A majority vote is likely not the best way to protect the rights of minorities.
By
Jonathan Rascher
on May 16, 2008
Agreed
Disagreed
|
|
22
0
100.0% 0.0%
Embed Claim
Make a related claim
This claim was inspired by
Similar claims
- 1-15 Citizens of any nation who are permanent residents in my country are granted full voting rights.
- 17-5 I would consider voting for a practising theist for head of government.
- 12-0 We are all manipulated by 'Fear'
- 6-6 When (if) I vote in November for McCain, Obama, or some third party candidate, I will be voting for a person, not for the set of ideas that person has.
- 22-3 This calls for a celebration!
Discussion (2)
To maintain the rights of all, a constitution is needed that clearly defines what power officials (elected or otherwise) have.... but then that constitution must be upheld.
+1: Jay Knight.
+1: James Madison and Federalist Papers, No. 10.
An Electoral College mechanism (weighing minorities slightly more than weighing majorities) is actually good at leveraging majorities into paying attention to the wills of reasonably-sized minorities. That is, it encourages compromise, in both directions. Granted, a minority of size 5% is still beat down, but a simple 51% cannot just barrel over the similarly-sized 49%.
-1: 48 US States, for block voting in Presidental elections.
-1: the other 2, for simply gerrymandering your state into districts of block voting.
+1: anyone who can get a Constitutional Amendment to proportionalize Electors to overall statewide popular vote for the 50 U.S. states. No gerrymandered districts, no 49% gets nothing, etc... (For example, with block voting a President can now be elected with only 51% vote of the 9 largest states; with proportional voting, it would be 51% of the 38 largest states. A minority of the popular vote might still elect a President (like if the other 12 smallest states were wholly against it), but what has been gained is that the groups' sums (greater than their parts) is given more voice than it would have in a completely popular vote. That is, even the 12 smallest states slighted got a much closer chance of winning, as opposed to the winner-take all blocks for which those 12 states would need the next 29 smallest states to come close.