I urge the electors of Florida to consider casting their votes according to the results of the mandatory recount, and to ignore the implications of any legal decision to throw out validly-marked ballots for any candidate.
The electors of Florida haven't been selected yet. It's not like they're 25 state employees.
The Republicans have chosen their 25 electors, and the Democrats have chosen 25 electors of their own. Whichever candidate is determined to have won in Florida, that party's electors will get to vote in the electoral vote.
These electors are chosen from each party's most faithful members. There's not a snowball's chance in hell that they'll vote against their candidate. (Yes, it has happened occasionally in the past that an elector didn't vote for the candidate he was "supposed" to, but in all cases the elector knew it wouldn't make a difference in the result of the election. And an elector never votes for the major party opponent of their candidate.)
I don't see the U.S. getting rid of the electoral college any time soon.
To do that would require a constitutional amendment. To pass a constitutional amendment, it must be ratified by 3/4 of the states--38 states. If there are at least 13 states that won't ratify an amendment, it won't pass.
The electoral college gives more power to the voters of some states, at the expense of others. Voters in less populous states have more voting power than they would in a direct popular vote. This is because each state gets N+2 electoral votes, where N is more or less proportional to population. The "+2" increases the power of smaller states proportionately more than those of larger states.
Also, with an electoral college, voters in states which are often closely divided have more power than they would under a direct popular vote, at the expense of voters in states which always go strongly towards one party or the other.
Switching to a direct popular vote would take power away from those states where voters currently have above-average influence on the result of the election. Now, I haven't done a state-by-state analysis, but are there at least 13 such states which would lose voting power by switching to a popular vote? I certainly imagine so. Will those states ratify a constitutional amendment to use a popular vote to elect the president? Of course not!
There's lots of talk here about the electoral college. I think we should keep it.
Why? I live in Indiana. A bastion of republicanism, at least in presidential elections. There was never any doubt that Indiana would go to Bush.
As a result, Bush and Gore have both done virutally no campaigning in Indiana. They haven't disrupted our lives with their campaign events. I have not seen a single television advertisement for Bush or Gore. (I did see Bush in a campaign ad, supporting the Republican candidate for governor. But that was a rare event.)
I pity my brother, who lives in the Chicago suburbs. He has been subject to an endless stream of Bush and Gore ads. Chicago traffic was severely disrupted last week, as both Bush and Gore came to campaign there.
Let's keep the electoral college, and keep presidential candidates out of Indiana.
I see a lot of people saying Bush is going to be harmless as president, but there is something they are overlooking. Bush is likely to appoint between 2 and 4 supreme court justices to the Supreme Court this term because the justices are going to be retiring.
Please don't buy into that Republicrat FUD. Yes, the next president will appoint some SC justices. What this argument fails to take into account is the fact that which justices resign depends on who is president.
None of the justices are so infirm that they will have to resign within the next four years. None of the liberal justices wants to be replaced by a conservative justice, so if Bush wins, the liberal justices will all stay on, and only conservative justices will resign. Vice versa if Gore wins. This election will not change the ideological makeup of the supreme court.
." I just think that I should provide for myself, not that you or anybody else should have to through your tax dollars! Similarly, you should provide for yourself and not depend on my tax dollars.
I think that's an excellent idea. What confuses me is what that has to do with Bush being a better president than Gore.
I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on you. I, too, once believed the republican rhetoric about wanting smaller government. But their actions have spoken louder than their words, and I no longer believe their lies.
. They can arrive up to 10 days after the election as long as the postmark is on or before November 7.
That varies from state to state. My understanding is that in Florida, they must be received by election day.
The computer counts get it right the first time.
Except that absentee ballots have to be counted by hand. And most of the absentee ballots in Florida have already been counted and are included in the vote totals you're seeing, so those may very well change following a recount. It's only the overseas military absentee ballots that haven't been counted yet.
The Western voters are influenced by what they see on the Eastern results.
That's they're problem.
are Americans more likely to go out and vote if they think their candidate is winning, or if they think he is losing?
Judging by the voter turnout in this election and recent past elections, I think the answer is neither. They're more likely to go out and vote if they think the election is close, and less likely if they think it's a landslide (regardless of whether the landslide is for or against their candidate).
It's not because Hawaii's small that it's a forgone conclusion. California was called by all the networks the minute the polls closed (a minute or two before, even, if the clocks in my house are accurate, which they're probably not.:)
It is true. Even if the person is someone who would have voted for Gore if Nader were not running, his vote for Nader is only half a vote for Bush. Switching one's vote from Gore to Nader affects the margin of victory by one. Switching one's vote from Gore to Bush changes the margin of victory by two. A vote for Nader is half a vote for Bush.
