Re: Re: US elections -- VOTE!

[Guest guest]

A pure Democracy can only work in small groups, and even then there has never really been a pure Democracy that I know of. The ancient Greeks, who's city states sometimes did have a form of pure democracy, limited the vote to men further limited by social standing and other things. Still, they never lasted very long. They were rather volitile and people began voting all kinds of goodies for themselves. Average life expectancy for those systems was about 200 years or less. When they fell they usually got a dictator or a foreign invader for a ruler.

Today there are just too many people for a pure democracy and the issues are too technical. This is true even for our elected representatives. Most of them don't even read the bills they vote on. They just go by party lines or a summary prepared by staffers who probably don't read the bill in detail either. This is true even though that is supposed to be their job. It would be even worse for the average person. What with balancing jobs and family, they barely have enough time to get all the things done that they need to in the first place. To expect them to read and comprehend every bill that comes down the pike is too much to ask.

Another point. If people were to be allowed to vote on everything, logically that means they would have to be allowed to submit bills and proposals as well. That would mean rather than a few hundred each year in Congress, the number would be in the millions. There is no way that could be managed.

The better thing to do would be to limit the power of the political class and the other elites. Things like limits on the number of bills they can submit each term, mandated attendance at the Congress, no more riders being added to bills and requiring a review of laws every few years to remove outdated laws from the books and reconcile redundant laws into one law, or remove them altogether. Another thing would be a budget which had the key items funded first and at a fixed percentage of the budget. So something like military spending would be up front at say 15% of the budget, education up there too at a fixed percent, research and such too. Other things like the welfare state items would come last. After that, the few percent left over could be up to the congress to decide where it goes.

Right now there are agencies, like the military, who's budget is at the mercy of the Congress and usually varies year by year by a fair margin. This makes planning very difficult and they are often left underfunded. Sure the Congress funds them to buy hi tech weapon system made in their districts, but they do not add the money in to allow the military to train with those weapons. Certain missions have also been ordered, like the Kosovo and Bosnia missions, but no extra money was requested, or at least nowhere near enough. The result was that cuts had to be made elsewhere in the military, things like pay, medical care, training and maintenance. Game like that could and should be avoided.

[Guest guest]

At 11:39 AM 11/2/04 -0000, aspergian_mutant wrote:

>

>

>I look forword to the day we all can read the ajendas and vote and

>EVERYTHING as a people by the people ON THE NET from our homes.

>not just elections but ALL the subjects.

To understand why the Founders were afraid of a pure democracy (and thus

why it's highly unlikely that political leaders of the United States -- who

have pretty much all read these philosophers -- would enact it), read

Locke, Machiavelli, Cicero and Aristotle.

Sparrow

[Guest guest]

At 04:39 PM 11/2/04 -0000, environmental1st2003 wrote:

>Florida was NOT one of the 38 states who were required to vote for

>the candidate who won the popular vote, which was why Bush won the

>last election.

There are some dissenting opinions about this particular statement (mine

being one of them) but I have to address this more fully a bit later. Right

now I have to go run some documents over to the department chair at the

University (concerning my problems with my English professor.) Wish me luck!

Sparrow

[Guest guest]

At 04:39 PM 11/2/04 -0000, environmental1st2003 wrote:

>Florida was NOT one of the 38 states who were required to vote for

>the candidate who won the popular vote, which was why Bush won the

>last election.

Okay, I'm back.

Florida did not go to Bush because the electors went against the popular

vote. Here's a basic timeline of what happened and why Bush got Florida:

On election night, all the votes except Florida were in and the electoral

standing at that point was Bush: 246, Gore: 255. 271 electoral votes are

required to win and Florida has 25 electoral votes, meaning the election

could still go either way, depending on how Florida went.

The Florida results were so close that they required a recount. Florida law

demands a recount when the margin by which the winner wins is below a

certain percentage (I forget that precise percentage off the top of my head.)

The Florida recount gave Bush the victory by 537 votes. Gore had already

telephoned Bush to congratulate him before the recount, but when he saw

that the recount showed Bush winning by such a tiny margin, he retracted

his concession.

The Democratic Party filed a dispute and a second recount began. The

recount was held county by county and the various local courts made varying

decisions as to whether a recount was called for or not. The Democratic

Party pushed to do manual recounts in three counties only -- those known to

contain the heaviest concentrations of Democrats. Many courts balked,

saying that this was not a fair way to conduct a recount.

The Gore campaign went to the Florida State Supreme Court and demanded a

recount. The Florida Supreme Court agreed. Bush went to the Supreme Court

of the United States (SCOTUS) and declared that, due to differing standards

from county to county and the lack of a single general overseer of the

process, the recount -- in the form it was taking (the manual recounting of

only three counties, known to be predominantly loyal to one party) -- was a

violation of the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution.

The SCOTUS asked the Supreme Court of FL to clarify their ruling and

combined that lower courts' findings with its own deliberation. The SCOTUS

found in favor of Bush, 5 to 4. The SCOTUS declared that insufficient time

remained to establish a unified standard and thus recounts must stop. Thus

Florida went to Bush by a margin of 537 votes and the White House went to

Bush with a total of 271 electoral votes.

Therefore, the institution to " blame " would be the SCOTUS, not the

electoral college.

Sparrow

[Guest guest]

At 10:47 AM 11/2/04 -0700, Sparrow wrote:

>On election night, all the votes except Florida were in and the electoral

>standing at that point was Bush: 246, Gore: 255. 271 electoral votes are

>required to win and Florida has 25 electoral votes, meaning the election

>could still go either way, depending on how Florida went.

Sorry: mis-type. Make that 270 electoral votes are required to win. 271 is

what Bush ended up with; just 1 vote over the minimum required.

Sparrow