WASHINGTON — Imagine that on election night, Barack Obama wins Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada plus the states that went Democratic in 2004, but John McCain wins the other states that went to the GOP in 2004.
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The result: A 269-269 tie in the Electoral College, and the House of Representatives has to choose the next president. And when the House decides, each state delegation gets one vote — meaning Wyoming’s lone member has the same clout as California’s 53.
Such narrow margins explain why the Obama campaign is targeting one congressional district in Nebraska, while the McCain forces hope to capture one district in Maine. All other states have winner-take-all systems, but Maine and Nebraska award some of their electoral votes by district.
Every four years, voters are reminded that it’s the arcane machinery of the Electoral College that determines the next president, not the popular vote. To reach the magic number of 270 electoral votes, the campaigns are battling over about 10 swing states and all but ignoring the other 38 to 40.
The Constitution’s founders devised the Electoral College to protect small states. Each state’s vote is determined by the number of House members plus senators. As the most populous state, California seems to have great weight with 55 electoral votes. But that’s one electoral vote for every 663,000 residents, compared with one vote for every 174,000 residents of Wyoming.
Defenders of the Electoral College say it confers legitimacy on close winners in the popular vote. Richard Nixon in 1968 and Bill Clinton in 1992 received less than 50 percent of the popular vote in three-way races, but solid majorities in the Electoral College.
Then came the 2000 election, with Al Gore losing after collecting 537,000 more votes than Bush. In 2004, a switch of 60,000 votes in Ohio would have given the election to John Kerry, even though Bush had 3 million more votes nationwide.
Polls show a majority of voters favor election by popular vote, but amending the Constitution is very difficult and also often takes years, if not decades.
The system can be idiosyncratic. Four times in the nation’s history, the winner of the largest number of popular votes did not win the largest number of electoral votes, and therefore did not become president.
It happened in 2000, when Al Gore got more popular votes, but lost the election to George W. Bush.
It also happened in:
* 1824, when popular vote winner Andrew Jackson lost the presidency to John Quincy Adams.
* 1876, when Samuel Tilden lost to Rutherford B. Hayes.
* And 1888, when Grover Cleveland lost to Benjamin Harrison.
The system is a relic of the early days of the republic when electors were supposed to be independent agents exercising their judgment in choosing a presidential candidate from a list of several contenders. It is intended to keep the "plebians" from actually wielding any direct power in their government.
All I know is this: if Barack Obama wins the popular vote with a 10% or more margin (as polls currently indicate) but McCain wins the electoral college, this reporter is going to personally call up Obama and say, "Ooooooh, the founding fathers got you good! Buuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrnnnn!!!"
But Obama's also leading in the electoral college by six estimates that I saw earlier today. They all put him at over 270. I guess Kerry was in the same situation in 2004, so who knows.
We should scrap the Electoral College altogether and go to direct vote. Or at least change all states' methods of choosing electors on a proportional scale. It makes no sense that Candidate A can win State 1 by only one vote and all the electors go to Candidate A and Candidate B gets shafted.
*--For behavior unbecoming anyone, perpetrated in real time over an extended--AH, FUCK IT! MORE MALIBU, BITCHES!!
here's what they should do. they should get rid of the electoral college. its like fucking university of pheonix or some cosmetology school. then they should get rid of voting altogether. they should let the pundits decide the election, give them what they want and let the rest of us not have to hear, "i'm barack obama and i approve this message," every two minutes for two years. they should settle it with a fight. but i don't think it would be guys. bill o'reilly could whoop any ass he wanted, but rush would have a heart attack and hannity would be trying to suck both their dicks and distract them, and then look at the democrat pundits, damn, i've never seen a bigger bunch of pussies. so it would have to be girls. let's say ann coulter and rachel maddow. only rachel has to grow her hair out. there's nothing wrong with prefering to do the mattress dance with your own gender, but you don't have to look all butch. shit, lady, you have an ok face but with that buzzcut you look like you could kick chuck norris' ass. and to be fair ann has to keep a space heater in her twat for a week prior so she doesn't get an unfair advantage from her magical ice powers. then we put them in a ring and broadcast the fight to every home and we all hope the tops come off. the election will be decided when it starts looking like saturday night cinemax. no president appointed until there's some serious muff diving. because every woman becomes a dozen times hotter when she's eating pussy. except maybe roseanne, because she's not really a woman, but a hippo hybrid. who wins? the american people. as for president, who the fuck cares, no one would attack a country that's so cool they decide their elections with a lickfest. we can say ron paul becomes president, because then we can laugh at how funny he looks every time he gives a press conference for the next four years. and for vice president, let's just give it to the shamwow guy, because your gonna pay $20 for paper towels, anyway.
I was doing a small U.S. tour of colleges promoting one of my many wonderful solo albums peace and love peace and love and I believe there was one bird at Electoral College who was into me shitting on her chest and then smearing it all over her naked body. I honestly can't remember though. I was so wasted on ludes and Jack I could have been fucking me own mum. Erm..anyway peace and love. Don't send me anything to be signed. Or objects. Peace and love.
