Lisa writes:
> Look at the bright side its only four years.
> (long ones).

It appears that Democracy in America is a contradiction. At the lowest
planning  levels we have democratic principles where citizens can submit
input into how a zone of forest or arctic tundra is managed in the US
through various legislation, etc., but at the highest planning level there
is this idea that "a single vote" once every four years is democratic. Only
a few hundred votes seperated the loser from the winner, and even more
important is the fact that the winner lost the popular vote. This was not
the first time that this has happened. But as far as any rational person is
concerned "Democracy In America" was not fulfilled....instead a primitive
technical error occurred: the "apparent" victor took advantage of the
technical errors [block votes by state electors], technical errors in the
counting votes [eg. butterfly ballots and chads], technical errors
associated with deadlines in the election of state electors, etc.

Real democracy could have occurred if the technical errors did not occur.
The voting should have been done with simple X's placed in a large circle
marked on the ballot. This is the way the vote here in Canada is made. We
had numerous "re-counts" in Saskatchewan, and in Quebec. We elect Members of
Parliment, and we do not pool votes by states, and have entire states send
the equivalent of 21 Members of  Parliment on the basis of the popular vote
for a single province.

Our entire election in Canada, with the re-counts, took only about two
months to complete. It is very unlikely for a government to lose the the
popular vote and be elected in a democracy in Canada. However in the US it
is happening quite often. It happened  about 116 years ago I am told, and it
has happened again. This is one reason why the US will never mature to a
pluralistic, or multi-party, form of democracy. It is technically impossible
for a new party to get elected when entire states [51 of them] actually have
the atomic structure, no further division is possible, to elect electors.

The challenge for the US is to revise the electoral system so as to make it
more probable for the popular vote to determine the governing party. The
system of governance should actually be by proportional representation as it
is in many European countries.

In the end though I don't think the winner of this election really cares
about reform, because after all, the advantage for a party existing in the
current system in the US is obvious: there will never be a third party, nor
any other parties that can have any status in the Congress simply because
most voters will always vote strategically, rather than from conviction.

The Green Party in the US had 2 million. Ralph Nadar had a lot of folks
voting out of conviction for the Green Party to achieve some real successful
changes. The Green Party will however never see power as long as the system
is set up like it is now. I think it would be advantageous for the US to do
something quick and adopt proportional representation. With proportional
representation the Green Pary would receive about 2 % of the seats in
Congress [or what ever term is used].

I quess when the issue comes home to rest in the hearts and minds, then it
will be one of a 'categorical imperative' versus a 'hypothetical
imperative'....in the later case, it is not hypothesis any longer, unless
you are firmly of the Republican mind right now.

The Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge is now going to spoiled because of a
few with that 'imperative' in mind that does not care about the future
beyond 10 or 20 years.

William Ophuls, in "Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity" wrote

"...the Alaskan North Slope field is a rather large discovery in historical
terms, but even during its period of maximum production, it will supply less
than 10 % of US demand for 10 to 15 years. Thus...we cannot rely the basic
supply picture....we have skimmed the cream, and much of what we can
reasonably anticipate finding will be ecologically perilous to exploit, as
evidenced by the controversies over the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline and offshore
drilling in the Santa Barbara channel....the imminent exhaustion of
petroleum presents a particular challenge to the current form of industrial
civilization...."

Remaining coal and oilshale deposits are not going to be sufficiently clean
to either. The best is already taken. It takes tremendous amounts of water
to extract oil from shale, and the tar sands. The National Academy of
Science {US} indicated in 1973 that water is a critical limitation to the
possibility of these resource being exploited.

"The high grade deposits of oil shale and tar sand are modest in extent, so
that even without the limiting factors mentioned above, these unconventional
sources of liquid hydrocarbons will never be able to take up the slack from
falling petroleum production." In fact the amount of fuel contained in these
reserves is estimated to be small because no more than 10 gallons can be
extracted from a single ton of shale. The "monetary, ecological and
energetic costs of prodcution would actually be prohibitive." [Ophuls, 1977]

john foster