Dear Jonathan Lundell, I wrote (7 Nov 2008):
> Second: It makes it possible that the elections > are run by the governments of the individual > states and don't have to be run by the central > government. > > [Currently, to guarantee that the Equal Protection > Clause is fulfilled, it is only necessary to > guarantee that all the voters within the same > state are treated equally. > > A popular vote would make it necessary that also > all the voters across the USA are treated equally. > This would mean that also the regulations on > eligibility, absentee ballots, early voting, > voting machines, opening hours of the polling > stations etc. would have to be harmonized across > the USA.] You wrote (7 Nov 2008): > And this would be, on balance, a bad thing because...? First of all: There are many people in the USA who argue that the central government should pass regulations only where absolutely necessary and that the individual states should have as much say as possible. Furthermore: Currently, there are always also many elections on the state level and on the local level parallel to the presidential elections. The states would either have to run the presidential elections separately from the state elections and the local elections (which would increase the costs) or they would have to apply the same regulations for the presidential, the state, and the local elections (which would increase the power of the central government even further). Markus Schulze ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info