Re: Re: nader/green party (political - duh)

[Bethany Keeley <blk4@calvin.edu>]

Quoting "Peter T. Chattaway" <petert@interchange.ubc.ca>:

> > . . . and it makes dissenters voices count for less.
> 
> Uh, how does it do this?  The whole point of the Electoral College is
> that
> it determines who becomes the President.  There is only one person
> who
> "counts" and that's the one who wins.  Second place comes away with
> nothing, and so do third place, and fourth place, and so on.  If
> anything,
> the very fact that the Electoral College polarizes geographic areas
> makes
> dissenters' voices count for *more*, because it allows dissenters to
> seriously damage any given major party by drawing away just enough
> votes
> to cripple them absolutely in certain geographic areas.
> 
> Which takes us back to Nader and Gore.
> 

but if someone is (hypothetically) a democrat in a largely republican
area, it makes no difference if they vote at all, becasue everyone
knows that the republican candidate will win all the electoral votes. 
Even if there are more americans who want a particular candidate,
arbitrary districting (and sometimes intentional districting) can skew
the results one direction or another.

> > This seems un-democratic to me, especially in the world of mass
> > communication and global culture.
> 
> Uh, what has "global culture" got to do with national elections?
> 

I chose the word "global" badly.  What I mean is that the electoral
system was originally set up so that people could vote well by
selecting someone locally to make a decision on behalf of their
community.  Then community was much more geographical, but now the
community that influences thought and ideology is not neccisarily
geographically based.
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