Arguments Against It: Crap. Seriously.
Crap.
10/28/04 - Amendment
36 is on Colorado's ballot for next week. It looks like
it won't go through, but at least it's there. Colorado might
follow Maine and Nebraska (not too big on the Electoral points,
but somebody has to set a precedent) in splitting its EC votes
proportionally between candidates according to whom its citizens
actually vote for.
I read the absolutely bollocks argument of Rowland Nethaway
in The
Waco Tribune the other week which he appeared to have
directly lifted from the scary but hilarious site www.probush.com.
The argument Nethaway adapted slightly is that Bush actually
won the popular vote in 2000.
Ah, hem. Sorry. My throat got clogged by the bullshit. This
argument is on the basis that if you look at a map of the
US split into voting districts, you see only dots of Democratic
blue majorities in a sea of Republican red. I guess I can
understand how this might seem like an intelligent point,
but I hope most folks would rebute with what should be the
obvious: SO WHAT! BIG DEAL! CAN ANYONE SAY, "GERRYMANDERING"?
I'm dumbfounded by this type of noisey garbage. My fellow
Texans hopefully recall the Republicans in the Texas Congress
trying to redistrict last year in order to give the Republican
Party more power in the state. Several Democrats kept leaving
the state during the vote to prevent the legislature from
voting on it because it was an ugly
power grab by a group that is already in power in Texas.
Until this year, I have always voted for 3rd-party candidates
for president. Why? Because it doesn't matter who I vote for.
If you're a Texan and you're not a Republican supporter, then
you are literally disenfranchised. Texas always goes Republican
in the Electoral College.
"The Electoral College gives smaller states a bigger
vote." What? Aside from the fact that the EC makes it
not matter if I vote or not, how does this argument work when
the fact of the matter is the presidential election puts in
power the head of the Federal Executive branch who sits in
power over all US citizens?
The most overt reason I could see for the EC existing was
to give more power to aristocrats during slavery because slaves
counted as 3/5ths of a person when the population was counted
to decide how many EC points Mississippi or any other of the
slave states got. Only now the aristocrats in power can't
count their slaves but the EC still works for them.
BIG DEAL if the majority of voting districts had a majority
of voters voting Republican. That only illustrates how this
method of voting created
by European nobility is even more corruptive of democracy
than it appears on the surface. How can someone supportive
of democracy defend a system permitting the Supreme Court
to decide who sits in the White House while the reality that
543,895
more people voted for the Democratic candidate in 2000 makes
no difference whatsoever?
Fuck the Electoral College. I'd like my vote to be counted
thank you.
