Electoral Maps

[scratchy]

And Wiki states that the electors are chosen by the parties, so why should
they vote for anyone who's not running for their party?

Or are there 2 groups of electors in each state - and only the winning group
of electors get the chance to vote in December?

They are not electors untill the votes are summed up, only elector nominees, selected by the party.

 

[Oliver]

They are not electors untill the votes are summed up, only elector nominees, selected by the party.

Oh, okay - so that means that once the Nov.4 election is over, the
winning party of the particular state selects the electors to make sure
they vote in the parties favor, correct?

 

[ddt]

Oh, okay - so that means that once the Nov.4 election is over, the
winning party of the particular state selects the electors to make sure
they vote in the parties favor, correct?

No, formally in the Nov. 4 election you don't vote for a Pres and VP, but you vote for a slate of electors. The electors of all states then elect a Pres and VP in December. It's just an indirect election.

Most electors are pledged to vote for a specific Pres/VP combination in the December election; but there can also be "unpledged electors" who have not promised to vote for one or another candidate. These unpledged electors haven't occurred in the last couple of elections, but it has as late as 1964.

So, in fact on Nov 4, you vote for Mr/Ms X Y and Z who promise as elector to vote for Obama/Biden (say). But since the names X, Y and Z are unknown to the general public, their names are not printed on the ballot but the names of Obama/Biden are.

It's just an indirect election: like gtc showed with the Bundesrat, which is made up of representatives of the governments of the Laender.

Or another example: in Holland, we vote every 4 years for the provincial assemblies. Then, a few months later, the members of these provincial assemblies cast their votes for the members of the (nationwide) "First Chamber", the upper house of Parliament.

The only difference is that the US Electoral College is specifically elected for the sole purpose of electing the President and VP, and thereafter is disbanded.

 

[CptColumbo]

Oh, okay - so that means that once the Nov.4 election is over, the
winning party of the particular state selects the electors to make sure
they vote in the parties favor, correct?

Technically Electoral College members can vote for anyone under the U.S. Constitution, but many states have laws to punish “faithless electors.” So by allowing the parties to nominate someone prevents most conflicts.

IIRC all but two states have adopted a plurality voting system (“Winner-takes-all”). Maine and Nebraska use a system where the two electorals representing the Senators go to the candidate who won the popular vote, and the others go to whoever won the popular vote in each Congressional District.

BTW if you want to look at a interesting Presidential Election, where the loser won the popular vote, take a look at the 1876 election between Rutherford B. Hayes (elected Republican) and Samuel Tilden (Democrat who had more of the popular vote).

 

[Oliver]

No, formally in the Nov. 4 election you don't vote for a Pres and VP, but you vote for a slate of electors. The electors of all states then elect a Pres and VP in December. It's just an indirect election.

Most electors are pledged to vote for a specific Pres/VP combination in the December election; but there can also be "unpledged electors" who have not promised to vote for one or another candidate. These unpledged electors haven't occurred in the last couple of elections, but it has as late as 1964.

So, in fact on Nov 4, you vote for Mr/Ms X Y and Z who promise as elector to vote for Obama/Biden (say). But since the names X, Y and Z are unknown to the general public, their names are not printed on the ballot but the names of Obama/Biden are.

It's just an indirect election: like gtc showed with the Bundesrat, which is made up of representatives of the governments of the Laender.

Or another example: in Holland, we vote every 4 years for the provincial assemblies. Then, a few months later, the members of these provincial assemblies cast their votes for the members of the (nationwide) "First Chamber", the upper house of Parliament.

The only difference is that the US Electoral College is specifically elected for the sole purpose of electing the President and VP, and thereafter is disbanded.

Technically Electoral College members can vote for anyone under the U.S. Constitution, but many states have laws to punish “faithless electors.” So by allowing the parties to nominate someone prevents most conflicts.

IIRC all but two states have adopted a plurality voting system (“Winner-takes-all”). Maine and Nebraska use a system where the two electorals representing the Senators go to the candidate who won the popular vote, and the others go to whoever won the popular vote in each Congressional District.

BTW if you want to look at a interesting Presidential Election, where the loser won the popular vote, take a look at the 1876 election between Rutherford B. Hayes (elected Republican) and Samuel Tilden (Democrat who had more of the popular vote).

Okay, understood so far. So how was it possible in 3 elections [if I include
Randfan's notion about the Gore/Bush election] that the electoral college
didn't elect the candidate with the most popular votes - what went wrong?

And why is there a need by the EC to elect the VP as well?

 

[KoihimeNakamura]

The EC more formally does the VP now - the 11th Amendment, IIRC, ensures that it's the same ticket rather than the winning Pres campagin and winning VP.

As for the elections..
See, it;s like this. You can gain the plurality of EC votes WITHOUT winning the popular vote, IIRC, those races tend to be closer though.

 

[Oliver]

The EC more formally does the VP now - the 11th Amendment, IIRC, ensures that it's the same ticket rather than the winning Pres campagin and winning VP.

As for the elections..
See, it;s like this. You can gain the plurality of EC votes WITHOUT winning the popular vote, IIRC, those races tend to be closer though.

Okay, so the reason why there where 2 [or 3] cases in which the
popular vote didn't lead to the white house are based on the fact
that some unpledged electors messed up by voting against their
states popular vote outcome, right?

 

[CptColumbo]

Okay, understood so far. So how was it possible in 3 elections [if I include
Randfan's notion about the Gore/Bush election] that the electoral college
didn't elect the candidate with the most popular votes - what went wrong?

