Interpreting the perfect electoral system

Social Designing the perfect voting system It may well have been the hot weather but more likely the fact Design Week called asking for a Voxpop quote, but last week debate in the studio raged over designing the perfect voting system for the next General Election. See if you agree and let us know your thoughts. Darren said… We should modernise and include the channels and options people now use every day.

Originally published as 74 Texas L. For educational use only. The printed edition remains canonical. For citational use please obtain a back issue from William S.

President Clinton, who signed those measures into law, later assured the overwhelming majority of the American people who believe that they have a constitutional right to own firearms [3] that "[t]he Members of Congress who voted for that bill and I would never do anything to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms to hunt and to engage in other appropriate sporting activities.

Rather, they argue, it was designed solely to allow the states to continue to maintain their militia units or, in modern terms, the National Guard free from federal interference.

Thus the Amendment presents no obstacle to even the total prohibition of private firearm ownership.

This notion has been referred to as the "states' right" theory. Although the states' right theory is understandably very attractive to supporters of more restrictive regulation of firearms [11] and has been accepted by a number of courts, [12] it is seriously flawed and has proven to be virtually indefensible in the law reviews.

Rather, the terms of the debate seem to have shifted.

Interpretation of Article II

Instead of arguing over whether the Amendment was meant to guarantee an individual right, the debate has evolved to a more sophisticated and intricate exploration of why the Amendment guaranteed that right.

This more sophisticated debate is carried on largely within what I will call a "functional framework. Within this functional framework or approach there is still much room for disagreement. The states' right theory, for example, has evolved into a more refined doctrine which concedes that the Amendment originated as a protection of an individual right but holds that the scope of that right is limited to militia service.

Thus, there is no right to own arms for personal or private self-defense. Why did the ratifiers of the Bill of Rights seek to protect the widespread ownership of arms? And how, given modern conditions, are we to interpret that protection?

These are the issues that I will explore in this Note. Analysis of the dominant political and philosophical ideas of the era suggests that widespread private ownership of arms was understood to serve at least four interrelated functions. An armed populace was thought to be the best means of defending the state, sensitizing the government to the rights of the people, preserving civil order and the natural right of self-defense, and cultivating the moral character essential to self-government.

I label these the militarypoliticalciviland moral functions and conclude that the Second Amendment was designed to protect private ownership of arms so that the citizenry would remain capable of performing each of these functions. Many commentators have asserted that this view is a dangerous anachronism inapplicable to late-twentieth-century America.

After rejecting these assertions as unfounded, I argue that despite the advent of modern police forces and professional armies, an armed citizenry is still capable of performing each of the four functions.

Because much of the rhetoric employed to discourage recognition of a Second Amendment right laments the absurdity that individuals would be allowed to own flamethrowers or nuclear weapons, it is important to demonstrate that a proposed theory does not compel such a result.

Part III applies my functional theory of the Second Amendment to several gun control measures to illustrate that such a theory is capable of protecting the rights of citizens without invalidating reasonable restrictions on the keeping and bearing of arms.

A Functional Analysis of the Second Amendment We must begin by examining the rationale offered for the right to keep and bear arms. The text of the Second Amendment states that its ultimate end is "the security of a free State.

The Ideological Origins of the Right to Arms Madison drafted the Bill of Rights with the aid of innumerable suggestions from his countrymen, most commonly in the form of the state bills of rights and the hundreds of amendments suggested by the state conventions that ratified the Constitution.Praise for Burt Neuborne's Madison’s Music: “Neuborne’s elegant book provides an important guide, grounded in the First Amendment itself, for those working toward an electoral system more deserving of the label of democracy.”.

And if anyone can figure out decent ways for a Robin-Hanson-ian em-clan to put together a similar sort of internal legal system for its members, and can describe how cultural-evolutionary pressures would lead em-clans to tend towards any particular systemic details, I would love to read about it.

This system does not violate all the theorems. It is well known that dictatorship is the one voting system that satisfies all the nice properties you would want. The system you describe is a called a randomized dictator (cause you randomly select the one dictator) and hence has all the nice properties.

The 12th amendment superseded this clause, after the election of in which Thomas Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, received identical votes and both claimed the office.

Annex 1: List of references

Here at The Mandt System, we’ve been thinking a bit about mentoring programs. A few new initiatives have started to take flight here (specifically The Mandt Student Academy) and as they do, we are investigating various ways to help our Instructors be as successful as they can be.

An exploration of the nature and history of capitalism. Global capitalism, colonies and Third-World economic realities.