Here’s an image of a ballot that looks like mine (but for a different district): http://www.trbimg.com/img-50999184/turbine/chi-election-ballot-20121106/600
Let’s talk about something else.
Over the course of the 1960 World Series, the Yankees scored 55 points and the Pirates 27, but the points were spread out in such a way that the Pirates won four out of seven games and, thereby, the Series four games to three.
I wonder if that was fair.
(Too late to edit; please omit the final four words in the second paragraph of the post above.)
The main reason we keep the electoral college is that it makes election night so much more fun. As a foreigner, you probably don’t watch our election night coverage as they call each state and rack up the electoral votes, but it is very exhilarating.
Also, this year, the networks were all able to call the presidency for Obama even while Romney was ahead in the popular vote, because he had secured enough electoral votes. So that means we get to go to bed a little earlier. Another bonus.
…I’m only half kidding honestly about the above points.
You’d be entirely wrong about me not watching. SBS had live coverage here from 1:00 pm Wednesday onwards (11:00pm Tuesday Eastern time, US), with frequent crosses to CNN. I could have watched CNN but also wanted the local take on what was happening over there.
I was enthralled. I did get a bit panicky when Romney was about 22 electoral votes ahead at one point but was reassured when it was pointed out that California and ?Washington State/?Oregon hadn’t even begun to count yet.
California, Washington, and Oregon are all on the Pacific coast (hence finishing later), and all three are pretty reliably Democratic. Hawaii is also, of course, even more out West, and even more reliably Democratic. Alaska is in between, and is reliably Republican, but it’s one of the smallest states by population and only has three electoral votes, so it doesn’t much matter.
jabiru, sorry for assuming you probably didn’t watch. But yeah, my boyfriend was doing the same thing all night. “Romney’s winning in electoral votes!!! Oh no!” Haha.
Of course, real patriotic Americans know that there really only a small handful of states that actually matter, and they might as well just fill in all the rest red or blue before the polls even close.
In fact, it often surprises people that 2 seconds after the polls close, the networks can call so many states without even a single vote counted. That’s because of exit polls, and history, really.
Kind of fun, really. It’s also fun to watch them zoom in and show which counties have reported, and how much, and how each politician’s chances are affected by what has and hasn’t been counted.
This is how Ohio was called relatively early in the night. Obama and Romney were nearly neck and neck, but all the outstanding votes were from heavily Democratic districts, so they called it.
Anyhow, yeah… the electoral college just makes things so much fun. Glad you got to appreciate it from afar. How boring is it where you live, watching the results come in? They just count up the total votes, live on the air, and keep reporting them?
Like many people, I often feel frustrated with the Electoral College method of electing a President. Sometimes I momentarily get the visceral feeling that it’d be better to just elect the Prez by national popular vote. But then I remember that the USA is federalist–it’s a union of 50 different states, not one monolithic government apportioned into 50 “districts”–and then the feeling goes away (mostly).
I can’t see how we can get away from the 50 states each deciding separately who they want to head the federal executive branch. To change this it would seem we would need not only a constitutional amendment, but an entirely new way of thinking of our country. I don’t think most people would like the U.S. to be one monolithic state instead of 50 separate (but united) ones. But that’s only if “most people” understand how our government(s) work, and I don’t think that they do.
That being said, I think there are lots of ways we could improve our presidential election method but these changes should and would have to be entirely at the state level. For example, I wouldn’t mind seeing all the states go to the system used by Maine and Nebraska (allocating electoral votes on a congressional district basis rather than an entire state basis), and there are probably other improvements that could be made as well. But to me, the selection of the president must always be left to the states. Otherwise we are a fundamentally different nation.
It’s very important to remember this.
Yes, we may be living in a different time now, but it remains true that sparsely populated states have legitimate fears of having their citizens under-represented in federal matters.
If you want to scrap the electoral college (and hey, while we’re at it, scrap that other bulwark of small states’ power–the U.S. Senate, as well) will you also make it easier for small states to secede (should they wish to) since you reneged on the deal they agreed to in order to join the Union? Maybe give them some nice, fat, compensation, as well?
Prolly not. But the Electoral Collage and the Senate aren’t going anywhere because the Founders designed an elegant method amending the Constitution. That is–ratification by 3/4 of the 50 individual state legislatures. Good luck getting the small states going along with anything that will take power away from them.
Each state does it differently, but in my state the ballot actually lists the names of the electors on each ticket below the names of the Presidetial and Vice Presidential candidates.
The only Constitutional rule is that Electors can’t be a member of Congress or hold an appointed position in the federal government. So Chuck Schumer or Hillary Clinton couldn’t be Electors for New York.
I wasn’t aware of that. Heard the compact mentioned on the radio and did a quick Google/Wiki lookup and posted.
But that really makes for an interesting context to read about Wyoming wanting to buy an aircraft carrier:
Yep. That was the best part. Or maybe I’m just easily amused. 
I’m a bit of a political junkie locally as well. We have electorates, based not on size but on the number of electors they contain. The Australian Electoral Commission tries to keep the numbers fairly even, so there are regular redistributions of electoral boundaries. Sometimes new electorates are created (in areas of population growth); others amalgamate if the numbers become too small.
