owners (which included some Presidents (e.g. James Madison) continued to use "States rights" as a tool to legitimize slavery until the 13th Amendment.
Hello 13th Amendment, goodbye original purpose of the Electoral College. (It was a bad idea in its origin, and a worse idea now.)
More recently, it has just become a tool for Republicans who, (in their current platform) could NEVER win a Nationwide popular vote election, to overturn the popular vote. (Even against a horribly flawed candidate like Hilary Clinton). The Electoral College, combined with massive gerrymandering at the state level allows the Republicans to hijack any elements of our Democracy (yeah, I know... We're a "Constitutional Republic")....
North Carolina is a poster child for this.
oh of course, what was I thinking?
so now the choice is either between a liberal interpretation of events, or a liberal revision of history.
what will disqualify either of them from being the case is your showing commentary from the constitutional convention, the federalist papers, or any other period pieces in which the issue of slavery and the electoral college are not only linked, but that the former is the reason for the latter.
meanwhile, im going to go with this:
quote:
The Constitutional Convention considered several possible methods of selecting a president.
One idea was to have the Congress choose the president. This idea was rejected, however, because some felt that making such a choice would be too divisive an issue and leave too many hard feelings in the Congress. Others felt that such a procedure would invite unseemly political bargaining, corruption, and perhaps even interference from foreign powers. Still others felt that such an arrangement would upset the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.
A second idea was to have the State legislatures select the president. This idea, too, was rejected out of fears that a president so beholden to the State legislatures might permit them to erode federal authority and thus undermine the whole idea of a federation.
A third idea was to have the president elected by a direct popular vote. Direct election was rejected not because the Framers of the Constitution doubted public intelligence but rather because they feared that without sufficient information about candidates from outside their State, people would naturally vote for a "favorite son" from their own State or region. At worst, no president would emerge with a popular majority sufficient to govern the whole country. At best, the choice of president would always be decided by the largest, most populous States with little regard for the smaller ones.
Finally, a so-called "Committee of Eleven" in the Constitutional Convention proposed an indirect election of the president through a College of Electors.
The function of the College of Electors in choosing the president can be likened to that in the Roman Catholic Church of the College of Cardinals selecting the Pope. The original idea was for the most knowledgeable and informed individuals from each State to select the president based solely on merit and without regard to State of origin or political party.
The structure of the Electoral College can be traced to the Centurial Assembly system of the Roman Republic. Under that system, the adult male citizens of Rome were divided, according to their wealth, into groups of 100 (called Centuries). Each group of 100 was entitled to cast only one vote either in favor or against proposals submitted to them by the Roman Senate. In the Electoral College system, the States serve as the Centurial groups (though they are not, of course, based on wealth), and the number of votes per State is determined by the size of each State's Congressional delegation. Still, the two systems are similar in design and share many of the same advantages and disadvantages.
The similarities between the Electoral College and classical institutions are not accidental. Many of the Founding Fathers were well schooled in ancient history and its lessons.
http://uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/INFORMATION/electcollege_history.php
It only makes sense (to a liberal) that after cuting the slave owners power with the 3/5 clause they woul turn around an increase their poer with the electoral college.
_____________________________
Government ranges from a necessary evil to an intolerable one. Thomas Paine
People don't believe they can defend themselves because they have guns, they have guns because they believe they can defend themselves.
|
RE: Electoral College 101 - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread