Or at least I would if it worked the way it was supposed to.
More on that later, but I find it interesting that the nature of the electoral college is being cited by some of you as a reason why you don't care about politics and don't see the point in voting. Nothing unique there. Arguments against the electoral college are regular staples of election commentary. New arguments are tough to find, though certainly the election of 2000 was a wake up call for those who thought it unlikely that the popular vote winner would ever lose the electoral vote again.
Over time I've become a big fan of separated powers, which includes fully distinct elections, and I think it would be beneficial to revert to the system originally envisioned by the country's founders, including a return to state legislative selection for the Senate.
I went over this in class briefly, and will spend more time Monday on it, but the genius of our institutional arrangements begins with the complete autonomy of each, including a completely distinct selection process for each institution. Each ultimately can be traced back to a decision by the general population, which makes it democratic, but the course of each varies, which makes tyranny of the majority difficult to establish. I may be wrong, give me an argument if so, but the introduction of a barrier between popular opinion and the public policy does not make a process undemocratic. It simply alters the nature of the democratic process.
I'd have no problem with a system where candidates run for the electoral college, are elected by us based on the type of president they might seek, and are given full discretion regarding who they give the four year presidential term to. We have a direct popular vote for members of the House, who could control the president by oversight, legislation, and the threat of impeachment. So that's how you have direct democratic control over the president.
I'm not sure how a president (a chief executive remember) could truly, democratically represent the interests of a country of 3 million square miles and 300 million people. There are too many interests and passions in a country that large for one person to represent. That's what the 435 member House of Representatives is for, they are more capable of doing it well. This means that the president would be reduced to an actual executive rather than a leader/savior/knight on a white horse. An electoral college, whose only function is to make this selection then step down from power may well be able to select from various, perhaps unlikely, candidates who would be less likely to fall in love with the power of the office.
Is it possible that we have become skeptical of democracy in the United States because we have grown accustomed to looking to the wrong office for evidence of democracy? That's what the House is for.
Perhaps this is naive, but the current system guarantees that only the excessively ambitious apply. It seems to me that when people complain about something being undemocratic it doesn't necessarly mean that the will of the people is not being heard by elected officials, but that there personal preferences are not carrying the day. It's not undemocratic simply because you lose. In addition, democracy tends to be a rarified mythical concept that is half illusion, like "peace, love and happiness," and "the Texans win." It's one thing to think about what a hypothetical democracy might look like, it another to actually create one.
Just a few thoughts to keep the pot stirred.
By the way, why should the electoral college cause people to not vote for other offices?
Keep the comments coming.
