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November 03, 2004
Some Preliminary Thoughts
Yesterday was quite a roller-coaster ride for everyone. It's only now that the effects of the hangover are beginning to subside enough that I can once again make sense of the letters on my keyboard. I won't say much about the election yesterday until I've had a little more chance to digest the information overload, but until then I'll leave you with this to ponder.
The Electoral College must go.
The concept of each state voting for the Supreme Leader of our nation is long since worn-out. Sure, it was a great idea when we only had 13 states and the only people allowed to vote were white male landowners and it was difficult to travel the distance required to vote and more difficult still to tabulate and communicate the results. (Yes, that was a run-on sentence. I told you I was still hungover.) But things have changed quite a bit since our Mighty Forefathers were powdering their wigs.
Last night we came dangerously close to an Electoral College tie, and that is an area where all sorts of nasty things can happen. In the event of a tie, the race would have been decided by Congress, with the House of Representatives electing the President and the Senate electing the Vice-President. Can you imagine a Bush/Edwards administration? Or Kerry/Cheney? I shudder. And really, what kind of self-respecting American would settle for a tie? We don't have a tie in the Super Bowl. We don't have a tie in the World Series. We probably don't even have a tie in the Stanley Cup, but I'm not sure that self-respecting Americans really care about that one.
And another thing to think about. Out of approxomately 120 million votes cast, the real margin of victory came down to only 140,000 votes. Had there been a swing of only a measly 140,000 votes to Kerry, then the Democrat would have won the White House while losing the popular vote by more than 3.5 million. I find it seriously distressing that we continue to endorse a system like this.
Discuss among yourselves.
And can someone recommend a good hangover cure?
Posted by bcoffee at November 3, 2004 10:06 PM
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Comments
Why would you ever need a hangover cure? Just keep drinking. I am. I'm hoping beer goggles will work on el presidente as well as it worked on that skank at the bar last week.. (Beer goggles, vodka goggles, tequila goggles... Join me!)
Posted by: JoshBlow at November 7, 2004 07:26 PM
