As a student of history, particularly that of my people (the Poles), I find this turn to our discussion very interesting. One of the reasons that Poland was such a mess for so long was that it was a pure democracy; any landowner could vote. They elected their king, who ruled til he died. Any individual citizen (landowner) could kill legislation. It sounded like a good idea at the time.

Unfortunately, it led to total gridlock and extreme corruption. Every "citizen" who was down on his luck put his vote up for sale to the highest bidder. The result was predictably chaotic; the King of Sweden was once "elected" to rule Poland, and proceeded to pillage his new realm. What a mess.

None of this was news to the founding fathers, who had good reasons to insist on things like representative democracy and the electoral college. If any of the 'Cat's scholars could add to my comments, I'd appreciate it. I'm at work and "shooting from the lip"; some of my facts may need buffing up.

Pax
Bart