But after a discussion today with a few buddies, i needed to vent. We got to talking about Presidential elections.. Seems that many people are misinformed on how the Pres. elections work. I do vote for city, county and state elections. You will not catch me at the polls for pres. elections. They had thought that was weird. until i explained to them how it works.. As per the constitution. The peoples vote does NOT put a pres. into office. The electorial college does. It has happened 3 times in US history that the pres that won the peoples vote was not the pres put in office.
"The Framers were wary of giving the people the power to directly elect the President — some felt the citizenry too beholden to local interests, too easily duped by promises or shenanigans, or simply because a national election, in the time of oil lamps and quill pens, was just impractical. Some proposals gave the power to the Congress, but this did not sit well with those who wanted to see true separation of the branches of the new government. Still others felt the state legislatures should decide, but this was thought to make the President too beholden to state interests. The Electoral College, proposed by James Wilson, was the compromise that the Constitutional Convention reached."
i just found it alittle frustrating... just had to vent...
Although the electoral vote is the final decision, the citizen's votes plays a major role in determining who gets the electoral vote. In 48 states they use the "winner take all" system where the winning candidate gets all the electoral votes for that state. So for example, if enough Republicans in Florida don't think voting against Obama will make any difference, and he were to get the most votes because the Democrats did take the time to vote for president, he could win Florida's electoral votes. Since the electors sent to vote are chosen by the winning party, it is rare that they vote against party wishes.
One other thing the electoral college does is gives the states with small populations a say in the process. Since each state gets at least 3 electoral votes (one for each senator, and at least one representative), small states get more electoral votes per voter. If it were simply done by number of individual votes, states like New York and California would have more say in who gets elected than Alaska, Iowa, New Hampshire, Montana, etc. And do we really want the people in California and New York deciding who our President is going to be?
yeah there are problems but it beats the "purple"finger system.
Anyone that chooses not to vote has no right to bitch about anything that goes on in this country. Sorry but that is my opinion
