Catch22,

May I retain your services? Both of my children delight in raising my blood pressure by doing so. Perhaps if someone else explained the principles to them, they would listen.

Grumble,

There is no doubt that there are major structural differences between the democracies of Australia and America. I expose my Anglophile tendencies when I say that I envy the discrimination between head of state and head of government. What I was attempting to describe were the great similarities in getting the PM or President into office.

Based upon Sharni’s two comments, your suggestion that Bilbo was criticizing the results of the election rather than the subsequent process makes sense. Perhaps any misinterpretation should be viewed in the light of the terseness of his comment. If he is indeed criticizing the results of the election, then he stands in good, if disappointed, democratic company. I can think of American Pixies who have had difficulties coming to grips with the result of the 2000 election, and others who remain dissatisfied with the two prior to that.

In re the Australian constitution and amendment count: yes, you seem to have done a rather good job of it. Australia must have called upon some penetrating thinkers and sensitive historians when it was being drafted.

And that is the good thing about democracies. We have the right to be unhappy. When it came out in the war trials after ww2. Was there any oppositon by the German people to the Govt. The reply from Hermann Goering was: Not from anyone living.

I believe it was Mr. Churchill who said, "Democracy is the worst form of government...except for all the others"

scotzoidman,

I did some checking, and it turns out that when the Electoral College received its current form in the 12th Amendment, the idea of electing the president by direct popular vote was not widely promoted as an alternative to redesigning the Electoral College. This may be because the excesses of the recent French revolution (and its fairly rapid degeneration into dictatorship) had given the populists some pause to reflect on the wisdom of too direct a democracy.

The Electoral College system imposes two requirements on candidates for the presidency:

1. that the victor obtain a sufficient popular vote to enable the winner to govern (although this may not be the absolute majority), and
2. that such a popular vote be sufficiently distributed across the country to enable the winner to govern.

Such an arrangement ensures a regional balance of support which is a vital consideration in governing a large and diverse nation. At the same time I also discovered that the Electors are not bound to vote for the candidate to whom they had been pledged! I have this vision that following a large infusion of money, following the election – Al Sharpton emerges as the President Elect!

I know that Tawana Brawley(sp?)will vote for him! Irish :eek:

Irish,

OK, I'll bite. Who's Tawana Brawley?

I don't remember the story exactly,but years ago,she was supposed to be a
black girl,that (according to him)was raped by white men.I believe the story was eventually proven to be a hoax.It's another of his stories about the White
Man,picking on the Blacks.Don't hold me to this,verbatum,The details are only
from memory.I think that he was fined,??money,but never paid.It's kind of hard,to pay a fine,when you've never held a "real" job! Irish
P.S.There is,probably,some kind of search,that you could do.As said,the details are only from memory. :jester:

Irish,

Ms. Brawley may have served as a role model for the French woman who falsely claimed she had been the victim of an anti-Semitic attack last month. She has admitted inventing a story of an attack by a gang of North Africans on a Paris suburban train.

Other than sheer inertia, is there any reason to still have the electoral college? I made great sense in the past, but as the technology exists to actually count each vote, why can't we get rid of it. It might be nice to have a president that was actually elected by the most votes.

:eek: you really want to allow people to choose for themselves in this day and age... preposterous!!!!!!!! We can barely get the technology to a place that allows the vote to occur in a somewhat accurate manor as it is.... can you imagine the name calling and accusations if an election came down to just a few votes... oh wait... that already happened!

Good lord, what was I thinking. We can't just let people vote. We need criteria! I've you've ever voted in American Idol, you can't vote for president. If you believe that a bunch of rich white guy laywers who went to Ivy league schools care about lower and middle class slobs, you're out. If you think that you need a 64 oz Huge Ass Gulp (or whatever it's called) from 7-11, so sorry. Am I missing anything :-) Or they could just play rock paper scissors.

or if you've ever been on Jerry Springer, you're definitely out!

fredchabotnick,

That was not the intent of the Electoral College. Ref my post to scotzoidman above. Perhaps that should be changed, but that would require a constitutional amendment. As there have been four - or three, depending – occasions where the candidate who received the most popular votes failed to become president, it doesn’t seem to be that big of a problem.