^ Because as much as city people hate to admit it, without the rural area's of the state, this country would very quickly fall apart. If you think our dependence on foreign oil is bad, wait until you're dependent on foreign countries for raw materials and finished goods.

Quote :

"hy if a majority did live in urban areas why their vote should be proportionally less then some rancher whose closest neighbor is 10 miles away."

Mostly because if some urban metrosexual loses his fashion store, or dead beat crack addict fails to survive long enough to get his tax payer funded rehab vacation, there's thousands more waiting to take his place, where as if the rancher's interests are ignored and he loses his ranch, there's considerably less people to take his place.

See I can use name calling to make worthless points too.

12/20/2007 3:13:23 PM

you're right about the worthless part.

12/20/2007 3:14:15 PM

^^

12/20/2007 3:29:04 PM

I believe most agriculture and finished good manufacturing in rural areas are fun by major corporations. I am sure they'd have no problem recruiting more methed out country folk to fill the ranks

12/20/2007 3:37:42 PM

i knew you people would have fun with it

12/21/2007 1:59:37 AM

Quote :

"someone listens to diane rehm. "

I gracious, I can't stand to hear her voice. It's like the antithesis of what an NPR voice is.

Quote :

"I don't buy the states rights argument since the federal gov't thanks to the income tax has sapped much of the authority and power from the individual states."

You do realize that the founding fathers specifically outlawed an income tax, right?

Quote :

"Ignorant people can easily be swayed in election time which allows candidates to play off the commoner and silence opposition voters in states that have a one color tendency."

Wouldn't this again be an indication of a problem with the TWO PARTY PROCESS? False dilemma, and all?

Quote :

"Let me guess you like the BCS system also to pick the College National Football Champion also?"

Because a college sport is absolutely comparable to something as important as the President of the Fucking United Fucking States of America, right?

Quote :

"Why should Jimmy Jon corn farmer's vote in Iowa count exponentially more then my vote in NC"

And how does it count "exponentially more?" More aptly, why should Jimmy Jon corn farmer's vote count for absolutely nothing when compared to a city, thousands of miles away, that knows nothing of his plight?

Quote :

"ah, my bad. didn't realize you were just a troll."

sounds like YOU are the troll, given how little you have supported your arguments here

Quote :

"that still doesn't explain why people who live in rural areas deserve more of a say in the vote, just because they are not packed densely into a city."

They don't deserve more of a voice. They deserve a voice, and the EC gives them that. Nevermind the fact there is a completely separate branch of the government, where everything starts out, where their power is so much more diminished than in the Presidential race.

Quote :

"say one state has 50 electoral votes based on their population. those extra two senate electors is rather insignificant. but for the state that has only 1 elector, the two extra electors triple their say. this means that the midwest (read: mostly republicans) have far more electors than their number of voters should."

And, yet, the state with 52 total votes has more than 14 times the power in the national election than the state with 3 votes. Do you not comprehend that massive difference? The concerns of Wyomans are 1/14th as important as those of New Yorkers in the current process, and yet the ultimate decisions still impact the people in Wyoming. The people in Wyoming might get a slightly higher percentage of "voice" per person, but New York still gets FOURTEEN TIMES THE VOICE overall (using your numbers). In short, it still evens out.

Quote :

"(this last is my main reason for disliking the electoral college as it is now)"

So, really, you dislike the TWO PARTY SYSTEM, not the electoral college.

Quote :

"if anything they are more likely less educated and will thus make a less informed ignorant vote."

So, the people in the cities, then, who know nothing about what it is like to live outside of a city, should thus be able to shit on those who live in the country. I also like the insinuation that country folks are stupid. I also like the insinuation that country people deserve no voice.

Quote :

"RepubsDems like the electoral collegepopular vote b.c they know they can always count on the all the rednecksblacks, countrycity folk, and christiansatheists living in more ruralpopulated areas to vote for them regardless of platform."

Works both ways.

The real problem is that the President has SO MUCH FUCKING POWER NOW over the States to begin with. With the President in his original situation as specified by this crazy thing we have called "The Constitution," the concerns over ND "having more voice" than NY didn't matter, because ND could do as it pleased and NY could do what it wanted. Both would be happy. The Electoral College was the perfect way to ensure a decent balance in decision making for the position of President, who needed to represent EVERYONE, not just New Yorkers, at the end of the federal process.

What you forget is that there is also a BEGINNING to this federal process. It's called "Congress." And who do you think has far more power here? With the system the way it was originally intended, there ended up being an almost perfect balance, with the big states have disproportionately more power at the beginning and the small states having disproportionately more power at the end. And which situation do you think results in more power in its own right: power at the beginning, or power at the end? I'd argue that power at the beginning is far more important, since that power dictates what can ultimately make it to the end.

You also fail to realize that States were supposed to be fairly independent of each other, with the federal government mainly existing to resolve disputes between states. The founding fathers never meant for there to be a federal government that could even begin to tell every single state how to educate its children or how to run itself. As a result, that ND got a little more voice in President was ultimately unimportant. But, then we decided to assrape the Constitution, so now we have what we have.

Basically, we fucked up the original process as it was intended to be, so we are now stuck with living with the things against which the Founding Fathers warned us. Ironically, we are now told the answer to the problems caused by ignoring the advice of those wise men is to ignore more of their advice.

