Sure you did; you said LAC voters don't have their concerns addressed as well because they are part of a large, populous state whose EC votes count for less per capita. My question is, if LAC is capable of managing its own affairs, why does it care?
In other words, you're assuming that the President's job is to "take care of everyone's concerns", so everyone needs an equal vote to elect the President. That seems to me to be absurd. The President's job is to faithfully execute the laws and to make executive decisions about national needs like defense and foreign policy. It's not to address the individual concerns of every voter or the local concerns of every city, county, etc.
Similar remarks apply to the Federal government more generally. The fact that everyone takes it for granted now that the Federal government is supposed to address everyone's concerns is a sign of how corrupt and inefficient our system has become. Everyone judges their Senators and Representatives, not according to how well they take care of national issues, but how much pork they send home.
Even when you take for granted--and we shouldn't, but just for funsies we will--that the whole point of the thing is to make executive decisions about national needs...why the heck should Nevada get a bigger say than Los Angeles County?
It has become evident that the federalist experiment has failed; because an integrated modern society cuts across state lines, while land can't vote and people matter more than land. Everything else is a side effect, no matter how tightly it's clung to by parties whose high-minded rhetoric, if we're being frank, is honored more in the breach than the observance as they look for low-status, low-power people to cudgel, using the guise of federalism to make it easier to do in their own little pond.
> It has become evident that the federalist experiment has failed
Not so much failed, but massively misaligned after the civil war. The nation made many compromises at every level for slave power, and should have renegotiated everything afterwards.
Agreed. I should have said that American federalism has failed; that misalignment is endemic to America--it goes back as far as the Missouri bleeping Compromise, and that's just the part labeled "America"--and is probably unfixable.
It doesn't though. Do you really believe voting is the most powerful way to influence lawmakers? There generally is far more wealth, power, and influence in population centers. How can you feel like some of the most powerful cities in the world are getting an unfair shake?
> why the heck should Nevada get a bigger say than Los Angeles County?
To start with, states are the compositional unit of the United States. If Los Angeles County wants to become its own state, there is a process to do that.
But to answer the correct question: Nevada has the same say as California, both being states.
> In other words, you're assuming that the President's job is to "take care of everyone's concerns", so everyone needs an equal vote to elect the President. That seems to me to be absurd.
Yeah you're probably right. Let's just disenfranchise more than half the population of the country. That'll give the federal government a ton of legitimacy!
> The President's job is to faithfully execute the laws and to make executive decisions about national needs like defense and foreign policy.
And we the people get to decide which candidate will do the better job. Or we should. But because of the electoral college, we don't.
> we the people get to decide which candidate will do the better job. Or we should. But because of the electoral college, we don't.
If we accept that we the people should get to directly decide, then of course the decision should be made by popular vote. But that's just assuming your conclusion.
Also, this is a different argument from the one you gave before: now you're accepting that the President's job is not to take care of everyone's concerns.
Sure you did; you said LAC voters don't have their concerns addressed as well because they are part of a large, populous state whose EC votes count for less per capita. My question is, if LAC is capable of managing its own affairs, why does it care?
In other words, you're assuming that the President's job is to "take care of everyone's concerns", so everyone needs an equal vote to elect the President. That seems to me to be absurd. The President's job is to faithfully execute the laws and to make executive decisions about national needs like defense and foreign policy. It's not to address the individual concerns of every voter or the local concerns of every city, county, etc.
Similar remarks apply to the Federal government more generally. The fact that everyone takes it for granted now that the Federal government is supposed to address everyone's concerns is a sign of how corrupt and inefficient our system has become. Everyone judges their Senators and Representatives, not according to how well they take care of national issues, but how much pork they send home.