The states have nothing in the world to do with cultural diversity. A group of
states may, or may not, but not an individual state. The electoral college
reflects the unwillingness of the smaller ex-colonies represented at the
Constitutional Convention to be overwhelmed by a one-citizen one-vote system that
would have given the then most populous, such as Virginia, maximum power. I simply
don't understand how someone can believe in democracy and favor a system that
gives a person in Wyoming sixty-nine times the vote of one in California in choice
of a president.
Bill Mandel
Michael Rossman wrote:
> About the bandwagon rush to junk the Electoral College: If the current
> situation were reversed, would Goreites and Naderites be scrambling so
> righteously to jump on? If not, the thought that changing the Constitution
> should involve reasons more profound than relatively-ephemeral concerns should
> give some premature riders pause.
>
> At issue here, among other things, is cultural diversity. To some limited
> extent, the E.C. enforces a degree of attention to differences in regional
> cultures and sentiments, which will be completely disabled by promotional
> processes in a system oriented simply to massed popular vote. The degree to
> which this partial reinforcement of residual political differentiation may
> work more broadly to reinforce residual cultural difrferentiation is surely
> debateable. But to assume its effect negligible is foolish; and to dismiss
> this subject is wrong-headed, in the face of the forces and momentum of
> monoculturalization, which will only be abetted by discarding the E.C.
>
> Michael Rossman <mrossman@igc.org>
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