Nothing went wrong, as far as the distribution of the EC is concerned (there is a dispute over how the ballots were arranged and counted in FL).

If Candidate A wins State 1's Electoral Votes by 250,000 votes, he/she doesn't get to use them to make up the difference in State 2, where Candidate B won its Electoral Votes by 5,000.

IIRC It's only happened 4 times, where the person who lost the election received the majority of the popular vote.
1824 J Q Adams/Jackson
1876 Hayes/Tilden
1888 Harrison/Cleveland
2000 Bush/Gore

So, it doesn't come up very often.

 

[Oliver]

Nothing went wrong, as far as the distribution of the EC is concerned (there is a dispute over how the ballots were arranged and counted in FL).

If Candidate A wins State 1's Electoral Votes by 250,000 votes, he/she doesn't get to use them to make up the difference in State 2, where Candidate B won its Electoral Votes by 5,000.

IIRC It's only happened 4 times, where the person who lost the election received the majority of the popular vote.
1824 J Q Adams/Jackson
1876 Hayes/Tilden
1888 Harrison/Cleveland
2000 Bush/Gore

So, it doesn't come up very often.

Thank you all for your explanation - now the process is much
clearer to me - including the intention behind it. And the fact that
it happened just a view times in history is a comforting thought.
Good that Obama doesn't seem to be anywhere near a draw.

 

[gdnp]

Well, the fact that the guy who lost the popular vote none the less became president almost 10% of the time is disturbing if you believe that the person that won the majority of the popular vote should be president, as I do. The disproportionate weighting the system gives to small population states also smacks as unfair to those of us who live in higher population states, especially since those smaller population states tend to vote opposite the way that I do.

 

[CptColumbo]

Well, the fact that the guy who lost the popular vote none the less became president almost 10% of the time is disturbing if you believe that the person that won the majority of the popular vote should be president, as I do. The disproportionate weighting the system gives to small population states also smacks as unfair to those of us who live in higher population states, especially since those smaller population states tend to vote opposite the way that I do.

I'm hoping that for the first time the person I vote for will be elected President. I am 0-5 so far.

Voting third party on a few occasions probably didn't help either.

ROSS FOR BOSS!

 

[gdnp]

I'm hoping that for the first time the person I vote for will be elected President. I am 0-5 so far.

Voting third party on a few occasions probably didn't help either.

ROSS FOR BOSS!

I voted Ford, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Clinton, Gore, Kerry. 2-6.

 

[CptColumbo]

I voted Ford, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Clinton, Gore, Kerry. 2-6.

That was you?!

 

[Foolmewunz]

Oliver,
With the help from someone in another thread, we've calculated that all you would need is a one vote victory margin in the 11 most populous states, and you could be president. That means you could win those eleven by a grand total of eleven votes, and then not get a single vote in all the other 39, and lose the popular vote, in total, by millions or tens of millions of votes.

The state counts you see are based on polls. Just as the "popular vote" you are originally referring to. Neither are guaranteed to be accurate, but we count them up and argue about them, anyway.

Yes, if you want to see how the election is going, watch the counts of the states and their electors. That's where it's won. In this year, the electors gained are apparently going to be way higher than the percentage of the popular vote, nationally. I think Barack's got ten out of those eleven states (only missing Texas), so if the election was held today, he'd win by a huge number of electors, but 7 to 8 per cent of the popular vote.

 

[gdnp]

Oliver,
With the help from someone in another thread, we've calculated that all you would need is a one vote victory margin in the 11 most populous states, and you could be president. That means you could win those eleven by a grand total of eleven votes, and then not get a single vote in all the other 39, and lose the popular vote, in total, by millions or tens of millions of votes.

As an aside, since the electoral college is skewed towards the small states, you could win the 40 smallest states by a single vote and get not a single vote in any of the largest 10 and win in the electoral college with even a smaller percentage of the total popular vote. I actually calculated this out when I was back in high school: at that time, I think you could theoretically win with only 18% of the vote. Which is not surprising. If all the states were weighted equally based on population you could win with ~25% of the vote.

 

[Undesired Walrus]

I voted Ford, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Clinton, Gore, Kerry. 2-6.

Mondale? Where were you, district of Columbia?

 

[maxfrost]

Although the Founding Fathers probably didn't have this in mind, I would guess that the EC would come in useful should the president-presumptive die before the EC met.

 

[The Man]

The name of the country is the the United States of America, not the United Citizens of America. The bias against direct interaction between the federal government and individual citizens has always been there by design, in contrast to the amount of interaction presumed at the local level. It is more accurate to describe the US as a collection of democracies, rather than a monolithic democracy.

"and to the republic for which it stands"

I recall hearing that somewhere.

Many of the founding fathers had a particular distain for democracy referring to it as “mobocracy”. So they created a republic or representative form of government. That they also made the election process for the single most influential position in that government a representative process as well, should come as no surprise.

ETA: State and local governments are also representative or republic, so a collection of republics under one republic government might be a more accurate description. Imagine how bogged down and screwed up everything would be if we all had to vote on every decision (democracy).

 

[Madalch]

Okay, understood so far. So how was it possible in 3 elections [if I include
Randfan's notion about the Gore/Bush election] that the electoral college
didn't elect the candidate with the most popular votes - what went wrong?

See my example on the previous page.

 

[leftysergeant]

The down side of the system is that, were Montana populated entirely by morons, they would cancel the votes of hundreds of PhDs in Washington.