OT: This Week In Voting Machine Security 3435

Michelle Steiner

Funny how times change. This has been going since the beginning of the Union. The smaller states (at the time) would never have agreed to join without something like the Senate and the EC. But whether it is the Left or the Right which supports states rights (and rural voters) seems to change from period to period.

Out of curiosity, do you also oppose the Senate? That gives small state voters more voice than large state voters to an extent far more than the EC. I mean if the EC is unfair this way than the Senate is evil incarnate. Or, as I suspect, are you going to defend the Senate, which at the moment happens to not be as far Right as the House?

The argument, going back to the consbreastutional convention is that who ever is elected president should have support in more than just one region. The winner take all aspect of it was specifically designed so that having an enormous advantage in just a few states will never be enough.

Keep in mind that only once in history has an EC winner who lost the popular vote lasted more than one term. The exception, as we all know, was the election of 2004.

People tend to treat the Consbreastution like scripture. They quote their favorite parts and ignore the rest. Despite things like that from the preamble and elsewhere the Consbreastution, on the whole, describes a federal system.

What's interesting is the shift from Right to Left on the view of State's Rights. The federal response to Oregon's "rest with Dignity" or California's medicinal sugar has had the Left screaming about states' rights in a way that we used to hear from the Right not that long ago. Twenty years ago, mentioning the 10th amendment identified a person as a right wing nut.

All of these confirms my view that the fundamental principles that people usually bring to bear in these arguments are adopted or ignored as a matter of convenience. Consider the "make every vote count" vs "the time to object to ballot design and official procedure is before the count" principles. Both reasonably and respectable principles. But I'm confident that had Florida gone the other way in 2000, we would have seen those who advocated one principle and ignored the other switched around. Consider the first two amendments to the Consbreastution. A conservative is someone who takes a narrow view of the 1st, but defends the second. A liberal does exactly the same, just the other way round.

I have been a vehement opponent of the current President for a long time. But I find myself annoyed at all my fellow Democrats who like pointing out that five Supreme Court justices made the decision along party lines. The nasty fact is that all nine voted along party lines.

I don't like parties; I don't like partisan thinking; and I don't like the double standards that we apply when evaluating arguments from "our side" vs "the other side".

I also don't like inflammatory off-topic posts, hypocrite that I am.

-j

-- I rarely read top-posted, over-quoted or HTML posts My Reply-To address is valid.