I’ll have to follow up with an assupmtion, Mathochist,
Given your argument on popular votes versus Electoral College votes, I’m going to assume that you would be against ‘proportional’ College votes where the EC votes of a state would be split according to that state’s popular votes.
Case in point, in that if I just have to focus on certain parts of certain states, that I’d win those EC votes, validating your post.
Tripler
Am I right, or am I missing something?
I figured one reason for the EC was to give a bit more power to the least-populus states. Basically every state is guaranteed at least 3 electors (2 senators and 1 representative) regardless of size - the state could have 1 person or 50 million people. Lets say you have 2 states, one with 100,000 people and one with 1 million people. If we don’t have an electoral college, voters in the less-populated state will have a slim to none chance of having any real say in anything. But lets say that each state is given 2 senators (which negate one another) but 1 Representative per 500,000 people. The smaller state, only having 100,000 is still guaranteed to have at least 1 representative, while the heavily-populated state only gets 2 representatives. This means the smaller state now has 3 votes for the President (2 senators, 1 representative) and the large state gets 4 votes for President.
Whether or not a state is actually below the population needed per representative anymore is doubtful, but it probably had an impact when we were first settling the nation.
A second reason might be another means of checks and balances - you have to elect electors to vote for you, if something crazy happens like massive voter fraud or the President turns out to be a martian the electors still have a choise as to how they will vote.
Thirdly, we’re a Representative Republic (as stated above), not a Democracy, so the EC fits more in line with this model.
The EC helps prevent voter fraud from having as much of an impact on the election - if 10,000 votes were illegally cast in Texas, no problem the state went to Bush. But in a direct election of the President these votes count.
The EC also forces candidates to campaign all over, not just in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, and LA. This election was only won with 60 million votes, there are probably 60 million people in America’s top 30 cities.
Finally, it was probably harder to count millions of votes up in the past and is just easier to reduce the states to smaller numbers; any recounts required can be done at the state/local level instead of nationally.
You’re very welcome.
If I can now get on my little soapbox, this sort of thing is the real kernel of the “mathematical” approach to an issue: analogies and test cases build to a rough idea of what’s going on. The best proofs are those with simplest stated rough ideas. If someone really wants the details they’re available, but the essential reasoning is very common-sense. This is what we should spend more time teaching at the high school level.
This varies on a state-by-state basis. I don’t have a cite at the moment, but an “election fact” popped up on the TV screen Tuesday night said that 38 states have laws requiring their electors to vote for whomever got the most popular votes in that state.
Um, Switzerland.
A side question:
Since the winner is usually declared as soon as the votes are tallied, does the Electoral College have any value other than symbolic? Do they actually get together and vote? Maybe a nice dinner and a few toasts?
A list of the 27 (not 38) states in which electors are bound by party pledges or state laws to cast their vote for a specific candidate. As the National Archives says, “The Supreme Court has not specifically ruled on the question of whether pledges and penalties for failure to vote as pledged may be enforced under the Constitution. No elector has ever been prosecuted for failing to vote as pledged.”
The electors meet to vote in their state capitals on the first Monday after the first Tuesday in December, which in 2004 is Monday, December 13. Key dates in the electoral process.
The National Archives Electoral College home page.
Not to get to far off topic, but I don’t think Switzerland is a democracy, it is a Federal Republic according to the CIA.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sz.html
Interesting to note, here is there assement of the government from of the US:
Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition
They also don’t define any country has a true Democracy, but many countries have forms of it.
Please excuse the spelling errors 
Meant to hit preview instead of submit.
Walloon explained it below, but the electors are really living people who go to their respective state capitals (or wherever they go in DC) and fill out ballots and sign their names to them.
It’s all an open process. You can go to your state capital and watch if you choose. It’s not frivolous at all.
This is an academic point and one that’s not even correct – it’s something high school teachers tell their students to try to confuse them as far as I can tell. The U.S. is a democracy – just not a direct democracy.
The system is sometimes called an indirect democracy, but it satisfies the definition of a democracy (see Walloon’s post) every bit as much as a direct democracy.
The Electoral College is the real vote, but since there have only been a handful of so-called “faithless electors” in history, the numbers that come oout election night are almost always what happens. Still, it’s not impossible that there are a large number of electors like Richie Robb in WV who may decide that they cannot in good conscience as a Republican cast their electoral vote for George W. Bush. Not bloody likely, but theoretically possible.
Republics and democracies are not mutually exclusive.
The United States is a democratic republic that is normally representative in nature, although occasionally votes directly (see recent referenda/propositions as direct examples).
Switzerland is a democratic republic (actual name is Confoederatio Helvetica) that has a mix of direct democracy and representative government.
Hmmm, seems we have a disagreement on the definition of Democracy. According to Wikipedia:
A democracy was a form of government under which the power to alter the basic laws and forms of government lies with the voting citizenry, referred to as “the people”, and all decisions are made by “the people”. (bolding mine)
I am not saying this is the absolute definition of the word Democracy. It is my understanding of the word. I really don’t care if we call the US a Republic, Democratic Republic, indirect Democracy, Representative Democracy, or even a Democracy. Besides a few measures (as you stated) I believe that I vote for several persons to represent me in government.
I thought by the previous statement you made “Um, Switzerland.” you were stating the Switzerland had such a system where all decisions were made by all the people. My bad.
Well, sorry for the misunderstanding and I hope it is ok if we agree to disagree. 
What stands out to me is #4: Majority rule. The US is not, and should never be, a nation governed by the “tyranny of the majority”. This is why the founding fathers set us up to be a republic instead of a democracy. This is why even today we are still a republic, and not a democracy. We do not believe that popular opinion automatically equals the right choice.
How very, very true.
Actually we are a Representative Democracy *and *a Republic.