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Barack Obama Is One Step Closer To Being President
At 3:00 Eastern time on Monday Dec. 15, 538 electors in state capitols across the US cast the votes that actually elected Barack Obama the 44th President. Obama received, unofficially, 365 electoral votes (with 270 needed to win). The exact total will not be official — or Obama officially elected — until Congress certifies the count of electoral votes in a joint session on Jan. 6, 2009. The Electoral College was established in its present form in 1804 by the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution. Electors are not required to vote for the candidate who won their state — in fact, 24 states make it a criminal offense to vote otherwise, but no "faithless elector" has ever been charged with a crime. "On 158 occasions, electors have cast their votes for President or Vice President in a manner different from that prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Two votes were not cast at all when electors chose to abstain from casting their electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 85 were changed by the elector's personal interest, or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless electors act alone. An exception was in 1836 when 23 Virginia electors changed their vote together. ... To date, faithless electors have never changed the otherwise expected outcome of the election."
Lots was made about Sarah Palin being on the Republican ticket. In 1972, Roger MacBride--a faithless Republican elector from Virginia--decided that he could not in good conscience vote for Nixon. He cast his vote for John Hospers & Tonie Nathan on the Libertarian ticket, marking the first time a woman had ever received an electoral vote.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
There are instances in history where the electoral college went against the will of the people. This would be news in that instance. Otherwise it's just business as usual.
Actually, that's probably the best way to do it, is have the electoral college be proportional to within its own state. I've never been a fan of the straight popular vote for President - it really takes away from the rural states and some of their voice in government, and places without major population center needs to have its voice heard. Yeah, it may mean their vote "counts more," but direct democracy, particularly when dealing with such a large population who is getting more and more uneducated about politics, and who is apt to fall for some of the semi-demogoguery from both sides (Obama's campaign to the masses was woefully short on substance, and about all anyone on the street was able to say was "change.")
Frankly, what I would like to see, and what has even LESS chance to get set in than getting rid of the electoral college, is a test that must be taken when one votes that has basic principles of civics.
Do we see posts on who is the new PM of Iraq, the new Pope is, or howabout what Obama had for breakfast?
That's a negative little ducky.
Unless there is an upset or irrational event on such an "important" event, the mechanics of the US political infrastructure do not matter.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
>>>a little doubt in the power of democracy. a fuck up
(1) That's because they recalled that a previous Democracy in Athens had killed one of mankind's greatest thinkers, Socrates, simply because they didn't like him. They did not want the right to life to be taken-away by a simple 50% +1 vote.
(2) It's no more fucked-up then how the European Union operates - ya know, a Union of States where States elect ministers to the Council, not the people. You need to understand history, because in 1786 we were not a single nation - we were 13 indepentent nations coming together as an EU-type organization. Hence an election organized by States, not people.
(3) Hence we a Republic of 50 States, where LAW reigns and protects the individual, not a democracy where the majority squashes the individual underfoot.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
By what definition should Al Gore have "rightfully" been President after the 2000 election? If the U.S. Supreme Court had not stepped in, the Florida legislature would have appointed electors to represent Florida that would have voted for George W. Bush. If those electors were not seated, the election would have gone to Congress to be decided. Congress would have chosen George W. Bush.
As for the "popular vote", California alone chose not to count more absentee ballots than the difference in the reported national vote totals between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The reason that California (and many other states) did not count all of the absentee ballots was because for California, the remaining absentee ballots were fewer than the difference in the vote total for California.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I remember during the 2000 election fiasco, I was watching some news call in show. A woman said that Gore had an unfair advantage, because he was a career politician and probably knew about this electoral college stuff, while she was sure Bush didn't. She apparently had never heard of it.
It doesn't hurt to remind people of the bizarre way that the US Presidential election works.
You take the first step, and then maybe I'll give up my gun in an urban environment. Post a sign on your apartment window that says "I believe in gun control. There are no firearms in this residence." The availability of firearms is a general, not specific deterrent. However if you let folks know of your views of how the world should be, then perhaps we can see how well it works out for you.
Good luck.
p.s. You might also help your cause by learning when to use capital letters. It really helps the reader determine when your next sentence begins, and also conveys a sense of pride in authorship.
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the official record is al gore won the popular vote. please, show us contingencies and if-then conditions where this is not true. it doesn't mean anything
The popular vote doesn't matter. The president is not elected by the people. He's elected by the states, through their electors. By the rules of our political game, deciding the president by the popular vote makes as much sense as deciding a football game by most offensive yards gained.
If you want to change the rules, start with your state. Your state decides who will represent it in the electoral college, and can pick them however it wants. After enough states have switched to a proportional system, you're more likely to get support for changing the constitution to eliminate the undue influence of the smaller states.
we need to remove the electoral college, to prevent another a gw bush: gw bush was not the democratic will of the american people, according to factual record (not your suppositions).
