I was wondering if Clinton died right now who would be President? Gore right?
But for how long?
Is there anyone that can explain to me in a very simple way why the popular vote is different from the electoral vote?
If this is what I think America, maybe it is about time things are changed, here in Canada in our democracy the guy who the “people” vote for gets into office.
I’m kinda confused…
This appears to be a very embarrassing situation around the world for democracy.
Gore (as Vice President) would be President until Jan. 20th, when either he or (more likely IMHO) Bush would be sworn in for a four year term. I believe the result of this election isn’t even actually made official until Congress accepts the Electoral College votes on Jan. 3rd. So they’ve got a while to sort this mess out if they need it.
Anyways, the United States was originally organized as a union of several somewhat autonomous states. While much more tightly organized now, this is still somewhat true. The Electoral College was originally designed as a body that was chosen to select a President for the people. Originally, the people in it were selected by the government of the state. It was later changed to be selected by popular vote in the states.
Each state gets a number of electors determined by its total representation in Congress (2 Senators plus a number of Representatives determined by population, anywhere from one to 54 or so). These are chosen by the vote in the state. For example, if a state votes for Bush, what it really means is that a bunch of people who say they’re going to vote for Bush get to be the states electors.
A couple states (Maine and Idaho, I think) actually decide the electors by congressional district, rather than winner-take-all. Anyways, these people meet in their respective state capitals on December 18th and cast their votes. In most states, they are bound by law to vote for the person they agreed to vote for originally (though this has never been challenged in court, so it’s concievable that these laws are unconstitutional). In others, they simply almost always do. Since the Electoral College vote is pretty much a direct result of the popular vote, the results can be predicted once the popular vote in each state is known.
If you see the federal government as being not only for the people, but as the binding agent between the several states, it makes some sense. Where it gets strange is if there’s no majority in the Electoral College votes. In that case, the House of Representatives votes with each state getting a single vote for its Representatives to decide on. That hasn’t happened since 1824.
As for the popular vote being diffrent from the EC vote, that margin is shrinking and might reverse (Bush might take both) as military ballets come in.
How can you say that? This is not embarrassing for democracy – it IS democracy. Democracy is not neat and tidy. It is not always easy.
This election proves (or should prove) that the United States is ruled by LAW, not personalities. The person elected president will have been elected through the laws of the States. Admittedly, the current situation is a bit vexing, but it WILL be straightened out according to LAW.
Remember that, while the president is a FEDERAL official, his/her actual election is a STATE function. The problems in Florida reflect only upon unique laws and voters of that state.
I am very confident that once it is all straightened out, there will be an orderly, smooth, and dignified transition between administrations. The security of the United States depends upon it. That transition, IMO, will prove the strength of our constitutional republic.
Also, instant reporting of an election is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the not too distant past, people would have thought you were crazy to have the results of an election on the very same night.
This situation calls for the calm rule of the LAW of our United States.
How is it even possible for the popular and electoral winners to not agree? Say you have a 10-state country, and each state gets 1 electoral vote. Candidate A wins 6 of the states 51%-49%, while Candidate B wins the other 4 states, 99%-1%. Candidate A wins the electoral vote, 6-4, while Candidate B takes the popular vote, something like 69%-31%. That’s a simplified example, but the US electoral college works in basically the same way. This sort of outcome is possible in any sort of districted election where it’s “winner-take-all” within a district.[sup]*[/sup]
While hardly “proof” that it’s a good idea, the analogy to baseball’s World Series is a reasonable one. It’s not who scores the most total runs, but who wins the most games. Runs correspond to individual votes, while games correspond to individual state races. Under the EC system, the candidate who wins a majority of the “games” (the population-weighted state elections) wins the election, regardless of how many “runs” (votes) he scores. Blowout victories and last-second squeakers count exactly the same.
A large number of threads recently have gone on and on about the relative merits of the EC vs. direct popular vote. Reasonable arguments exist on both sides - check out those threads for more info.
To second Drum God, I don’t see why. It’s an extremely close state election that, as it turns out, will swing the whole result one way or the other. Those happen from time to time - hardly something to be embarrassed about.
[sup]*[/sup] - Yes, I realize that Maine and Nebraska are not winner-take-all.
If this were Canada, we would know that our president now would be the leader of the majority party in the House. We’d all be saying hello to President Dennis Hastert, unless there was some power struggle in the Republican party and somebody like Dick Armey got chosen.
If the situation were embarrassing, there would be violence in the streets over the results in Florida. There isn’t any violence. There’s a lot of rhetoric and complaining and whining, but not much else.
> This appears to be a very embarrassing situation around the world for democracy.
The USA is NOT a democracy! It is a constitutional republic, fortunately.
How to you guarantee that? As I understand it your system is a parlimentary system, meaning your head of government is selected by the majority in your legislature, and further, that your legislature is chosen on a district basis, rather than a proportional basis. What is to prevent a situation where a narrow parlimentary majority results from winning 51% of the seats by generally close margins, while the opposition party wins many of their 49% by large margins?
The US has not had a situation where the PV leader lost the EV since 1884 (and it should be pointed out that it is not clear the situation will occur this year either- neither the PV or the EV winner is certain yet). Can you verify that all of your Prime Ministers’ parties received the plurality of all votes cast throughout your history?
Actually, we’re even worse at it than the US…
We’ve got 5 parties, rather than 2. This means the government is not necessarily the majority, but simply the party with the most seats, and therefore not necessarily having the majority of the popular vote (example: last election, the Liberals only got 38% of the vote and yet somehow formed a majority governement)
I think my beef the US system is how big the voting “blocks” are… One state is either for or against a candidate, millions of people at a time. In Canada, we have comparatively tiny blocks (30 000 000/~250= 120 000 each i think).
Dandmb50wrote:
Neither Canada nor the US is a democracy. Heck, in Canada the individual citizens don’t vote for the chief executive at all! (I don’t have a problem with parlimentary systems, personally- I merely think it’s ironic that Dandmb50 criticizes the US system while demonstrating a profound lack of knowedge of both it and the Canadian system)
jbird3000 wrote:
This is false. As waterj2 and brad_d alluded to earlier, the individual states each have their own laws about how electoral college votes are awarded. It is true that 48 of them have decided to award the Electoral College votes in a winner-take-all fashion, but doing so is not universal nor is it a rule federally. This criticism as addressed to the “US system” is misplaced, unless the issue is the 538 electors being too small a number. This corresponds to roughly 5 times the relative population per elector as is the case in Canada.
I’m surprised no one has yet pointed out in this thread that the electoral college is also not strictly proportional to population, giving disproportionate representation to less populous states. It’s quite possible for every state to have the same margin of victory and for the winner to have the minority of votes simply from this. (Bush won more of the smaller population states.) It was intended this way to try avoid having the more populus states tyrannize the less populous ones. (Like, for example, Canada did with energy policy under Trudeau.)