Quote:
Originally Posted by SweetT
Your points are well made and I am not saying that they have no merit. I just do not like giving that much power to such a small geographical section of our entire country. Remember that our country is founded on the principal that states govern the country not the individuals within the states. If that were the case, we would simply call ourselves America...not The United States of America.
Again, I am not bashing your points...they are well thought out and have merit. I, personally, just think that when you give that much power to such a small part of the country that you are opening yourself up to HUGE abuses of power. If you think that the "hanging chad" debacle was bad, wait until you see what could happen under a popular vote system. Imagine a President campaigning on platforms such as raising the minimum wage in Calfornia and Texas to $35/hour while decreasing the rest of the states to $1.95. I know that I am using an absurdity to make a point, but the point is still the same. ;)
--T
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I guess we just disagree on which system actually gives too much power to too small a group. You can look at the last election and see a state like Texas as a great example. Bush is from Texas and still lives there. He was governor there and still Kerry got 38% of the vote. Even in the most conservative of the conservative states Kerry got around 30-35% of the vote and the opposite can be said of Bush even in the most liberal states he got 35% or higher. I can't imagine there will ever be a day where any one candidate could possible win 100% of the vote in any state. I think with the availability of the media to everywhere in the country it would be very hard for any candidate to promise one state too much and not enough to another. If a candidate promised minimum wage increases to a couple of states but not the other states, it would take about 20 minutes before that information was everywhere.
Our population is large enough and diverse enough that I think under a popular election any candidate would have to focus on just about every state in order to get enough votes to win. As it is now you just focus on your stronghold states and the battleground states and ignore the states you don't have a chance in.