Just a rambling of thoughts going through my head:
So, this being a presidential election year, there’s inevitably talk about this archaic Electoral College system, especially in a race this close. But I would think that changing it to general-popular-vote would just shift campaigning from states-that-are-close to states-with-many-people, since campaigning in a state with lots of people will get you many more votes than campaigning in a state with few people. But I agree that it’s kinda weird that my vote for president essentially doesn’t count.
It also seems kinda interesting that with roughly half of people voting for one person and half voting for the other, that we’re all going to end up being governed by one guy. I know that this is a silly idea, but I was thinking that it’d be interesting to split the country in half, and have those people who prefer the Republican approach to solving problems in one half and those who prefer the Democratic approach in the other. We’d then see which half-country ended up better. Of course, there are tons of problems with the idea, not the least of which is that it could never work, but sometimes I think of random things.
And then I got to thinking, that we kinda do have that… We have a state level of government, and the state runs things the way it wants. And it does make sense that we have to have one overarching executive in charge of the whole country. But if the fundamental unit of governing is the state, and the federal government is merely uniting the states, then why not have each state decide who to have for president? So maybe this Electoral College thing, or something like it, does make some sense. The reason we have both a Senate and a House of Representatives is to ensure that the smaller states have a say in Congress, and similarly the Electoral College system kinda gives a boost to the smaller states to ensure that they get counted somewhat. And that’s why it kinda makes a lot of sense for Bush to have won the presidency in 2000 even though he didn’t win the popular vote: he had enough states, particularly smaller states, behind him.
Of course, it looks to me from looking at the 2000 race and projections for this year, that population density is related to who gets the vote. At least, California and New York go to the Democrats, and the sparsely populated West goes to Republicans. This is probably not a coincidence, as Democrats tend to propose welfare spending that appeals to those in large cities. So, by having a system that increases the importance of the vote of less-populated states, they end up not completely forgotten.
I don’t know how well my reasoning made sense, but I figured I’d post some of the randomness going on in my mind.
So, as a public service announcement, people should, of course, vote. But pay attention to the other races on the ballot too: they can sometimes (often?) affect your life more than the President can. Those of you living in MA should check out the State Elections Division site, which can tell you exactly all the races that’ll be on your ballot. It’s kinda hard to find info on all the candidates besides president, though… I’m particularly having a tough time trying to track down info on the race for Worcester County Sheriff. McCarthy’s site doesn’t have much useful information on what he stands for, and I can’t find anything on Beshai. I may end up voting for Glodis just because he has the best web site at telling me what he’s about. I’ve found a couple news articles on Google, but they tend to mostly be from immediately after the state primaries, and aren’t very detailed on the candidates’ stances.
(For those who are interested, my current choices are Bush/Cheney for President, Crews for U.S. Rep. (despite his Flash intro), and Paige for State Senate (As Article 8 says, “Chandler is so bad, how could Paige be worse?”… Plus he’s for cutting taxes, and I liked him on the debate on WTAG today, although I think he did a poor job presenting his points.). And it’s all but impossible to get information on the candidates for races that are uncontested… But I figure that if they’re the only one who wants the job, they’ll probably be better at it that someone who doesn’t. I just thought I’d let people know where I stand, although that wasn’t really the point of my post. Then again, I’m not sure what the point of my post was.)
Just out of morbid curiosity, if I were to show you statistics proving that the elecotral college is the only reason Bush won the election, would that change your mind about it?
Honey, the sheriff election has come and gone. I guess your info sources aren’t that great…
perhaps change is the wrong word. Would it alter your thinking?
Well, I guess I was trying to say that a majority of states voted for Bush in 2000, and therefore there is a reasonable argument that he deserved the office because of that.
Well, the primaries are done… but there’s still the actual general voting to be done. What info sources do you suggest on the race?
I forgot you couldn’t vote in the whole Glodis v. Flynn thing. ;)
There was a very interesting study done where they graphed the electoral college outcomes if you change the ratio of congressmen (H of R) to citizens they represent, taking into account the algorithm for apportioning congressmen (yes, there is one). The results were that when there were less that 250 congressmen, bush won 100% of the time. When there were more than 800 congressmen, Gore won 100% of the time. in between it was a total crap-shot.