12/22/2007 11:48:03 PM

Electoroal College sucks [/thread]

12/23/2007 12:06:09 AM

The constantly defended idea that a person is only entitled to a vote the weight of which is inversely proportional to his or her local population density is moronic.

12/23/2007 12:07:14 AM

thank you for contributing absolutely nothing to the thread.

12/23/2007 12:10:59 AM

Quote :

"The constantly defended idea that a person is only entitled to a vote the weight of which is inversely proportional to his or her local population density is moronic."

EXACTLY

Quote :

"Electoroal College sucks [/thread]"

[Edited on December 23, 2007 at 12:12 AM. Reason : ll]

12/23/2007 12:11:55 AM

I guess none of you guys feel you can rebut any of my arguments, so you will resort to saying "EC sux, man."

but, I'll play the game

Quote :

"The constantly defended idea that a person in a rural area is only entitled to aabsolutely no vote the weight of which is inversely proportional to his or her local population density is moronic."

if you need any references to back that up, just refer to my quote-bomb a few posts earlier

12/23/2007 12:18:48 AM

I apologize for not going on and explaining my point which should be ridiculously self-evident to anybody with a functional knowledge of basic mathematics.

Hey, speaking of "self-evident"...
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal

Surely, then, all men (and women) deserve an equal share of the vote. A man living in Wyoming has no reason whatsoever to have fifteen times the say that a man in California as to who will be our nation's president.

12/23/2007 12:27:50 AM

Quote :

"I apologize for not going on and explaining my point which should be ridiculously self-evident to anybody with a functional knowledge of basic mathematics."

I'll take that as tacit admission of defeat, since you are unable to defend your beliefs.

Quote :

"Hey, speaking of "self-evident"... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal "

Clearly, someone doesn't know that said passage is NOT in our Constitution, nor does it have an applicability to the given topic.

Quote :

"Surely, then, all men (and women) deserve an equal share of the vote. A man living in Wyoming has no reason whatsoever to have fifteen times the say that a man in California as to who will be our nation's president."

The sad thing, though, is that you ignore the other half of the argument: whether individual regions should have disproportionately more power over the another at ALL STAGES of the governmental process. The answer to THAT question, is a resounding "HELL FUCKING NO!!!", and that is why we have the Electoral College.

12/23/2007 12:31:36 AM

Quote :

"I'll take that as tacit admission of defeat, since you are unable to defend your beliefs."

How am I unable to defend my beliefs? I said I initially chose not to explain further because it is trivially obvious. I then explained them anyway because you act as if it isn't.

Quote :

"Clearly, someone doesn't know that said passage is NOT in our Constitution, nor does it have an applicability to the given topic."

I didn't realize that only passages from the Constitution were allowable in this discussion. I guess we need to omit basically 95% of this entire thread since we're not all just posting back and forth with quotations from the constitution.

It is relevant to the topic at hand since we are discussing the INequality of different Americans' votes. I posted it because it is a sentiment I agree with.

Quote :

"The sad thing, though, is that you ignore the other half of the argument: whether individual regions should have disproportionately more power over the another at ALL STAGES of the governmental process. The answer to THAT question, is a resounding "HELL FUCKING NO!!!", and that is why we have the Electoral College."

Once again, I say the following: The idea that a person is only entitled to a vote the weight of which is inversely proportional to his or her local population density is moronic. It is logically flawed at a fundamental level. You say that these vaguely defined regions, wherever they may be, deserve to have power inversely proportional to their population density. I say that no man deserves more of a voice than any other in choosing our nation's president. Mine is the position which is defensible, yours is quite the opposite.

12/23/2007 12:53:04 AM

Quote :

"I didn't realize that only passages from the Constitution were allowable in this discussion."

when you are talking about the Constitution, it makes no sense to make an appeal to an irrelevant document.

Quote :

"Once again, I say the following"

Hey, when you can't refute an argument, just repeat yourself, right?

Quote :

"You say that these vaguely defined regions, wherever they may be, deserve to have power inversely proportional to their population density."

That would be a Strawman. For one, the power is NOT inversely proportional, as there is no constant which can be used that defines such a thing. For another, I say that, in the case of a Constitutionally prescribed President and Congress, it is preferable for the smaller states to have a little more say "per voter," especially in light of how much more say the big states have in Congress.

Quote :

"I say that no man deserves more of a voice than any other in choosing our nation's president."

And I say that you ignore the fact that States were intended to be relatively autonomous to each other. You ignore the fact that the Founding Fathers wanted that, and they didn't want populous states to be able to push around the less populous ones. This direct issue is the reason that we have a bicameral legislature. Do you have an issue with that? If not, then I ask why you have a problem with the Electoral College, which is directly related to that historic compromise.

Quote :

"Mine is the position which is defensible, yours is quite the opposite."

Interesting that you say that, since you have failed to attack any of my arguments and have instead resorted to repeating yours and ignoring my refutions. Moreover, you argue that it is defensible to ignore the warnings of the Founding Founders further in order to solve problems caused by previously not heeding their warnings. What, dear genius, is "defensible" about that?

12/23/2007 1:11:40 AM

fuck it.


i think ill go drink some bourbon and lay out in the rain.




[Edited on December 23, 2007 at 2:55 AM. Reason : ]

12/23/2007 2:49:47 AM