Exactly.

Why not the international level?

The Ni4D doesn’t advocate for a more centralized or decentralized government or anything like that – just that people are more involved in the government.

Instead of creating another branch of the federal government, we should be working to take power away from it and move it down to as local a level as possible, and ultimately to individuals.

It requires that you have faith in the people to make intelligent decisions as a whole.

No. You can be for it if you think people are generally dumb, venal and corrupt. Just as long as you think politicians and lobbyists are even more so.

On the other hand, as a decentralist, I would rather work for I & R in more states and/or towns rather than at the federal or international level.

On the other hand, as a decentralist, I would rather work for I & R in more states and/or towns rather than at the federal or international level.

It also has an initiative process and a bias for appointive, not elected officials , again, thanks in good part to the efforts of the Libertarians there.

For the sake of argument, and only for that sake, I’ll stipulate to the possibility of rampant voter stupidity.

Even stupid voters probably aren’t so stupid that they’re not going to be offended when someone gets up in their grills and tells them “you’re stupid” — in the context of asking them for their votes, or opining as to whether or not they’re intelligent enough to — by analogy — look at a menu and choose an entree.

And, of course, if the voters are stupid … well, who was it that chose the “major party” candidates in the primary process? If they were stupid, then they made stupid choices … so why constrain them to those particular stupid choices on the next go-round? Even if they’re stupid, they might randomly make better choices if they have the opportunity to do so, right?

So are many non-voters.

Given the proportions of registered and not voting, unregistered (and prevented from voting if they get a mood to vote) and registered to voting, there are probably more stupid people not voting than voting every year. And rather many stupid people counting, or pretending to count, the votes.

Presumably not all members are interested in being, or even necessarily qualified to serve as, presidential electors.

That said, the quote seems to imply that easy ballot access is a bad thing, and I disagree. It shouldn’t be government’s job to limit availability to the voters of qualified candidates from whom to choose.

When some “third parties should STFU” type complains that there are too many choices, he’s revealing his implicit opinion that the voters are too stupid to distinguish between candidates — in which case I’d say that he’s really saying the voters are too stupid to vote, period.