Re: How to prime kids to learn 3+ languages?

On Oct 7, 10:01 am, Seán O'Leathlóbhair <jwlaw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 7 Oct, 13:53, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





On Oct 7, 3:35 am, Seán O'Leathlóbhair <jwlaw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 6 Oct, 23:21, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Constitution does not "tell" the Elector what to do. The Founders
indeed envisaged the Electoral College as an independent body -- no
(nationally?) elected official may be a member -- that would meet to
select the president and vice president (and the first time they had
the opportunity, they screwed it up by selecting a president and vice
president from opposing factions, who could not work together -- Adams
and Jefferson respectively -- and amended the Constitution
accordingly). It is only tradition that a state's Electors vote en
bloc for the candidate winning the majority of votes in their state.
Electors were not originally labeled with their faction, because the
Founders did not envisage political parties and were very uneasy about
factions.

You trust your vote to electors who only by tradition vote according
to the wishes of their state's voters and then you criticise our
system of choosing a prime minister?

The tradition has been in operation since 1800 and no Elector has ever
cast a vote that changed the outcome from winner-take-all of a state.

As far as I can see, more by luck than design.

Electors have on occasion voted for persons other than the principal
two or three candidates.

Are you happy with this behaviour? Consider that it was your state
and your preferred candidate had received the most votes yet one of
your state's electors voted for someone else. Such behaviour may not
have ever changed a result but, as I say, that would seem to be luck.
I expect that the elector does not know at the time of his vote how
the others will vote so he does not know how close the result may be
and whether his faithlessness will change the overall result.

Electors _are_, nowadays, elected (at least in New York and Illinois;
I don't remember how the electronic voting machine was set up my first
time in New Jersey, in 04) by party label and are "pledged," but
evidently not legally obligated, to vote for the candidate of their
party.

A step towards sanity but why bother with them at all?

Because the Constitution would not have been ratified without some
sort of system to ensure that the small states didn't get swamped out
by the big states (Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and
Virginia).

As I said
elsewhere, I can see that the system had a purpose when it was first
set up. I will even admit that it was a good solution for the time.
However, the world as changed a lot since then and it would seem to
have no purpose anymore and may distort and misrepresent the wishes of
the people. I am not just referring to the possibility of faithless
electors here but to the effect of the winner-take-all bloc voting.
This has had an effect as recently as 2000 when Gore received more
votes than Bush yet lost.

It was not the first time that happened.

.

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