You can't really say that. Both candidates ran campaigns which took into account the electoral college. Their strategies would have been vastly different with a popular vote. You wouldn't see both candidates ignore California and New York. Even though both are strongly Democratic, each contains more Republicans than Iowa.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
The United States doesn't acknowledge renouncing your citizenship when you go through a foreign nations naturalization process that has renunciation as part of its oath. USA's naturalization oath also calls for giving up any other citizenship... but other countries ignore it just like we ignore theirs. The only way to lose your USA citizenship is to go to an embassy and formally renounce it or commit treason.
While you can technically have multiple citizenships. When your in USA controlled territory the only one that matters to them is the USA one, any other is irrelevant.
The Goal: A long simple life filled with many complex toys.
then there's the issue of him enrolling in a school in Indonesia, at a time when Indonesian citizenship was required to do so, and no dual citizenship was available. To become an Indonesian citizen, he (his mother, actually) would have to renounce his US citizenship.
Or his mother falsified his citizenship status on his school application. I find that to be more likely. In fact I'd bet mother's everywhere do that sort of thing every day to give their precious spawn a better chance.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
again, let me get this absolutely clear to you: for the sake of the current (flawed) interpretation of the second amendment, there are needless deaths every day in urban settings. right now, for the disproportionate influence of rural people, urban people die.
The Urban tendency is to blame objects for acts degenerates commit. This avoids any uncomfortable questions about the sick culture in the most violent American cities.
Further, your entire post is pretty much negated by the facts- that crime, and armed crime, go up whenever a gun ban is introduced.
Why? Lawful people follow the law, criminals don't, advantage: criminals. It's really, really, simple, and I don't see why so many folks have a hard time grasping this repeatedly demonstrated phenomenon.
i look forward to the day when a few rural folks die for having their gun rights curtailed, rather then the status quo we have today, in which a lot of urban folks die for the sake of irresponsible gun ownership.
Again, rural people don't guy to gun violence, urban people do. The 'irresponsible gun ownership' occurs in the urban environment, because you allow a subculture of entitlement, selfishness and shortsightedness to flourish there, AND the cities with the worst crime have banned guns, making honest people easy targets for criminals.
You have amoral degenerates running around your cities that you refuse to deal with. That is your problem. Not guns.
Rural voters don't deserve to have more rights than urban voters, which is exactly what you are asking for, no matter how you frame it, and it is still wrong. any, ANY disproportionate influence leads to injustice and abuse of power.
Simple fact: Take away the electoral college, and the influence of small states is irrelevant. There is no way they would sign off on that change, and there is no way they would have joined the union without it.
Maine, by splitting their electoral vote to the popular vote, has made themselves irrelevant in campaigning. Most contests are close- within a few percentage points. To get an extra electoral vote in Maine, you'd need to swing an additional >10% of the vote your way.
This would take a massive campaigning effort- if it was even possible- for one additional vote.
Easier to ignore the state instead and get your half, or half +1. States that follow your idea make themselves irrelevant to the campaign and can safely be ignored.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
> the president is the man who must follow the will of the legislative branch
Do you really think the founding fathers thought that the at present 535 members of congress should be 'leading'? No, I'm not attacking at the present political makeup congress (which is always so easy) but the simply the number of members... heck, go back to the first congress where at the end there were 26 Senators and 64 Representatives... and even in a group of 90 people.
Constitutionally it is clear who the 'leader' is through the presidents delegated powers as well as higher requirements for office.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
And that, my friend, is why I will not consider him legally elected until the matter of his citizenship is investigated and resolved.
Get over it, man. He won and is a citizen. Do you really think the Republicans or Clinton never tried to dig up this bit of dirt on him? Maybe McCain/Palin kept harping that tired old "Bill Ayers" lines because that really was all they could dig up on the man.
One thing about this whole Obama citizenship debate that bothers me - how the *hell* do we even wind up in a situation where, *after* the election, someone is questioning eligibility? In order to run for President, you have to register your candidacy with the Federal Election Commission, or something, don' you? Why aren't candidates required to prove eligibility as a requirement to even *be in the election*?
We should not have a system where it's even remotely possible that someone could be elected when they aren't eligible.
That said, there really is no question that Obama is a natural citizen. After all, we know who his mother and grandmother are, and we know they are natural born citizens. By definition, if either of your parents are US citizens, you are a natural born citizen. Unless you don't think the woman he claims as his mother really is his mother.
You missed the advantage of limiting the damage of close counts or contested elections.
Remember the mess in Florida in 2000? Now imagine that instead of having to consider recounting one state, we have to consider recounting all FIFTY.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
The case of New York is particularly interesting because premeditated policy decisions may have exported crime to surrounding areas: