The Electoral College and Democracy

The sad truth is that America's founding fathers did not really intend for their new country to be a true democracy. Madison and the other founders feared the "tyranny of the majority" and worried that putting too much power into the hands of the uneducated masses would doom the country and the elites who created it. The only concession to the power of the common people in the Constitution was the direct election of members of the House of Representatives, which was considered an inferior body to the more respectable Senate and which elected its members every two years to allow for the changing passions of the electorate. No other part of the federal government was directly elected. Senators were originally chosen by state legislatures (of course, that practice was changed by the 17th Amendment in 1913), the judiciary were appointed by the executive branch, and the president was elected not by the people but by the electoral college.
The electoral college is a perversion of true democracy. It violates the guiding principle of "one person, one vote" by inappropriately weighting the votes of some citizens and effectively stripping other the value from the votes of other citizens. As many political scientists have shown, because of the electoral college system,citizens in certain states have up to three times as much "voting power" as citizens in other states. Consider that in a presidential election with 120 million votes. In a true democracy, every voter's vote would be worth 1/120,000,000 of the total. If a simple majority elects the president, then each vote carries same "power": roughly 1/60,000,001. But with the electoral college, a citizen of Nevada, which has 5 electoral votes and about 1 million voters, theoretically has 2% of the power to elect the president (because technically, one vote can decide an election and Nevada contributes 5 of the 270 votes need for a majority of the electoral college. 5/270 is roughly 2%). If that citizen crosses the border into California, though, his or her vote could decide 20% of the presidential election. Although an individual vote now accounts for only 1/13,000,000, it can now control 55 electoral votes.
Of course, theorists interested in true democracy have long called for the elimination of the electoral college. Now, Republicans in California are proposing a change to the state's system of divvying up electoral votes. The new system would allocate the electoral votes on a district by district basis instead of the current winner take all mode. Such a system would actually be better for democracy, but it would be unfair to introduce it piecemeal. Either all states would need to go to such a system, or better yet, the states could pass a law that requires them to pledge their electoral votes to the winner of the general election. Only then will America be a true democracy.

Is Homosexuality a Choice?

At a debate focusing on issues important to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community, Gov. Bill Richardson responded to a question on the nature of homosexuality. When asked by Melissa Etheridge if homosexuality was biological in origin or a choice, Richardson stated, "It's a choice."
Although he later retracted this statement (using the rather lame excuse that he misunderstood the question), it's puzzling to hear this line come from the mouth of Richardson. Opponents of gay rights often argue that individuals "chose" to be gay and therefore are not entitled to any special treatments. What is not addressed, though, is why some would make this choice?
Surely, a person wouldn't chose to be gay just to be denied rights, subject to societal scorn, and victimized in hate crimes. And if the choice was simply a choice of sexual partners, why wouldn't an individual chose to enjoy the full rights and privileges of a heterosexual and indulge in whatever sexual escapades he or she wished on the side? If homosexuality was merely a choice, any homosexual could have his or her cake and eat it too. But it's not.
Homosexuality is well known in the animal kingdom and is a biological fact of life.
If anyone thinks it's a choice, I'd like to hear the justifications of that view.