Windy wrote:That's not reliable or sustainable and probably a violation of checks and balances. The courts can easily rule the opposite way. And having a strong judiciary is going to bite a lot of people in the ass now that Trump's the one packing the courts.
Meanwhile, the EC has never bitten anyone in the ass, and giving one faction in society a lot more power than others is very consistent with checks and balances?
The law is a social construct, your rights are not secured just because a piece of paper said so. Your government can take away your rights whenever they want if they really feel like it. And even if you have your rights, law enforcement won't always respect them, and the judiciary doesn't always have to protect them.
That's correct. Constitutional guarantees are just words on paper if the will to enforce them doesn't exist. I'm not sure how this is an argument for the EC though, since it too is just words on paper.
Kate wrote:I don't think Jamish is saying you need to be an idiot to want it abolished; there are ways to approach abolishing it that are more intelligent and nuanced than "this thwarts democracy" and boiling it down to that displays either a lack of knowledge for what the system was designed for or a disregard for it.
Perhaps it displays knowledge that the system was designed for various reasons, several of them bad (such as classist disdain for the hoi polloi, or enabling states to disenfranchise disfavored groups without suffering for it in presidential elections) and the rest unfulfilled. It doesn't stop demagogues (indeed, it enabled one), it doesn't make all the states matter in elections (indeed, it constricts the focus to swing states), and it doesn't protect minorities in any systematic way (instead, it favors one minority group
against most others). All it does is tilt elections toward a favored faction and breed resentment among the disfavored ones...which is why that favored faction is the only one that generally supports its continued existence.
And it could backfire; saying "this is a flawed system but I understand why people support it and we should find an alternative that addresses their concerns" is better than "this is the enemy of democracy" in my opinion.
I agree that there are more persuasive ways to make the case than just saying the EC is undemocratic. However...the EC is undemocratic. It's intended and specifically structured to be so. By picking favorites in political contests it strikes directly at the heart of bedrock democratic principles, namely popular rule and equality before the law, and unlike other minority protections like the Bill of Rights it doesn't even pretend that rights are the only thing it protects--instead, it secures raw political power for one favored group. One can argue that this is fine, but it's difficult to argue that it isn't true. Consequently, suggesting that anyone who notes this must be stupid seems unjustifiable.
"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn