So, nothing to do with the candidates here, but, I learned something the other night I didn’t know. Did you know some of the states split their electoral votes?
I thought that was the greatest idea ever, and think that would probably be a better “representation” of the countries will. I saw NE does that, and apparently so does ME…
Anyway, thought that was interesting.
That would be a great start to campaign/election reform. It’s almost comical to listen to people preach about voting and your civic duty when in a lot of cases your vote does not actually count. We had neither candidate campaign in NY since it was common knowledge the it would go to Obama. In fact it was even on the news a week before the election that Obama would win NY. Bad enough that it discourages people from voting, but the 38% who voted for someone other than Obama did not count. Hard to believe that in the 21st century we aren’t able to come up with a better way to elect a president.
Not voting is the problem here, a lot of people didn’t and they just don’t know the value in a vote apparently. I also heard the military also didn’t get much of their vote in ether.
I believe that a states electoral votes should be proportional. If a candidate wins a district, they win those votes.
In my state it would have meant that Obama would have won 2 electoral votes and Romney would have won 4. Instead two counties decided the entire state and gave it to Obama.
Who monitors this stuff, why are they just throwing all the votes to Oboma if Romney should have gotten them?
Presidential elections aren’t determined by how the people vote. They’re determined by the electoral college, each’s state’s electoral votes being assigned by the state’s electoral college, whoever exactly that is. I may have it all wrong but from what I understand, the popular vote, the votes of the people, don’t actually count towards anything.
Very good point - the electoral system was supposed to be to help the small states (low pop’s) have equal say in the bigger pool…honestly I’m tired of crying about it though. It seems that somehow common sense has given way to spreading misery evenly and making the rich guys pay for it. They figure rich guys are evil and won’t pass the losses on to us by not hiring/promoting/benefiting ---- LOL I laugh only so I don’t cry
Somewhere between fighting the red coats and spilling lots of blood on our own soil fighting for freedom we are giving into being “governed” and told how much to pay all over again…guess we didn’t gain anything after-all. The entitlement mentality is running rampant and if it doesn’t get the brakes put on full force - we are doomed to European type failures! All hail to the king! 
Under the electoral college system, we don’t actually vote for the President and Vice-President. We vote for the electors. The popular vote in a state determines who the electors will vote for when the Electoral College meets. As previously noted, this system was put in place to protect the smaller states from becoming subordinate to the more populous states.
There have only been a handful of elections when the electoral vote and the popular vote were split between candidates, the most recent being George W. Bush winning the electoral vote and Al Gore winning the popular vote in 2000.
If you don’t mind me saying, …this sounds stupid to me, really. If i were running for president, I would want every vote for me count. From what im getting form this, there are so many votes that could go to on party/individual and they are not. If you had a 65% vote for one party, the other 35$ goes to them as well because one out did the other. if this is true, Did I say stupid?
You are correct, it is stupid. And the reasoning of it being to protect the smaller states I think is a modern invention to try and justify it. The smaller states have fewer electoral votes, so how are they “being protected”? I think the real reason the system was created also exposes why it should be done away with. It was simply too big a job to tally votes for the entire country. The electoral college made it simpler. And on a side note, most people think the the electoral college must cast their vote the way the popular vote was cast. The truth is they can cast their vote as they see fit. I’m not certain that any have actually gone against the popular vote, but it could be done. Our system was devised by those who considered the people too stupid to govern themselves. Funny a lot of people think we’ve come right back around.
But you guys realize that if it weren’t for the electoral college, Bush Jr never would have been president, right? CatVert just pointed that out two posts ago. The people never elected Bush Jr, they elected Al Gore.
And Al, the electoral college system does favor the smaller states. They have fewer votes, but they have more votes per capita. So if you live in a tiny state, your vote (electoral vote as a proxy for your actual vote) counts for like four times as much as a vote from NY or California.
This graphic does a good job of showing the difference between how it looks when you use our traditional map (which is actually a distorted projection onto Cartesian space of the surface of the Earth which is curved), versus how it looks when you adjust it to express population, versus how it looks when you adjust it to show electoral votes.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/346315/title/Red_state%2C_blue_state
FWIW. The Electoral College gives each state a number of electors based on the total number of representatives in the legislative branch (2 Senators per state, and 1 for each congressman) This is established in the constitution.
