OK, a little political education.

[gridlore]

Daily now, we're being bombarded by the results of various polls conducted nationwide about the election.

Ignore them. Because, as most of you Americans should remember, we don't elect the President, the Electoral College does. We vote for the electors. In all but Maine and Nebraska these votes (one for each member of Congress [both houses]) are winner take all. Say Obama takes California by the slimmest of margins, 51/49. He still gets all 55 votes in the college. So the important thing is how the states are feeling.

Which is where electoral-vote.com comes in. Daily updates on how the states are leaning.



270 are needed to win.

Comments

[caraig.livejournal.com]

I'm torn about the Electoral college.

It would make perfect sense if the federal government had much less of a hand in 'states' rights' than it does. (Yes, I know I'm using a coded buzzword there.) If we were, say, still under the Articles of Confederation, it wouldn't be unreasonable to have the Electoral College. But at the same time, that model requires the people of the states themselves to be isolationist, and there are too many folks on both sides of the aisle who approve of at least some intervention here and there, or international peacekeeping, or similar operations.

On the other hand, the government is very much federalist, and becoming more and more so, thus, people get more and more upset when the popular vote and the electoral vote don't match.

On the gripping hand... those numbers are comforting (for now at least) so I'm not sure how much I should be complaining about the EC. :(

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

The Electoral College is, IMO, largely an artifact of a time when prompt polling - let alone nearly real-time polling - was impractical or impossible. Times and technology have changed, but the method of electing our leaders has not.

There are things to be said both for and against "but that's how we've always done it."