That is rather interesting. And we’re just “lucky” that 538 is in-between, and thus didn’t have the outcome predestined?
So, how well would a popular vote with votes weighted based on the state population size work? (If you vote from a less-populated state, your vote counts “more”, like say 1.2 times or something.) I don’t know exactly what the weighting factor would be, exactly, but something like it might combine the advantages of each method.
I just found in the T&G; today (page A2) articles on the three candidates for sheriff. None of them overly impress me, though.
For T&G; subscribers: McCarthy, Glodis, Beshai. (Note: I don’t know how long these pages will be up, and you need to be a T&G; subscriber to see them.)
well one of the things the article pointed out is that as the size of the House got bigger, the relative value of the extra 2 votes given because of the senators approached 0, meaning that the final election result approached the popular vote. The opposite happened as the House size approached 0. So in many ways the status quo is what you’re looking for.
Think of it this way. Pick a handful of states, and compare these results: NumberOfCongressmen/435 compared to (NumberOfCongressmen+2)/538. Divide the 2nd number by the first and you get any given state’s “weighting factor”. e.g. MA’s is roughly 0.97.
So, if we used that number as the weight for a given person’s vote in that state and did a weighted popular vote, we’d end up with something very close to what we have now, except:
Yet, we’d still end up with similar results. It’s a thought, anyway.
At first I thought all the candidates looked decent.
A summary for those who can’t access the articles:
McCarthy (the Republican candidate), the only candidate with real experience in law enforcement, proposes sweeping reforms after a 100-day assessment. This makes him a Democrat, but at least he’s doing some fact-finding first. According to the Telegram, “His issues are accreditation and employment and promotion based on performance.” Certainly those sound like good things. He mentions his grant-writing abilities, and he wants to supervise inmates released on probation and make tracking sex offenders a priority. All of this sounds good, assuming that “sex offenders” aren’t just 16 year old boys who got their 15 year old girlfriends pregnant.
Glodis (the Democratic candidate) “worked as a temporary guard at the Worcester County Jail and House of Correction and as an officer at the Worcester courthouse” during his spare time in college–in other words, not much experience. He is willing to vote across party lines or take stands by himself when he feels it is necessary. He favors English immersion and filed a bill that will keep Ebonics from being taught in schools. He feels that Muslim terrorists should be buried with pig entrails to prevent them from going to heaven. Clearly he is a Republican. He also was on a committee which helped tighten security at Logan after 9/11. Although now that I’m looking closer–his record may look good, but I don’t see any plan here. What is he bringing to the office of Sheriff? How will he improve the system–if he thought the system was fine, he wouldn’t have run against Flynn.
Beshai (the Independent candidate) has experience on the inside of jail, which is an interesting qualification. (He has since overcome the drug addiction which landed him there.) He mentions his business management skills as well. His goal is to cut down on the amount of kids who return to crime after being in “juvenile lockups” as well as reducing the recidivism rate at the jails. He mentioned several foundations working to this effect that he had been involved with. I’m going to call him a Democrat. While they aren’t specifically mentioned by other candidates, these foundations would not cease to exist if Beshai is not elected, and one would imagine that recidivism is one of the many concerns that McCarthy’s overhaul will address. While he does have goals, he does not have a specific plan of action.
So when it comes down to it, I think I’ll have to vote for McCarthy. He has experience in law enforcement, he has a logical plan of action which includes finding out what needs to be done, and he will write grants to get his money–meaning it won’t just be coming out of my pocket.
That’s about the reasoning I independently ended up with, and I think I’m gonna go for McCarthy as well. I’m not sure that I understand the reasoning behind your party-assignments, though.
Those still following the race may want to check out yesterday’s T&G; article (subscribers only) on a debate they had, as well as the article from the Southbridge Evening News on it. The Spencer New Leader (published by the same company) also has profiles on Beshai, Glodis, and McCarthy.