Wilenz' article assumes that we are or should be a 'democracy', not a republic, designed from the beginning to ensure that the voices of smaller states, jurisdictions and groups are not lost in sheer numbers. We aren't a democracy.

The Constitutional structure of the Electoral college, weighted toward smaller states, reflects that continuing concern, no matter how much some of us hated it in 2000, before vote cheating. A number of states such as Nevada also reflect that concern, where rural popular voices would vanish against the weight of numbers in Las Vegas and Reno. So does the Voting Rights Act, which bars the drawing of electoral lines to disenfranchise certain groups, by dividing their core areas among a group of districts in each of which they are a minority bound to lose on a winner take all race every time out. Or those who elect for state or regional matters a blend of at large and district seats, to the same effect. All equally honorable and American.

It is ironic that Prof. Wilenz overlooks this consistent concern in his loathing of caucuses which require voters to face down one another and discuss matters face to face rather than going into the anonymity of the voting booth. Presumably, he also hates open primaries, which lets non-Democrats vote in the choosing of the Democratic candidates. In condemning everything, it would seem that nothing the Democratic voters have done in any state this year is genuinely legitimate to him.

The peculiarity of his article is his rejection, in mid-campaign, of all rules, urging instead that the gross popular primary vote does not matter and the delegate count does not matter, and caucus states shouldn't exist, but that the only charge is to determine who is more likely to win in November, with no clear notion of who makes that decision or how it is now to be made. The old guys in the back room used to be very good at that, old Boss Tweed, but that is a model all parties have rejected.

And the push this year in most places is that states not normally taken into account have and want to have their distinct voices heard. The irony, of course, is that one candidate used a big state stragegy and had no organization in the smaller states and caucus states, as a result of which that candidate has won ten of forty states contested to date and will have no organization in place for November in the smaller states which count disproportionately in the Electoral College. So I do not understand where his Electoral College method argument goes.

The only important thing to me in any state is that the party use a system its voters are comfortable with, whether or not I ever figure out how Texas works, to have their share of the voice in choosing the candidate all those voters think will win, and that the agreed rules for running that system are applied neutrally. Not a system whose validation by the writer is determined by his agreement with the outcome.

There is at least this year a problem with the question.

This year, the question is skewed by the candidates bearing their respective group's standards. As to women, would the answer be different if the candidate were one with less long-standing personal negatives and campaign stumbles. As to African Americans, would the answer be different if the candidate were Sam Jones, Baptist from back forever with nothing odd about his name or his minister and a few more years in the US Senate. This year, those hearing the question hear it in this particular light.

And how many of those polled are not telling the truth exactly and are saying what they do so they don't sound biased to themselves or the pollster. Who count themselves willing because they tell themselves and others they think Obama is a closet terrorist Muslim because of his name, or because they don't believe he should have stayed that long in that church, rather than his race as such, or because Hillary is a #@#/! and not because she is a woman. There is a lot of that going around.

I am surprised the numbers are as high as they are, on both sides.

Do remember that in most countries, the way a couple gets 'married' is not by a church ceremony but by toddling off to the Registry Office. The religious ceremony is not the one that does it. Going over to a civil system in joinings for legal effect would sidestep the religious questions entirely. Since every last state now requires a marriage license anyway, making it a 'civil union' license and providing by statute that every person joined in a civil union will have all rights granted in public or private contracts or by law or policy to the 'married' accomplishes the practical result needed. This is historically correct as the Church did not get involved in marriages, otherwise entirely private, until the 12th Century at the time it started cursing out gay people.

The gift of 'civil union' is that if a state is willing to alter its statutes to provide that the civil license-registry proceeding is the one which vests the rights of the married on two people, and that it vests all rights of 'married people' on them, then the civil union does the job. And thereby avoids all religious issues, since there is a route to the real married state which does not require finding a minister to do it, and thereby implicate whatever denominational view a given denomination has as to gay people.