We don’t have ‘swing states’ as such, because we have only six states but we do have swinging seats (electorates). Everyone wants to live in one of those because it means that the politicians care about you (ie want your vote) and money and facilities are generally thrown at those electorates. If you live in a safe seat (doesn’t matter for which party) you tend to miss out because the party which ‘owns’ that seat (wrong terminology but you get my drift) knows the voters will continue to vote for them regardless and the other party knows you’ll never vote for them.
Everyone gets bombarded with pre-election polling and mail but not at much as the poor citizens of Ohio because we don’t have to be ‘encouraged’ to get out and vote. Voting is, theoretically, compulsory. Only insofar as we have to get our names marked off at the polling place, however.
I enjoy watching our election night coverage, especially if there are a number of seats which could change sides and thus force a change of government. We also have pundits and commentators of all political colours who like to talk about who’s going to win and why a particular seat may have fallen.
Another factor which makes our elections different is that we don’t have first-past-the-post voting. Some electorates with a lot of candidates can take several weeks for the results to be known because preferences have to be distributed.
I think you are making invalid assumptions. Changing how the president is elected doesn’t change anything else about our federal system. Sure, it may make it seem inconsistent, but that means nothing. It didn’t change the federal system when we went to directly electing Senators, either.
Furthermore, if you actually think most people think of themselves as residents of their state that just happens to be in their country, you’re entirely wrong. People do think of states as just being the next division down from the country. It’s not a lack of knowledge, but just the way our understanding of our country has evolved over time as we’ve become more united. State sovereignty is just a political fact to most, and has nothing to do with how we see each other.
Even those who push for certain things to be handled by the state do so because they think the U.S. Constitution guarantees them that right, not what technically is true–that they inherently have that right and the Constitution only guarantees it.
So even if our entire system changed instead of how we elect the President, I don’t think even those in the know would feel much different.
Depends on the change. If, for example, we just change–on a state by state basis–to the system used by Maine and Nebraska then no, that doesn’t change our federalist system.
If, however, we change to a direct national popular vote, then we will have fundamentally changed the entire concept of our federalism.
We changed to electing Senators directly within each state–not to electing them directly on a national level.
That’s similar to how we elect the president. By voting for him/her on a individual state basis–NOT as a nation. We could eliminate the college of electors and just have each state vote directly for the president, but to elect the president based on national popular vote totals would be a complete departure from our federalist system.
I would certainly consider it a huge change. I am a citizen of both South Carolina and the United States, and one of the nice things about being in South Carolina is that it certainly is peopled by folk who consider being from South Carolina a much different proposition than being from much of anywhere else. Not that I’m always happy with how they choose to distinguish themselves. :smack:
However, I do think that you are in general correct, that most people would not feel in any way part of some significantly changed relationship if the election were to convert from selecting Electors to selecting the President directly. The moment of unhappiness would come the first time that the voting patterns showed that President A would have won the Electoral College, but President B won the plurality of the vote.
Improvements in transportation and communication have contributed to the ascendance of the view of this as one country rather than as 50 states.
Anyway, I think it’s time for an insane hypothetical that illustrates how the Electoral College would work if political alignments and allegiances were vastly different from what they actually are:
Candidate Smith gets 90% of the vote in the 6 most populous states, except Texas. Candidate Jones gets 60% of the vote in Texas, every state smaller than Pennsylvania, and D.C. Assuming turnout is consistent nationally, this gives Smith a clear popular vote victory and, as electors are currently selected, Jones a clear Electoral College victory. It’s not too hard, I think, to defend either candidate winning under those circumstances.
Much of the confusion may be caused by people who mistakenly think the US is a democracy, responsive to a single group of people (the citizenry, collectively). It is not. The US is a constitutional republic – a collection of individuals and states responsible to constitutional procedures designed to foster states rights and divided government. A monopolistic federal entity was never the intent. Through this lense, the EC make perfect sense. But I’m not sure how many citizens, let along foreigners, are aware of this.
You seem to mistakenly believe that a constitutional republic is not a kind of democracy.
Frisco makes a common error in relating the concept of a “republic” (a government deriving its right to govern directly from the consent of the governed) to a “democracy” (government where decisions are made by the governed). The two are not opposite concepts. Republics can be contrasted with monarchies (divine right and/or hereditary right to rule); democracies can be contrasted with theocracies (decisions made by a religious hierarchy).
However, the United States government is not a democracy (thankfully, IMHO). Instead, it uses democratic principles to elect representatives to govern us. Which is why a more accurate description would be that it is a “representative republic.” It is also a federal republic, when we look at the US as a whole, rather than just focusing on any individual governmental body. In a true “democracy”, everyone in the body politic votes on everything that needs deciding by vote.
I might also point out that the term “constitutional republic” is a bit silly. ALL governments have a “constitution”, whether written down or not. I know this concept baffles many who write in the area of American government (I was forced Friday to correct some students at the school who pointed to the statement in their textbook on American government that a “constitution” is a written document; I merely commented that my professor on English Constitutional history would have been amused to learn he had been wrong about the title of his course all these years). Adding the word “constitutional” to a description of the type of government a political entity has is superfluous.