Apr 9 2008
replacing the electoral college
posted 08:30
many will agree that the electoral college is an outdated system for determining our presidency, but no one can figure out what’s the best way to replace it.
here’s my idea:
everyone who decides that they’re going to vote has to take a comprehensive aptitude test. but not an aptitude test like the GRE or the SAT or something that’s just based on intelligence. it’s a much broader test that encompasses other things as well - mechanical things, house sorts of stuff, understanding of politics, awareness of issues, that sort of thing.
weight the individual questions based on some sort of predetermined system (as in answering 2+2=? isn’t as impressive as 13! mod 4). Then, based on the individual’s final result, weight how much their vote counts towards the final tally to determine who takes office. that way, someone who doesn’t know what end of the pencil is used to fill in the little boxes will only influence the vote a little.
there’d have to be some guidelines. it can’t just be an isolated measure of intelligence or practical things or awareness of social issues - placing too much emphasis on any of those things individually would influence the presidency too heavily. a balance needs to be struck, determined and governed by a well-picked council.
this way, everyone can still vote, which i think is important to the democratic process, but it eliminates the total free-for-all nature of the voting system being completely equal.
and then of course there’d have to be an air-tight auditing process to prove that it was all done fairly and no one breached the system and all that.
Jul 8, 2008 at 21:14
“there’d have to be some guidelines. it can’t just be an isolated measure of intelligence or practical things or awareness of social issues - placing too much emphasis on any of those things individually would influence the presidency too heavily. a balance needs to be struck, determined and governed by a well-picked council.”
At that point the testing guidelines become more important than voting, and the “well-picked council” inherits the power imbalance currently occupied by the electoral college. And that’s without even getting into *who* will get to pick these council members. You idea is superficially appealing, but it doesn’t have anything to do with Democracy, less so even than the system we have now.
Also, we tried the whole “3/5ths of a person” thing a while back, - didn’t work out so well.
Jul 9, 2008 at 02:08
fair enough. and yes, it’s a very idealistic sort of idea to have, an avenue to vent my frustrations at what i feel needs to be changed. fun to think about. :)