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The senate is there in order to give each state a stonger vote in governmental affairs. That way not just the most populous states get the say in how things are run.
drisley - I agree somewhat on both of your statements regarding democracy and a multi-tiered election.
A democracy in and of itself is nothing more than mob-rule. It's funny how politicians and other people always scream that we need to be more democratic are often the same people that scream bloody murder when an unfavorable reforendum gets passed. Take Washington state for instance. Both parties up there love to lace their speaches with terms of "democracy," "will of the people," ect. But only one election ago, a referendum passed that made it so that any further tax increases must be done by referendum. Effectively, the people neutered the politician's power to levey taxes. Both parties fought that referendum as much as they could. Not a peep out of democracy from them during the fight. I doubt the people of Washington will be seeing any more tax increases any time soon. (I'm unsure if it was successfully challenged in court or if it has been gutted in another way, but the basic idea is pretty good and it won easily if I remember correctly)
So for all the people that are b*tching and moaning about democracy being circumvented and that the constitution needs to be changed in order to eliminate the electoral college, why don't we institute a real change and require that all tax changes be voted on by the general public? I doubt the Federal budget would be 2 trillion a year for very long. (Can you say "budget cuts"? I knew you could.)
As far as the electoral college is concerned, the conflict between it and the popular vote has only happened 3 times (not counting this years potential). So I don't think that there would be any great danger in either eliminating it or keeping it. However, to eliminate it the constitution would have to be changed and I just think that we should not mess around with the constitution for such a small difference.
As far as the multi-tiered election, I also was in favor of that until about a week ago when it dawned on me that it would effectively kill any hope of a 3rd party shifting the platform of a major party. I'd always believed 3rd parties play a larger roll than most people believe, b/c in order to recapture votes, it forces one of the major 2 parties to change their views. (take the populast party early in this century. the Repubs had to dramatically change for them.) But if minor parties, like the Greens or the Reform, are strained out early by a multi-election process, they would have very little sway if they couldn't impact the final tier of an election. The major parties would have a diminished incentive to change. If the greens had been eliminated in an early election this fall, the Dems wouldn't have to change their platform at all to try to pander to them. (I mean, where else would they go if it was only the Repubs and Dems in the final election)
[Edited by troysvihl on 11-08-2000 at 03:12 PM]
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