roundup

[rone]

Via sanspoof: hundreds of people draw Batgirl.  Maybe the artist types who read my journal want to participate in the mindless nuttery, too.

Via jennyaxe: "[Alito's] motive... remains unclear."

Don't recall where i saw it, but this proposal for a one-party political system in the United States makes so much sense, i predict it will be widely ignored.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

If that were the case, why do Republicans spend so much effort on suppressing voter turnout and establishing ever more onerous registration and "fraud prevention" regimes, especially in poor and black neighborhoods? The 2000 presidential election in particular was probably swung by bogus enforcement of felon-voting prohibitions.

It's a nice idea that we'd have a better government if only qualified people had the vote. Who decides who's qualified: you, or the crypto-segregationists who keep complaining about unqualified voters in the National Review? I can guess who's more likely to have a say.

[frosch.livejournal.com]

It's a nice idea that we'd have a better government if only qualified people had the vote.

Go read the constitution. There's nothing in there about a popular election of presidential electors, or even of senators. In the original design, senators and presidential electors were chosen by state legislatures. Vote fraud was a non-issue, because everyone knew who the voters were, and who they voted for. Legislators (if they're interested in continuing in office) treat their votes as a responsibility to the public rather than as a personal birthright to be spent any damn way they feel like, and thus use them more responsibly.

This might seem intolerably antidemocratic, but it's essentially the way most of the rest of the first world governs itself. Everyone votes for his local member of parliament, and the parliament figures out how the country is going to be governed.

I don't flatter myself with the thought that I ought to be sitting in the state legislature. It just really gripes my ass that we spend millions upon millions of dollars every four years on this extravaganza when it's such an ineffective means of doing the job.