[Vision2020] Can Clinton Win?(Forgetting something)

[Mike Weatherford]

>If you are advocating true direct democracy as "more reflective of the 
>majority", then I respectfully disagree with the premise that it would be a 
>net good.   I like the checks and balances offered to smaller states as 
>protection from larger states.

  Now thats an interesting statement to make. The electoral college makes 
the smaller states proportionally more powerful than the larger states. For 
example, Wyoming (2000 census population: 493,782) gets three votes in the 
Electoral College. That works out to one vote per 164,594 people. California 
had a population of 33,871,648, and only 54 electoral votes. Thats one vote 
per 627,252 people. What, exactly, are smaller states being protected from? 
A majority decision in which everyone has an equal say? I'm genuinely 
interested to hear what the smaller states are being protected from (other 
than the ominously vague "larger states") , because I've heard this argument 
before (my high school AP Government class) but never quite understood the 
reasoning behind it.

>The majority, by the way, doesn't vote.  What do we do then?  Call the 
>election for lack of interest?

No. And thats not true. Close, but no cigar.
Voting age population (Census Bureau Population Survey for Nov. 2000): 
205,815,000
Percentage of voting age population casting a vote for president(2000 
election): 51.3%

I direct your attention to this table:
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election#Voter_turnout

With the exception of '96(which had 49.08% turnout), the Presidential 
elections were in fact decided by a (simple) majority of voters.

( voting information from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0876793.html )
( census information from http://txsdc.tamu.edu/txdata/apport/table2.php )

-Mike Weatherford

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