WE, THE PEOPLE, must create a severe consequence for cult followers

[The Magistrate]

143. We Ought Probably To End This, Sir

I understand your desire to retain a system weighted to your advantage, and expect you understand my chafing at a system weighted against full representation of the population and interests of sizeable states, one of which I reside in. Nothing is going to be done about it in any case. Certainly if you cannot see that it is the votes of Democrats and others in larger states which are under-weighted, in some instances grossly, under the present dispensation, it is hard to imagine any profit might come from continuing the discussion.

The fact of the matter is you favor a system which already devalues the votes of a great preponderance of the country's citizens, and does so to your advantage. It would be possible to turn your question easily, to ask why you think the votes of Democrats in states like California and New York are less valuable than yours simply because they live in larger states. You are arguing for an unearned privilege, and that is something that can lead someone to simply not notice things that to persons without that privilege are blindingly obvious.

No words have been put in your mouth regarding taxes: you offered a flat tax scale as somehow analogous to the weight of votes in the Senate and the Electoral College. For the reasons given above, it strikes me as an analogy in the 'that's not even wrong' class.

A reasonable compromise would seem to me that states with one or two Congressional districts, or perhaps three districts, receive one Senator, while states with something north of a dozen Congressional districts would receive three.

The Electoral College should simply go by the board, and Presidents be elected by popular vote of the nation as a whole. The Electoral College has never really functioned save perhaps at the very beginning. It was put in place to prevent the ascension to office of demagogues and mountebanks, and in the one situation the nation has ever faced which cried out for that employment, it failed to perform that function. Twice in less than twenty years it has handed power to the candidate for President who got the least votes. That is simply intolerable in a Democracy.

Allow me in closing to state that though I am writing in some heat and with more than usual asperity, I regard you with respect as a fellow Democrat, who I would expect to be aligned with on most issues, and I recognize you are in some sense 'behind enemy lines' carrying on the good fight, and I have nothing but good feelings towards you.

Be well, Sir!