Instant runoff voting (IRV) produces basically the same result without the practical problems of having to run two elections.
The only problem is that you have to rank candidates 1,2,3,etc. This may not seem that hard, but considering that old fogeys in Palm Beach can't even tell which punch-hole lines up with "Gore", I'm not very optimistic about educating people about IRV.
Yep, the Republicans have been spouting that line as long as I can remember. Don't feel bad, I used to believe it too. But after enough years seeing what Republicans actually did in office, rather than what they said, I wised up to their hypocrisy.
In 1868, *one vote* saved President Andrew Johnson from impeachment.
Nothing saved Andrew Johnson from impeachment. He was impeached. He was not convicted.
While one or two of your examples have merit, most are cases where one vote in a legislature, electoral college, or similar body made a difference--not the vote of one average person.
Perhaps your posts could use a little more critical thought, and a little less cut-and-paste.
Us vs. them??!! With Bush and Gore so close on 99% of the issues that Jim Lehrer had to ask them again and again in the second debate to differentiate themselves, without much success?
In this election, republicrat supporters even had to resort to whining about who would get to appoint supreme court candidates in order to scare people of a victory by the other candidate. Can't you come up with any more meaningful issues than that?
The press is not saying that all absentee ballots are military. What they are saying (if you bothered to pay attention to the reports) is that all the absentee ballots except overseas military have already been counted and are included in the vote totals that you're seeing.
Ruined the economy? The person with the most control over the economy is not the president, but the chairman of the federal reserve board. Since both Bush and Gore would reappoing Greenspan to that post, this election makes little difference to the economy.
Electoral votes have been cast against the popular vote of that electoral vote's region nine times in the past -- in a race this tight, it would seem more likely to occur than ever before.
It seems to me less likely than ever before. In most cases where it's happened before, the elector(s) who defected didn't affect the outcome, knew they wouldn't affect the outcome, and did it just to make a statement or somesuch. The one instance I know of where this wasn't the case is 1876, where there was some very shady dealing going on.
Of course, I won't rule out the possibility of shady dealing going on here too.
This article is so easy to refute it's not even funny. It shows that some voters have more power with an EC system than with a direct popular vote. What they do not take into account is that that power does not come out of thin air; it comes from voters in other states who have reduced power.
This election provides a perfect example: a voter in Florida has quite a bit of electoral power. I, living in Indiana, a state which votes overwhelmingly republican in presidential elections, have very little power.
With an EC, the overall average voter power remains the same. It's just distributed much less evenly than with a direct popular vote.
The fact that electors are chosen from among a party's faithful. In other words, electors from a state that Gore won are brainwashed zombies who believe that Gore is the savior of the world, and Bush is the anti-christ. Vice versa in a state the Bush wins.
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Could you cite a source for that?
The electors of Florida haven't been selected yet. It's not like they're 25 state employees.
The Republicans have chosen their 25 electors, and the Democrats have chosen 25 electors of their own. Whichever candidate is determined to have won in Florida, that party's electors will get to vote in the electoral vote.
These electors are chosen from each party's most faithful members. There's not a snowball's chance in hell that they'll vote against their candidate. (Yes, it has happened occasionally in the past that an elector didn't vote for the candidate he was "supposed" to, but in all cases the elector knew it wouldn't make a difference in the result of the election. And an elector never votes for the major party opponent of their candidate.)
To do that would require a constitutional amendment. To pass a constitutional amendment, it must be ratified by 3/4 of the states--38 states. If there are at least 13 states that won't ratify an amendment, it won't pass.
The electoral college gives more power to the voters of some states, at the expense of others. Voters in less populous states have more voting power than they would in a direct popular vote. This is because each state gets N+2 electoral votes, where N is more or less proportional to population. The "+2" increases the power of smaller states proportionately more than those of larger states.
Also, with an electoral college, voters in states which are often closely divided have more power than they would under a direct popular vote, at the expense of voters in states which always go strongly towards one party or the other.
Switching to a direct popular vote would take power away from those states where voters currently have above-average influence on the result of the election. Now, I haven't done a state-by-state analysis, but are there at least 13 such states which would lose voting power by switching to a popular vote? I certainly imagine so. Will those states ratify a constitutional amendment to use a popular vote to elect the president? Of course not!
Why? I live in Indiana. A bastion of republicanism, at least in presidential elections. There was never any doubt that Indiana would go to Bush.
As a result, Bush and Gore have both done virutally no campaigning in Indiana. They haven't disrupted our lives with their campaign events. I have not seen a single television advertisement for Bush or Gore. (I did see Bush in a campaign ad, supporting the Republican candidate for governor. But that was a rare event.)
