Random Rambling: Politics

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.)