AI
Friday, February 01, 2008 8:35:31 PM
Hi Jimsky,
It's a cinch. Each states' total electors in the Electoral College is equal to its number of members in the House of Representatives, plus one for each of its two US Senators, divided by the inverse of the average IQ of the state's residents, plus one elector for each backward state, minus one elector for each state between your state and the geographical center of the country, plus one elector if your state has a low population made up predominantly of religious conservatives provided they believe Noah really existed, and he managed to stuff two of every kind of animal including dinosaurs onto the arc.
Some states are winner-take-all - the candidate who gets the most votes in that state gets all the state's electors. That means, for example, the number of Californians who end up voting for the candidate that they did not vote for exceeds the population of most of the mid-west which voted for the other idiot. Every 4 years millions and millions of Americans vote for the candidate that they voted against.
And then there's the often forgotten fact that the electors do not have to vote for the candidate they are assigned to. Electors are actual people, and thus can be quirky.
Here's a cartogram of how the US looks state-by-state according to its electors. Note how many of the small states are not so small after all.
Now, the delegate system for the primaries is based more on population. That's why it is used only for the primaries, and abandoned for the election. To just count the popular vote in the presidential election could mean that nobody would bother to campaign in the heartland. For example, the entire middle of the country could vote for someone like George Bush, but Al Gore could be elected because he was popular in the more heavily populated coastal states. We certainly wouldn't want that!
Anyway, the simple way to remember it is that the popular vote is meaningless. In 2000 Bush won the presidency with half a million fewer votes than Gore. And if Kerry had won Ohio in 2004, he would have won the presidency with three million fewer votes than Bush. That's how we like things in America. We call it Democracy.
It's a cinch. Each states' total electors in the Electoral College is equal to its number of members in the House of Representatives, plus one for each of its two US Senators, divided by the inverse of the average IQ of the state's residents, plus one elector for each backward state, minus one elector for each state between your state and the geographical center of the country, plus one elector if your state has a low population made up predominantly of religious conservatives provided they believe Noah really existed, and he managed to stuff two of every kind of animal including dinosaurs onto the arc.
Some states are winner-take-all - the candidate who gets the most votes in that state gets all the state's electors. That means, for example, the number of Californians who end up voting for the candidate that they did not vote for exceeds the population of most of the mid-west which voted for the other idiot. Every 4 years millions and millions of Americans vote for the candidate that they voted against.
And then there's the often forgotten fact that the electors do not have to vote for the candidate they are assigned to. Electors are actual people, and thus can be quirky.
Here's a cartogram of how the US looks state-by-state according to its electors. Note how many of the small states are not so small after all.
Now, the delegate system for the primaries is based more on population. That's why it is used only for the primaries, and abandoned for the election. To just count the popular vote in the presidential election could mean that nobody would bother to campaign in the heartland. For example, the entire middle of the country could vote for someone like George Bush, but Al Gore could be elected because he was popular in the more heavily populated coastal states. We certainly wouldn't want that!
Anyway, the simple way to remember it is that the popular vote is meaningless. In 2000 Bush won the presidency with half a million fewer votes than Gore. And if Kerry had won Ohio in 2004, he would have won the presidency with three million fewer votes than Bush. That's how we like things in America. We call it Democracy.
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