You say that having a diverse set of candidates will lead to more "good" candidates in office. So it sounds like you do agree that the ultimate goal is to get more "good" candidates in office, right?

Now, having a more diverse set of candidates might give people more voices to hear from. But in the end, what makes you think the majority is more likely to choose the voice of a "good" candidate?

I think people don't bother voting because they're happy with our laws. I think that for the most part, they don't bother learning about politics because they've never really had the motivation to do so. Ask someone why he doesn't vote, and I'll bet your most likely response is, "I don't really care about politics."

And that's fine. People shouldn't have to care about politics if they don't want to. If you don't or care about politics, then you shouldn't be obligated to vote. Would this be a real problem?

I have not met the person I consider an idiot, but many people are uninformed about politics. And I'm not just talking about other people, I'm talking about myself. I'm not qualified to stand as a member of the electoral college. There are probably hundreds of thousands of Americans more knowledgable about the federal issues than I.

But whose vote am I taking away? People would still vote, but instead of voting for a political party, the people would vote directly for electoral college members. The difference is that presidents are not campaigning directly to the people, they are campaigning to the members of the electoral college.

You make it sound like I'm deciding who votes and who does not. I am making no such decision. The majority is making that decision, and they have always made that decision. That's what a representative democracy is: the people vote for a politician, and that politician votes for the law. What I am doing is adding an additional level of abstraction between the majority and the president: the electoral college. In fact, that level of abstraction already exists, it simply isn't being used in the way it was intended.

This is not some arbitrary theory brought up by some guy from the forums. This is a concept propsed and implemented by the founders of the United States.

I disagree. People are uninformed because each day they spend 9 hours working, and when they go home, they don't want to spend another 2 hours researching politics. They want to relax. They want to have a good time, and they want to live their lives. I don't blame them; we shouldn't expect them to spend significant amounts of time researching politics.

It's like the Federalist Papers said:

"the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations."

The Federalists spoke at great lengths about the problems with Democracy: the majority of people will tyrannize the minority, and the majority of people will not necessarily make the right decision. These, they said, are the problems of Democracy. They intended to fix these problems by giving less direct power to the majority.

Let me address these two together. First, the correct viewpoint is not relative. Let me use an example:

Should it be legal to murder anyone you please? Someone else might think murder should be legal, but wouldn't you say that man is wrong? Or would you shrug, and say, "The morality of cold-blooded murder is relative." I think you'd argue that the man supporting murder is wrong.

Now surely the man who supports murder is entitled to his own opinions, and surely having a variety of opinions in the populace encourages debate and discussion. But do you really think we'd be better off if he were an elected politician? Would we be better off if the guy who supports murder had a seat in the Senate? We want our elected officials to be diverse, right?

But no, we wouldn't be better off with a guy who supports murder in the Senate. It's simply the wrong stance on the issue, and if he ever got his way, he'd hurt a lot of people. On this issue, there is a right stance, and there is a wrong stance, and we don't want this guy to be elected because he simply has the wrong stance.

Murder is not the only issue with a "right" and a "wrong" stance; it's just that other issues are more difficult to figure out. I think you guys already believe this, because if you did not, you would not be here on these debate forums, arguing that your stances are correct, while other people's are wrong.

And at the very least, we can say that there are good candidates for president, and there are bad ones. But this can be tough to figure out. Should we have people who know a whole lot about good politics, who meet the candidates personally, and who research the issues make this decision? Or should we have the majority of people make it? Would you trust the electrician to decide how to wire your house, or would you trust the majority vote of fifty random people you questioned on the street?

I mean, why is everyone so obsessed with majority-rule, with giving direct political power to the majority? What makes the majority more likely to be right than anyone else?

Maybe what you mean to ask is, "Who says who is a good candidate, and who is a bad one? Who says what is the right stance on an issue, and what is the wrong stance on an issue?" Well, the electoral college does, of course. And who decides the electoral college? The majority of the people. Maybe an electrictian knows better how to wire your house than a majority vote of fifty people. But I'll bet a majority vote of fifty people could tell you who the electrician is.