11-02-2004, 04:46 PM
eppie,Nov 2 2004, 04:38 AM Wrote:So what are you saying?? It seems more that you are discussing if there should be one presidency of the USA, or instead each state his own president.Generally, we don't have a direct democracy. We have a republic, which uses representative democracy. When we elect a president, it also needs to account for the positions of all the states, not just the interests of the most populated state. If you look at electoral representation;
As you said the electoral college has its disadvantages. The USA has chosen to have one president (despite the large size of the country, cultural differences etc.), so then it would be better to give every person a vote that counts exactly the same as the vote from any other person, or not?. Europe did not decide yet that it should have one president, so your comparison does not work here.
The system in the US looks like tennis...you can win without having made the most points. For a game that can work, for a presidency it seems rather wrong.
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California(55),
New York(31),
Texas(34),
Florida(27) = 147 electoral votes out of 538 (27%)
Compared to population(in millions) representation;
California(35),
New York(19),
Texas(22),
Florida(17) = 93 out of 291 (32%)
You can see that things are slightly skewed in favor of smaller states. For instance North Dakota has 3 electoral votes for a population of 633837 people (1 vote per 211000 people), whereas California has one electoral vote per 645172 people. I think this is good in many ways so that the smaller states do not become marginalized and irrelevant. I think the misconception is that United States is one entity. We are actually 50 states, the District of Columbia, and a handful of protectorates all operating as separate units but organized and led by a federal establishment.
In many ways, the Netherlands should be able to relate in a Europe dominated by France, Germany and Britain.