I pity my brother, who lives in the Chicago suburbs. He has been subject to an endless stream of Bush and Gore ads. Chicago traffic was severely disrupted last week, as both Bush and Gore came to campaign there.
Let's keep the electoral college, and keep presidential candidates out of Indiana.
Please don't buy into that Republicrat FUD. Yes, the next president will appoint some SC justices. What this argument fails to take into account is the fact that which justices resign depends on who is president.
None of the justices are so infirm that they will have to resign within the next four years. None of the liberal justices wants to be replaced by a conservative justice, so if Bush wins, the liberal justices will all stay on, and only conservative justices will resign. Vice versa if Gore wins. This election will not change the ideological makeup of the supreme court.
I think that's an excellent idea. What confuses me is what that has to do with Bush being a better president than Gore.
I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on you. I, too, once believed the republican rhetoric about wanting smaller government. But their actions have spoken louder than their words, and I no longer believe their lies.
That would be rather difficult, seeing that there are only 538 electoral votes to be had. 270 electoral votes is an outright win; 269-269 is a tie.
Here is a more thorough, less biased comparison of several voting methods.
That varies from state to state. My understanding is that in Florida, they must be received by election day.
The computer counts get it right the first time.
Except that absentee ballots have to be counted by hand. And most of the absentee ballots in Florida have already been counted and are included in the vote totals you're seeing, so those may very well change following a recount. It's only the overseas military absentee ballots that haven't been counted yet.
That's they're problem. are Americans more likely to go out and vote if they think their candidate is winning, or if they think he is losing?
Judging by the voter turnout in this election and recent past elections, I think the answer is neither. They're more likely to go out and vote if they think the election is close, and less likely if they think it's a landslide (regardless of whether the landslide is for or against their candidate).
It's not because Hawaii's small that it's a forgone conclusion. California was called by all the networks the minute the polls closed (a minute or two before, even, if the clocks in my house are accurate, which they're probably not. :)
It is true. Even if the person is someone who would have voted for Gore if Nader were not running, his vote for Nader is only half a vote for Bush. Switching one's vote from Gore to Nader affects the margin of victory by one. Switching one's vote from Gore to Bush changes the margin of victory by two. A vote for Nader is half a vote for Bush.
You forget that in the U.S., complete morons can and do vote.
Gore? A liberal? Oh please. Do not confuse "slightly less conservative than Bush" with "liberal".
The only problem is that you have to rank candidates 1,2,3,etc. This may not seem that hard, but considering that old fogeys in Palm Beach can't even tell which punch-hole lines up with "Gore", I'm not very optimistic about educating people about IRV.
That's what the pundits said about Jesse Ventura.
Yep, the Republicans have been spouting that line as long as I can remember. Don't feel bad, I used to believe it too. But after enough years seeing what Republicans actually did in office, rather than what they said, I wised up to their hypocrisy.
Nothing saved Andrew Johnson from impeachment. He was impeached. He was not convicted.
While one or two of your examples have merit, most are cases where one vote in a legislature, electoral college, or similar body made a difference--not the vote of one average person.
Perhaps your posts could use a little more critical thought, and a little less cut-and-paste.
In this election, republicrat supporters even had to resort to whining about who would get to appoint supreme court candidates in order to scare people of a victory by the other candidate. Can't you come up with any more meaningful issues than that?
The press is not saying that all absentee ballots are military. What they are saying (if you bothered to pay attention to the reports) is that all the absentee ballots except overseas military have already been counted and are included in the vote totals that you're seeing.
Ruined the economy? The person with the most control over the economy is not the president, but the chairman of the federal reserve board. Since both Bush and Gore would reappoing Greenspan to that post, this election makes little difference to the economy.
It seems to me less likely than ever before. In most cases where it's happened before, the elector(s) who defected didn't affect the outcome, knew they wouldn't affect the outcome, and did it just to make a statement or somesuch. The one instance I know of where this wasn't the case is 1876, where there was some very shady dealing going on.
Of course, I won't rule out the possibility of shady dealing going on here too.
This election provides a perfect example: a voter in Florida has quite a bit of electoral power. I, living in Indiana, a state which votes overwhelmingly republican in presidential elections, have very little power.
With an EC, the overall average voter power remains the same. It's just distributed much less evenly than with a direct popular vote.
The fact that electors are chosen from among a party's faithful. In other words, electors from a state that Gore won are brainwashed zombies who believe that Gore is the savior of the world, and Bush is the anti-christ. Vice versa in a state the Bush wins.
Don't blame me, I voted for Browne.