I agree completely. My latest communication says essentially the same.
My concern is on how to mathematically model a large-scale survey of
public political preferences to maximize representativeness in the
outcome. The feasibility of implementing that under US law is secondary,
and interesting only in terms of context considerations.
Francis Heylighen wrote:
>
> At 15:02 -0800 12/1/0, Norman K. McPhail wrote:
> >I submit that if we use the standard of what "...most of the public
> >would prefer..." to change the whole structure of our constitutional
> >form of self governance, the social, political, economic and cultural
> >fabric of the American experiment would quickly unravel. You seem to
> >buy the Gore mantra that the supreme authority in this nation ought to
> >be making sure all the votes are counted.
> >
> >Do you really think Mr. Gore cares that much about counting votes?
> >Can't you see that the main thing he cares about is winning the
> >presidency? To me, he seems to be willing to sacrifice anything that
> >gets in his way including the clear and unambiguous U. S. Constitutional
> >provisions for electing a president.
> >
> [...]
>
> >I don't think this would be Constitutional. Nowhere in the Constitution
> >is Congress given the power to tell the state legislatures how to
> >determine the way they select Electors. As I understand it, Congress
> >did pass a law after the 1876 election saying how they would deal with
> >counting Electors. In addition, they even went so far as to spell out
> >in detail what rules they would use in the event of a controversy
> >regarding the Electors sent by a given state. What leads you to suspect
> >that Congress could require proportional representation of Electors?
>
> I would like to remind our estimated subscribers that this is a
> mailing list about cybernetic philosophy, not about present
> politicial debates. Applying cybernetical reasoning to analyse the
> Florida situation is an appropriate subject for a PCP-discuss
> message, but discussing the apparent motivations of the candidates,
> the pecularities of the US legislation, and one's personal political
> preferences is not. I can understand the temptation to get from the
> one into the other, but please keep your discussions focused on
> cybernetics.There are more than enough other channels to discuss the
> political situation. Also take into account that for people outside
> the US this is not necessarily interesting or even understandable.
>
> _________________________________________________________________________
> Francis Heylighen <fheyligh@vub.ac.be> -- Center "Leo Apostel"
> Free University of Brussels, Krijgskundestr. 33, 1160 Brussels, Belgium
> tel +32-2-6442677; fax +32-2-6440744; http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
> ========================================
> Posting to pcp-discuss@lanl.gov from Francis Heylighen <fheyligh@vub.ac.be>
========================================
Posting to pcp-discuss@lanl.gov from "John J Kineman" <John.J.Kineman@noaa.gov>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Dec 05 2000 - 21:19:41 GMT