When Voting For President....Do Our Votes Really Count??? If Thats The Case, Whats the Electoral College's

Question

Role In The Presidential Elections???????

I read somewhere that the Electoral College elects our next president...Then whats the point of going out to actually VOTE?????

Answer 1

Currently, The Electoral College votes for the person that wins the majority of the public vote in their state. They generally give all of their votes if a majority of the population votes for a particular person, one or two state give the percentage (rounded) to each candidate. Under this system, it is possible for someone to win the popular vote and lose the election. If 90% of the people in New York vote democrat (which they do), democrat gets all their massive amount of electoral college votes, but if other states have much close elections, it is very possible for the electoral college to elect someone who does not win the popular vote. It will still be very close popular vote.

Answer 2

Your vote counts as a vote for how the electoral college will vote for you in Washington DC. It was a useful when we frist stated this country when votes could not be counted and received in Washington in a reasonalbe time. the states sent people to washington to vote for the people in their wishes. Yet over the years, the states have made the electoral college into something that it was not meant to be, by having some states that give 100% of the electoral college to one candidate for 50% plus one vote, this loses the 50% minus one vote cast. This is why the candidates spend so much time in a few states trying to gain these votes to win, like Ohio and Florida.

The electoral college is way pass it time for be done away with. It lived it useful function.

As in the last election the battle for a few states with high electoral counts, where they vote 100% for the biggest vote in the state. So if you voted for the other candidate then your vote was lost at this point.. this is where the electoral is out dated.. it steals votes from the common voter.

you should do every thing you can to get congress to make an amendment to do away with the electoral college.

Answer 3

How about reading an article written by a Presidntial Candidate?

"Hands Off the Electoral College" by Ron Paul
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul226.html

"The Electoral College vs. Mob Rule" by Ron Paul
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul214.html

an exceprt:
"Many Americans agree, arguing that the man receiving the most votes should win; anything else would be unfair. In other words, they believe the American political system should operate as a direct democracy.

The problem, of course, is that our country is not a democracy. Our nation was founded as a constitutionally limited republic, as any grammar school child knew just a few decades ago. Remember the Pledge of Allegiance: “and to the Republic for which it stands”? The Founding Fathers were concerned with liberty, not democracy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. On the contrary, Article IV, section 4 of the Constitution is quite clear: “The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a Republican Form of Government”

Answer 4

The Electoral College, under which states generally vote as a block - with all their electoral votes going to the winner of the popular vote in the state, is great for people who live in swing states such as Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. People in swing states (also known as battleground states) get lots of visits from candidates who pay attention to what they want. The candidates also spend a great deal of money in those states for campaign advertisements.

The Electoral College is great for the Miami Cubans because neither party wants to upset them by easing the embargo on Cuba.

Unfortunately, if you don't live in a swing state, you are just a spectator in presidential elections - The candidates don't even bother to visit spectator states except to raise campaign contributions, because it is assumed that the state will vote blue or vote red. Why bother with the needs of Texas or California, when you know that Texas's electoral votes are going to go to the Republican and California's electoral votes are going to go to the Democrat?

Some Republicans in spectator states, such as Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, favor keeping the Electoral College. These people claim that getting rid of the Electoral College would favor liberals on the East and West Coasts. But if John Kerry had won just 60,000 more votes in Ohio, he would be president today, even though Bush won the national popular vote by more than 3 million votes. In response, the conservatives who favor keeping the Electoral College argue that this was an anomaly that is not likely to happen again if we keep the present system.

Republicans tend to benefit when the voter turn out is low, and moving to a popular vote system, would increase the voter turnout, because every vote would count. Republicans have also be active in challenging the right of people to vote in areas where most voters are likely to vote Democratic (based on the argument that the voter is not properly registered or has been convicted of a felony or is ineligible for some other reason.) The current Electoral College system permits Republicans to concentrate their vote suppression efforts in a few swing states.

In theory, the Electoral College gives more power to small states like Alaska or Montana, because each state gets at least 3 Electoral Votes, but in practice the candidates don't pay any attention to a small state, unless it is also a swing state with roughly an equal number of Democratic and Republican voters.

There is a realistic plan to get rid of the electoral college, and the state of Maryland has just enacted it into law. The Hawaii legislature has passed a similar bill and it is awaiting the signature of Hawaii's Governor.

See: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/10/schneider.electoral/index.html

The idea of one person - one vote is an important principal in a democracy. But the greatest evil of the electoral college is that it concentrates power in a very few states, something that people who favor the Electoral College claim that it avoids.
Source(s):

For more information, see:

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/pages/explanation.php
and
http://www.every-vote-equal.com/

Answer 5

In short the popular vote is assigned to the electoral college.
This means everyone in your state votes. The candidate that gets the most votes wins the electoral college. The person who gets the most electoral votes wins. Most states give all the electoral votes to the popular vote winner but I believe that there are a few states that does split the electoral vote.

Answer 6

Did they not cover this in civics class in school?

The Electoral College was essentially a compromise between the bigger, more urban, more densely populated states, and the smaller, more rural, less densely populated ones. Consider this. Without the Electoral College, one could essentially campaign in just a few, heavily populated states and win the election, thus rendering the votes of those who live in more sparsely populated areas (meaning most of the country) meaningless. So in a sense, the Electoral College reaffirms the worth of a person's vote.

