I was thinking about something last night somewhat related to this. Why do we still have states? Why not just get rid of the states, have one government with voting districts and eliminate the redundancy that 50 state governments make?
You want those jack asses from New York, or Cali telling you what to do? I don't. By the time you set up all the bureaucracy that they would stick into this, I don't think we would save any money.
I will stick with Oklahoma, but, can we get rid of the electoral college and go back to popular vote?
I wasn't really thinking about money saved which likely would be zero. I was thinking in the reduction of all the laws. I mean, if we're one nation, wouldn't it be simpler to have to deal with one set of laws instead of 50 different sets of laws? Seems kind of redundant. For example, if I want to CCW across several states on a vacation trip I have to know the laws of all the states I'm going through. Be easier to just deal with one set. I know that history has a bearing on how things are now and it's not going to change. Can't say if I'd want it to. Just got to wondering when I saw that Starwars list of departments in just Oklahoma alone. Crazy long for just 3.7 million Sooners.
Could the same then be said of 50 states? Of course, with no states there wouldn't be a need for senators. Might save a few dollars there. With the advances in technology, why not have our representatives at the federal level back here? Wouldn't that make them more accessable to the constituents? And limit their exposure to lobbyist and special interest groups? Voting and committee meetings could be done over the internet maybe? Couldn't the number of representatives at the federal level could be increased for better representation instead of keeping it set at 435? Getting sidetracked from my original question, lol.
These questions make me very sad. Yes, it would be more efficient. No, that's not necessarily a good thing. One size fits all government just doesn't work. People in Ohio have different immigration law needs than people in Texas. People in OK have different religious beliefs (for the most part) than people in NY. Some states embrace gambling, while in others it is verboten. States are in competition with one another and competition breeds innovation. I'll take 50 laboratories of democracy over a monopolistic, innovation-stifling, all powerful central government every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
How can one go back to something that we haven't had?
Even so, the Electoral College serves an important purpose in elections. People in geographic regions tend to think in a similar manner in a sort of herd mentality. What you get is some regions that have larger herds than others (whether by procreation or warm and sandy beaches or that it is established as the corporate base). So what you get is a disproportionately large group of people in Chicago, NYC, DC Metro, or California that have common political beliefs because they are the prevailing beliefs of the local herd, and not necessarily the same beliefs they'd have if they lived elsewhere.
What the Electoral College does is act as a check on this herd mentality, using the states as "regions". States can choose how to allocate their electoral college votes (See Nebraska in 2008). But through the Electoral College, states with a smaller or more rural population get an increase in voting power (30% in Oklahoma's case), while states with much larger or more urban population, and thus an increase in herd mentality, get a decrease in voting power. The Electoral College is more representative of the overall desires of the People by neutralizing disparities between population centers and rural areas.
Now, if you want, we could go back to the pre-12th Amendment Electoral College, where it was usually the "Second Choice" candidate that won...
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