yes, the bill is not as bad as written. i've already admitted that the letter of the law is not the problem. it's the fact that a fringe minority is getting their agenda pushed by the ones who actually write the laws. it reminds me more of the flag burning amendment that went around back in the 80s and 90s than many of the examples of your previous post. a method of protest which didn't really harm anyone and probably makes some level of sense to outlaw (to someone) doesn't need to be enshrined in the constitution. requiring papers to be provided for presidential (and other) candidates is directly an attempt to de-legitimize obama's presidency masked as some kind of common sense reaction to running for state and higher elected office.

and in response to the second part of your quote above, i find the electoral college to be a major obstacle to true democracy in this country actually. but bush v. gore proved that we have a severely flawed system for electing the president and i would support any method to reform what we have in order to maximize the effective vote for each person.

consider that if you live in a blue state and you vote red or vice versa, your vote is basically discarded when your candidate does not win. either doing away with the electoral college, or better yet, assigning an amount of electoral college votes to the candidates based on margin of victory (i.e. - 60% of vote gets 60% of electors) means that not only do voters get close to direct election of the president, but almost every state becomes a swing state except for the very smallest ones. it's about making the election of president a fair competition and not about how many more big states can one candidate win over another.