h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.h2g2.com/A495001

Proboscis

Good stuff, just what I've been looking for to explain what is happening across the pond. I have comments though:

Paragraph 2 begins "our country", unfortunately I'm a Brit so it isn't my country. Maybe a brief explanation of the US, its 50 states, declaration of Independence, voting for the President every 4 years, first Thursday in November, inauguration in January would begin matters better.

Despite your valiant attempts in paragraph 2, I found myself wondering exactly what Electoral college votes are. Assume that everybody else is at least as dumb as me, maybe simple statement like "Despite an countrywide election it is actually the Electoral college voters who vote for who will be President. In 24 states, they must accept the popular peoples vote but in the remainder they can do as they bloody well choose. In 2000, there were 538 [or however many] EC voters across the 50 states.".

I have to say it got pretty heavy going mid 3rd paragraph and I just jumped a few to the one beginning "I think". No first persons allowed I seem to remember.

Also noticed a strange typo about mid 3rd paragraph something about "district &#8217".

Overall though I think this is an important entry for explaining something that has gripped the news for the past month or so. Maybe we can have an entry on the Judicial System next and all the different courts

I would suggest that the key to making this entry more readable is to break it up. Maybe chuck in a few subheaders e.g. "Our Founding Fathers", "The Electoral College", "How past elections could have been changed", "How things could be improved"

Get cracking

Hello,

Well, it's a good article and definitely topical. It's also nicely informative for the Edited Guide. However, I have a few suggestions I feel obliged to make. They seem long and dry, and it's okay if you think they're pointless, I just feel like spouting forth :

1. I agree with "Bright Blue Shorts". You need to explain some of the background for people that have no experience with our system. Basically, every state has the same number of Electors as Senators+Representatives. The representatives get reapportioned every 10 years which affects the number of electors (I'm not entirely sure of how this reapportioning process works). I'm not sure how much more background you might want to fill in. The distinction between Democracy and Democratic Republic recently came up somewhere else, but I don't know whether you want to cover that here.

2. You do a nice job of explaining the Founding Fathers' fear of untempered democracy. This is the same fear that led to the creation of the Senate as a house of wise elders that could temper the fads of the House. Of course, it's not as much like that today.

3. You do an excellent job of explaining some of the original rationales for the Electoral College.

4. It is true that many states can allow faithless electors. However, I think it should be stated that true defectors are extremely unlikely, since electors are mostly picked from the party faithful. I think it works like this: each party has a list of Electors for the state. Depending on who wins in the state, their electors get picked to do the vote. So you won't have Democratic electors voting if a Republican wins the state. Even those examples you give weren't major defections (more like one voting for Bentsen for President, Dukakis for Vice-President). Still, I suppose it could potentially happen, and you could object on the principle of the matter. Also, I might be wrong on that one...

5. I really feel like this article could be more balanced about modern arguments for the Electoral College. I think it's a bit dismissive of modern supporters' arguments. Some of the best arguments for the Electoral college don't rely on either of those points, instead presenting the electoral college as a defense against the "tyranny of the majority" (otherwise, candidates would hit the coasts and ignore the middle of America) or as a mathematical amplifier of voting power, to give a few examples. It's true that this amplification is different from state to state, but it's higher than for direct votes.

6. I also agree that you should break it up under headers and other GuideML tricks.

Anyway, don't get alarmed. I think it's a fine article and deserves inclusion into the Edited Guide. Now, you just have to find a scout.

Yours,
Jake

I hate to disagree with popular opinion, but that has never stopped me before...

I don't think this article is appropriate for inclusion in the Edited Guide. It's a persuasive piece that reflects one researcher's opinion, and doesn't represent the other side very well. Its lack of balance is its primary fault.

I also disagree with the arguments regarding the origins of the Electoral College. I'm working on a project on the US Constitution at the moment, so I've done a lot of research into this area. The college is actually another of the many compromises between large and small states that went into the creation of the Constitution. If the president were elected from a straight majority vote, the voices of Rhode Island, Delaware, and Vermont would have been drowned out by New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Under the Electoral College, small states have an opportunity to affect the election. This could possibly lead to a president winning the college who fails to win a majority of the popular vote, but it is important to note two things. The first is that this is not the first time in US history that this has occurred. The second, but most important, is that this is exactly what it was designed to do. The primary reason people aren't scrambling to reform the Electoral College is because it behaved exactly as it is supposed to. If the various states want to change how their votes are proportioned, that is for the states to decide. If they want to mandate how their electors vote, that is also a state decision.

The piece is a persuasive one, but it is persusive to prove a point, to illustrate a calling for reform. I will try to balance the article with pro-EC support.

The Electoral College was created as a compromise between the states. I guess my article doesn't state that as clearly as it should. I'll get editing and hopefully solve these problems. Thanks for the responses!

Proboscis

The Entry is very interesting, although lacking some additional information for non US Citizens. I agree with the other posters on that.

My proposal is to move that Entry to the Writing Workshop. You have said that you'll keep on editing it, and that's exactly what will take place in the Writing Workshop. I also propose that some information in favour of the Electoral Collage should be included (if there is any, which I personally doubt). It's hard to decide whether an Entry is well balanced if the topic itself seems to be so clear, but that's only my personal point of view.

Jeremy FS JBB

To my mind this is a balanced entry because there are no good reasons for an eleectoral college.

The "tyranny of the majority" argument is dumb because it suggests that the middle of america should get special protection as a minority, which is something that other minorities, such as the blacks, simply don't have. If the rule of law and the bill of rights and democracy are enough for the blacks, why aren't they enough for the landbound? More importantly, it's well known that presidential candidates largely ignore safe states (where they exist), so while middle-america gets special protection, Alaska (for example) gets none whatsoever.

The "mathematical amplifier" is equally dumb because your votes still have exactly the same power with or without the EC (or at least: they would do if each state had the right number of EC votes). On the other hand, if some states allocate proportonally, and some don't, then those states would be at a disadvantage. That's why the whole thing should be abolished in one fell swoop.

I reckon that this entry is fine in PR. Yes, it could be improved - but it's fundamentally ready for inclusion now - the bits that are missing aren't huge and a sub-ed who bothered to read this thread could fill in all of the blanks. As I understand it, entries which are OK for the guide, but which *could* be improved, are meant to remain in PR... but tell me if I've misinterpreted...

rereading, I start to doubt my earlier confidence.

Specifically, I happen to know comparatively quite a bit about the EC (for a non-US person) - but I guess that more normal non-US peops would indeed have problems.

So, I'll second the move to the workshop - though I think the necessary amount of work is small. I do hope it gets done - I'd hate to see this entry fade...

Three years later and this seems to have faded away. After the selection of George Bush the question of the electoral college was raised again and the reason it still is here remains
1. States rights
To pass an ammendment to the US Constitution requires three forths of the state legislatures to approve the change. The majority of states have more power with an Electoral college and don't want
the voters in places like California or New York to carry the election
2. Inertia.
Problems with the system crop up about as often as a "blind moon"
so the US congress generally turns a blind eye and goes about ignoring it.

I think it has stayed the same because the underlying reasons for arriving at this rather strange compromise are still valid.

Two Questions,
Why is it in the flea market rather than writers workshop?
Would anyone object if I took the article and worked to complete it, sending it to peer review under my name?

hearing no objection I guess I will take this article under my wing. I will credit the origianl author as a researcher.

The newer version is found at A2896842