On 11/6/04 1:16 PM, "VIRKKALA" <virkkala@...> wrote:

>
> No Fly-over Zone
>
> After the Florida debacle in 2000 we heard talk of the alleged obsolescence
> of the Electoral College. No surprise, since George Bush received
> fewer popular votes than did Al Gore.
>
> This time, Bush got more popular votes than Kerry, so the grumblings
> have hushed to a murmur as people move on to other reforms.
>
> Good. I agree that Democrats have some legitimate gripes. The Electoral
> College just ain't one of them.
>
> Everyone should be disgusted, for example, with our Presidential
> Primary system. It often selects very bad candidates. John Kerry
> this time, Bob Dole a few elections back. Neither were suited to
> unseat their incumbent rivals. Both parties would have been better
> served were the primary dates bunched up more, distributing some
> of the selecting power away from the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire's
> primary voters.
>
> And were the parties forced to pay for — and control — the selection
> of their own candidates, then they might select even better candidates.
>
>
> Whatever we do to improve our democracy, let's be wary of tampering
> with the Electoral College. Is it an out-dated relic of the 18th
> century? Hey: it succeeds in making the candidates speak to the concerns
> of numerous states with small populations.
>
> I say, let's keep making presidential candidates speak to people
> outside the biggest population centers. Long before Wilbur and Orville,
> our founding fathers figured out a way to counteract politicians'
> tendency to treat vast tracts of the nation as a fly-over zone. This
> wasn't just savvy for the 1790s, it was prophetic. It works today.
>
>
> Designations   |   November 6, 2004   |   Wirkman Virkkala

I may suffer from too much cynicism, but I see another advantage to the
Electoral College. I think it limits corruption. Suppose there is a state so
wholly dominated by one party that the possibilities for getting away with
election fraud are pretty substantial. In our current system the most that
state could effect the election is limited to the number of electoral votes
of the state. A state that, if wholly dominated by a single party is
probably not a "battle ground" state anyway. The only incentive for election
fraud would be for state-wide and local races.

But under a system of national popular election, there would be a great
incentive to report the largest possible margin because the larger the
margin the larger the state's "say" in the outcome of the election.

Or to put it another way, the corruption of the Chicago Democrat party is
limited to 21 electoral votes.

--
Jon Kalb
Kalb@...