On 19-Oct-00 Jamin Collins wrote:
> Sorry to continue off-topic, but there are a few items I feel need cleared
> up.
>
> You have a slight misnomer here, elections are most certainly not decided by
> the "swing voter" (as you put it). Shockingly enough, the election
> is not even decided by the millions of people that turn out to the polls
> thinking their vote counts. The sad fact of the mater is that elections are
> decided only by the electoral votes. What impact does this have? Simple,
> it means that the power to elect a President of America rests in a small
> sub-set of America. There have been a few occurrences where the popular
> (read majority of public voters) have elected one candidate only to have the
> electoral (read small sub-set) elect the other candidate. IIRC, this
> happened with Clinton's first election, the public voted for Bush and the
> electoral for Clinton.
The electoral college is required _on the first round of voting_ to vote for
the canditate that they represent. After the 1st round vote, if there is not
a winner, they are free to choose their vote.
Due to the nature of the electoral college (all the votes from a particular
state go to 1 candidate, and are not split as they were by the general
populace), it is possible for a candidate to carry large states (with large
electoral vote count) by a small majority (or even a plurality if there are
more than 2 candidates), and lose smaller states, totally, end up with less
than majority (or plurality) of the vote, yet be a clear cut winner in the
electoral college. not very easy to orchestrate, but it is possible. and
off topic :)
rgds,
-Greg
----------------------------------
E-Mail: Gregory Hosler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 20-Oct-00
Time: 09:26:02
If Bill Gates had a dime for every time a Windows box crashed...
...Oh, wait a minute, he already does.
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