02-18-2004, 01:53 PM
I am not the best qualified to answer all these questions, but I will take a stab at some of it.
First, the system has issues, I don't disagree with that at all. Second, the system is rooted in history, and one of the older democratic systems as well. It is also one of the oldest systems that wasn't born of something else. When it was created it had to take into account the huge size of the country (even the original 13 states was vastly larger than most other nations at the time and was the largest democratic nation) and the slow speed of information travel. It could literally take weeks for information to get from one state to the capital. The system was designed to try and answer some of these problems.
So you have an electoral college. Each state has electors (I don't know how they are appointed), and those electors don't actually have to vote the way the populace votes, there isn't anything legally binding about it on a federal level. There are usually "protest" electors who will cast their vote differently than the state populace vote. Some states have laws that force the electors to cast their vote for the most popular candidate. Some will proportionately split the vote. But the idea behind the college was so that Joe Frontiers man who couldn't get to a city could still tell his elector who he thought should be president. The electorates were also more informed about the canidates as well. Then the electors would take their week or whatever to get to the capital and then the voting would happen, all at one time. This is still technically what happens but you never hear about it. The original system also had the person recieving the most votes as president and the 2nd leading vote getter as vice president, this is elector votes again. But a lot of this was done to overcome distance and communication issues. The federal government didn't have a lot of power. The power was with the state governments, and the local governments. No other county had to deal with issues like this. The only countries comparable in size at the time were Russia and China, and they had dictatorial types of governance.
So as to a third party canidate (and there are tons of them, I had 12 choices for president in the last election on my ballot, other states had more or fewer depending on if the canidate got enough backing in that state to make the ballot) if they get more votes in a state, the electors will most likely cast their votes for president for them. Otherwise it doesn't really matter.
The systems hasn't really grown with the times, but then again what government changes anywhere to rapidly evolve? With modern technology and high speed wide spread communication (that really has only been around for the last 50 or so years) things could change, and they are. The system was also designed without the ideas of political parties in mind.
I could say more, but I have to get to work, and as I said there are better qualified people out there. But I had to point out that you can not consider this system without considering why it was developed and the unique issues faced by the designers.
First, the system has issues, I don't disagree with that at all. Second, the system is rooted in history, and one of the older democratic systems as well. It is also one of the oldest systems that wasn't born of something else. When it was created it had to take into account the huge size of the country (even the original 13 states was vastly larger than most other nations at the time and was the largest democratic nation) and the slow speed of information travel. It could literally take weeks for information to get from one state to the capital. The system was designed to try and answer some of these problems.
So you have an electoral college. Each state has electors (I don't know how they are appointed), and those electors don't actually have to vote the way the populace votes, there isn't anything legally binding about it on a federal level. There are usually "protest" electors who will cast their vote differently than the state populace vote. Some states have laws that force the electors to cast their vote for the most popular candidate. Some will proportionately split the vote. But the idea behind the college was so that Joe Frontiers man who couldn't get to a city could still tell his elector who he thought should be president. The electorates were also more informed about the canidates as well. Then the electors would take their week or whatever to get to the capital and then the voting would happen, all at one time. This is still technically what happens but you never hear about it. The original system also had the person recieving the most votes as president and the 2nd leading vote getter as vice president, this is elector votes again. But a lot of this was done to overcome distance and communication issues. The federal government didn't have a lot of power. The power was with the state governments, and the local governments. No other county had to deal with issues like this. The only countries comparable in size at the time were Russia and China, and they had dictatorial types of governance.
So as to a third party canidate (and there are tons of them, I had 12 choices for president in the last election on my ballot, other states had more or fewer depending on if the canidate got enough backing in that state to make the ballot) if they get more votes in a state, the electors will most likely cast their votes for president for them. Otherwise it doesn't really matter.
The systems hasn't really grown with the times, but then again what government changes anywhere to rapidly evolve? With modern technology and high speed wide spread communication (that really has only been around for the last 50 or so years) things could change, and they are. The system was also designed without the ideas of political parties in mind.
I could say more, but I have to get to work, and as I said there are better qualified people out there. But I had to point out that you can not consider this system without considering why it was developed and the unique issues faced by the designers.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.