Levin: Congressional Term Limits

[Vox]

I would not touch electoral college. The moment you abolish it - the moment you sign in the dictatorship to occur.

I have mixed feelings on this. It is a Catch 22 to me via your statement above, but at the same time knowing that 4 States carry SO MUCH OF THE VOTE.

An area I'm undecided on.

then think about it - Hitler was VOTED into power.

so were some other dictators.

the electoral college so far is a deterrent of the tyranny of fat, lazy low-information voter on a government infusion pump

 

[eagle1462010]

I would not touch electoral college. The moment you abolish it - the moment you sign in the dictatorship to occur.

I have mixed feelings on this. It is a Catch 22 to me via your statement above, but at the same time knowing that 4 States carry SO MUCH OF THE VOTE.

An area I'm undecided on.

then think about it - Hitler was VOTED into power.

so were some other dictators.

the electoral college so far is a deterrent of the tyranny of fat, lazy low-information voter on a government infusion pump

Had Germany had an electoral college, would it have assured that Hitler would not have been elected? I simply don't have that crystal ball to say it's so.

aka Thanks but that dog doesn't 100% hunt with me, yet I do understand your concern.

 

[Wacky Quacky]

Imposing term limits is equivelant to admitting that Americans are too damn stupid to vote out someone who obviously doesn't hold the country's best interests.

 

[FA_Q2]

I don't like the idea of someone telling me who I'm allowed to vote for. How is that freedom?

They tell you that now.

If we want to do something about too many incumbents winning, we should take out their monetary advantage and go to public financing of elections.

Which would only result in more incumbents getting reelected at a higher rate, so I fail to see how that solves the issue.

No, it would not according to studies done on the subject. I believed that as well until I started a thread on it here a while ago and had a good debate with LadyLiberal on the subject.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean-debate-zone/239125-funding-of-federal-elections.html

And the source that she used:

http://campfin.polisci.wisc.edu/Wisc Camp Fin Proj - Public Funding and Competition.pdf

Good info really. I had to concede that public funding is not really a bad idea. The core problem that I have though is not that public funded elections are bad but that it does not address the real problems that cause corruption. The congress would still be as corrupt before and after such legislation because the core problem (pandering to special interests) is still present.

 

[FA_Q2]

Something that would help immensely is repealing the Reapportionment Act of 1929 and expanding the size of the U.S. House by at least 100%, maybe 200%. None of us are really being represented. You can't be represented when you're one person crammed into a district of 700,000 people. That's too diverse and large a group for one person to effectively represent in Congress. Districts somewhere between 100k and 200k constituents would better ground our representatives in reality to our needs and concerns. It also would greatly dilute the influence of lobbyists.

And Congress would hold session in FedEx Field?

Why meet anywhere. We have computers now that make such a gathering pointless. They could do almost everything online including voting and debating. That would be far more efficient. It is time that they started using technology for this process.

 

[FA_Q2]

I would not touch electoral college. The moment you abolish it - the moment you sign in the dictatorship to occur.

I have mixed feelings on this. It is a Catch 22 to me via your statement above, but at the same time knowing that 4 States carry SO MUCH OF THE VOTE.

An area I'm undecided on.

then think about it - Hitler was VOTED into power.

so were some other dictators.

the electoral college so far is a deterrent of the tyranny of fat, lazy low-information voter on a government infusion pump

No, it is not. The EC votes with the majority of the state that sends them there. IOW, it is the DIRECT representation of the ‘fat, lazy low information voter’ and not a stop gap from them. The EC does not vote differently than the people that send them there and its only effect in modern elections is that it forces the presidency to be decided on a very select few of those low information voters. It should have been eliminated decades ago.

An EC would have done absolutely nothing to stop Hitler from gaining power.