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."

Comments

Why on Slashdot?

[fprintf]

Why is this piece of tripe on Slashdot? You can read this stuff all you want on CNN.com or any other "news" channel. I thought Slashdot was "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters."

This doesn't matter.

So all that is left.

[jellomizer]

So all is left is to clear up the right wing conspiracy theories about Oboma's birth origin. (However McCain was born in Panama so I am not sure who would be left...)

Re:So all that is left.

[lwsimon]

The "controversy" was that there are several people, including his own grandmother, who claim he was born in Mombassa, Kenya.

That being the case, and his mother being a minor at the time, he would not be a US citizen at all.

Taking the tinfoil off, and assuming he was indeed born in HI, 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. Coming back to the US, he would be required to undergo naturalization, and would no longer be considered "natural born".

Either of these is a hell of a stretch, but it is interesting that he has defended himself so vigorously from proving them false. He has never presented a birth certificate, to this day.*

*A Certificate of Live Birth is NOT a birth certificate. It does not establish residency.

So much for "Hope and Change!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Hopey Changey is filling his cabinet with storied Washington insiders.

Woo hoo.

Can't wait to see how when we're having problems two years from now the Obamabots figure out ways to blame McChimpyHallibushHitlerCheney anyway.

Get this: Obama didn't inherit any problems. He turned off online contribution credit card validation and recording, sleazed his way to $300 million in contributions, and BOUGHT EVERY DAMN PROBLEM HE WILL FACE

Re:And?

[RiotingPacifist]

lol, next story to justify. obama sneezes at 13:26 (in particular you've got to cover why its news for nerds)

I, for one, welcome our first foreign-born...

[meburke]

Muslim Overlord.

do you have a gun in every room of your house?

[circletimessquare]

no? what's wrong with you?

then you need to put a sign on every door in your house saying "gun in here" or "gun not in here" to guide criminals, for being the inadequately enthusiastic gun owner you profess to be

have i successfully dismantled your bullshit propaganda about the a sign on my window yet?

think of an urban environment as a large house. on the street corners, are police. they are the guns that i need to keep me safe from crime. the gun is in safe, responsible, vigilant (and awake) hands. that it is in his hands, and not in my apartment, is the same as your gun being in your bedroom, but not your kitchen

see how that works?

zzz

[circletimessquare]

http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2000/prespop.htm

educate yourself, then open your ignorant hole

Re:for all the founding fathers did right

[azaris]

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

Did you realize that to kill a man in many states it takes not 50% of people + 1 vote, but just 12 people? Well, maybe also the judge and DA.

because its not the outback

[circletimessquare]

your observations are spot on... in a rural land, where the law is too far away to matter

in an urban environment, there's something called POLICE

Re:News?

[Beefaroni]

err defend the parts of the Constitution that i agree with - like "free" health care, raising taxes, and whatever George Soros says.

Re:So..

[operagost]

I certainly hope you weren't leaning on Obama's own experience. After all, (and I will be modded down for stating this fact), he hasn't actually completed a term in the last two offices he has held.

Re:dude, you're spastically way off target

[theaveng]

I too was discussing the Presidential election by the Electoral College. Go back and re-read the post a few more times until you understand.