The general idea was that an unscrupulous candidate might run based on eliminating the income tax on big city residents and increasing the tax on people who live in small towns. It would be too easy to win huge majorities of the popular vote just by appealing to a few large population centers. The reality of the situation is that what has actually happened is very similar to what they were afraid of. Look at the map and you can see that the vast area of the map is red, but the big metropolitan cities are red.
Not true. See Bill’s post.
Personally I think Al Gore would have been a lousy president, but Bush not being elected really wouldn’t have been a huge problem for me. You keep wanting to characterize me as a party line Republican. That’s far from the truth. I’m not registered with any party and I cast my vote based on the merit of each candidate. I know that’s a strange concept in today’s society since most people don’t even know their candidates names much less where they stand on the issues. My criticism of the Democratic party comes from the fact that I’m a fiscal conservative, which is diametrically opposed to most of the Democrats. Not from the fact that I’m a Republican.
As for the electoral college, I stand by my earlier statement. It’s an antiquated system for electing a president that should be replaced. What served us well 200 years ago isn’t necessarily the best way anymore. If that were true we wouldn’t have this forum, we’d all be riding horses.
Article II
Section 1. The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
The above is the language in the Constitution that established the electoral college system. Note that the electoral votes are equal to the Congressional delegation from each state. The reason the founding fathers set this up was to broker a compromise between those who wanted the President selected by Congress and those who wanted the President selected by popular vote. It does have the effect of allowing less populous states to balance out the votes from more populous states since they will all have two Senators and at least one Representative and thus, at least three electoral votes per state.
One can argue that it has lost it’s relevance in modern times; I won’t argue that. But it was a reasonable compromise at the time.
Al, it is true that states with lower populations get more electoral votes per capita. I’m not guessing on that, I looked up the actual numbers. With NY and Cali getting a little over 0.1 electoral votes per 100k popular votes and Montana or whoever was the emptiest state getting around 0.5, yeah, it came out around 4 times more voting power per capita for the empty states than for the full ones.
Ok my numbers were off, I just went back to look at them today and saw I looked at 2004 numbers. Here’s the newest data I found on the Wikipedia page regarding the electoral college. Closer to 3 or 3.5 times as many, not 4.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:State_population_per_electoral_vote.png
Not to get off on a different subject, but this is what the company I work for has done to avoid up comming taxes on larger conpanies. A few other large corporations have done the same thing and more will follw unless they find a way to close this loop hole as it is all legal. By acquisition of another large company allows us to be incorporated in Ireland and not longer legally based in the US. Using loop holes we currently pay 20% tax and when the loop holes get closed it will almost double the companies tax rate. By being pro active and plus expanding buying another company we are now set at 13% tax rate next year. Can’t say I totally agree with this, but it makes good business sense. Basically, if my math is right 320 million a year is being paid in tax to the us. Half will now go to Ireland and the other half back to the company. Now zero corporate tax will be paid to the US. Although a lot of other taxes will still be paid to conduct and do business in the US as we have many US locations. Also, it avoids about 160 million in tax increases if they go ahead with adding tax to the large corporations. Which I don’t think either party can be sucessful at without causing a big fincial back lash. I’m sure my math is off a little as I rounded the numbers, but what’s a couple mill anyways… 
“Eaton will take advantage of Cooper’s tax domiciling in Ireland to reincorporate in old Eire, allowing it to take advantage of Ireland’s 12.5% corporate tax rate. Eaton currently uses loopholes to pay a tax rate of about 20% in the U.S., and expects to achieve immediate synergies of $160M annual in tax savings starting in 2013. Totally legal and a sign of the times. (You’ll notice in the linked Barron’s article that Eaton will avoid any problems posed by the IRS’s plan to make reincorporation more difficult). In total, that works to $535M in annual synergies by 2016 and immediate synergies in 2013 of $235M, versus $200M in total integration costs that will be front-loaded to 2013 and 2014 and fully paid by 2015. Clearly, the math is attractive”.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/26/eaton-cooper-vote-idUSL3E8LQ84820121026
Yeah to me that’s awfully un-American, taking advantage of living and existing in the US, taking advantage of all the services provided with the tax dollars of guys like you and me, and then when it comes to paying their share, turning to the government that provides for their existence in the first place and saying “F off”.
But hey at least you’ll be putting money into the Irish government’s hands, which will make up for Bono moving to Monaco so he could skip out on paying taxes there. 
Last I checked, taxes are what led to the creation of America, i.e., NOT wanting to pay them. So, bully for them, I say, if it helps them stay open for business, rather than closing/laying off.