Answer 7

Perhaps this explains :

A general election does not elect the president. It states in numeric terms how many people voted for each candidate but only that. The election of a president is determined by the Electoral College though their votes usually follow the popularity of the voters.

Each state has a number of delegates attached to it who are members of the state’s Electoral College. It is these people who the voters in that state are in reality voting for as most of these delegates are voted for at the same time as the presidential election. The number of delegates a state gets is dependent on its population and its representation in the House of Representatives. Each state has 2 Senators but the number of Congressmen it has is dependent on its population. Therefore, California has 52 Electoral College delegates, New York 33 delegates, North Dakota 3 delegates and Maine 4 delegates.

The Electoral College is not a body that meets in one place. In fact, it is 50 bodies that meet in the state capital only during a general/presidential election in its own state.

The presidential election is done on a winner-take-all basis in a state. Therefore if a candidate has most voters voting for him in California he will get all 52 Electoral votes. This is true even if the number of people who voted against him is greater than the number he received :

California :

Candidate A : 5 million votes
Candidate B : 4 million votes
Candidate C : 2 million votes

Therefore more people voted against Candidate A (6 million combined) but he will get all 52 Electoral College votes simply because he got most votes as a candidate.

In America most elections at presidential level are between two parties and two candidates. However, the elections can legally see independent candidates running (Ross Perot) and the above example could happen - though in the 1996 election Perot got 7.8 million votes out of about 90 million votes.

Once a candidate had got a simple majority of Electoral College support nation wide he is declared the victor. In the highly unlikely event that no candidate gains an overall majority, the decision goes to the House of Representatives where each state votes as a block and each state block has one vote. Whoever wins here is declared the president.

The Electoral College system has been criticised because of its winner-takes-all basis.

In the 1996 election Clinton got 379 Electoral College votes out of a total of 538. This represents 70% of the total possible. Yet his popular vote stood at just 49%.

Bob Dole received 159 Electoral College votes (30% of the total) but got 41% of the popular vote.

Ross Perot got 8% of the popular vote (7.8 million votes) but no Electoral College votes.

In terms of states, Clinton won 31 states out of 50 (62%)

Dole won 19 out of 50 (38%)

Perot won none.

In this instance, Dole’s was nearest to his popular vote whereas there was a 13% difference in Clinton’s representation. In theory, if Perot had got the number of states that his near 8 million votes represented he would have got 4 states instead of none.

In the November 2000 election, George W Bush got 271 Electoral College votes with 47.9% of the popular vote while Al Gore got 266 Electoral Colleges votes with 48.4% of the popular vote. In this election the loser got more votes nationally but the Electoral College system 'pushed' through a victory for George W Bush. This election threw into doubt the legitimacy of the system but after a few weeks of soul-searching about the whole structure of what was a messy electoral process for this particular election, the issue of electoral reform has all but died a death

In the last century, on three occasions, the person who won most votes did not win the election as their rival got more Electoral College seats. This did not happened in the C20th century.

As the number of Electoral College delegates per state is known on election night, once the votes in that state have been counted and the majority of the states decisions are in, it can be concluded with almost certainty who will be the next president and the Electoral College’s post-election votes are merely a formality and a ritual gone through.

Answer 8

The Electoral College protects the interests of States of small population. If we didn't have it today then if you live in Oregon or Idaho or Vermont or Maine your influence would be easily overwhelmed by California and New York voters. I think the Electoral College should be retained.

The republic (not democracy) was designed to protect the rights of all, not to give power to the majority to overrule a minority.

Answer 9

How the Electoral College representatives vote is determined by the popular votes in each of the states. Your vote still counts. If one person more voted in the Florida precients for Gore in 2000, he would have been president instead of Bush. That is how important one vote is.

Answer 10

ok it incredibly is between the suitable inquiries to ask relating to the formation of our government. to understand the gadget you will desire to renowned somewhat historic previous: while the framers of the consitution have been putting it jointly, smaller states have been very stressful that they might have little or no say in the government. it incredibly is the reason the senate has 2 senators from each state - in spite of how massive the state is. meanwhile, extra advantageous states needed their due, so the home is according to inhabitants. So while it got here to the presidency, the comparable situation became into afoot. Smaller states have been stressful that a presidential candidate ought to win many small states - yet all the different candidate had to do became into win one very super state to negate the votes of many small states. back, no person might conform to this -when you consider that, the president might have in ordinary terms long previous to a minimum of one state and the different states would not have mattered. So the compromise became into this: each state could have particularly some electors equivalent to their type of domicile and senate individuals. in spite of in case you win the state via one vote or a million votes, you get all the electors - for that state. jointly as this did no longer completely decrease value the extra advantageous states, it gave the smaller states sufficient potential to be significant. in spite of if a candidate gained one massive state and have been given all their electors, he/she might nevertheless would desire to win some small states with the intention to get the presidency. jointly as no longer a suitable gadget, it helped even out potential between the small and extra advantageous states. wish that info is efficient.