electoral college voting at the state level
 

i know in the past, on a national level, the popular vote hasn't always matched up what the electoral college has voted for as president. but in the past has the electoral college always voted for the popular vote of the state?

so for example. in florida, lets say obama has the most popular votes, but can the electoral college vote for romney? has this happened in the past?

Yes, it has happened before and is know as "illoyal electorals".

Since they are actual people, whom are elected to cast their votes, they may, at their own free will, decide last minute to swing and vote for somebody else. It's not very likely, since they will then never be elected to vote again. In a close election like this, one or two votes might swing the whole presidency!

Yhe electoral system is flawed in many ways, one basic error, which the absolute majority, regardless of political color, can agree on, is the error of having an even number of electorals. With this, an electoral voting round might actually end up in a tie! Then the winner of the presidency will be decided by the Congress, under current condition that would mean Romney becomes president since the republicans control the majority in the Congress.

Another nummerical flaw is the even number, 100 in the Senate, since each state gets to send 2 Senators each. A tie here, means the Vice President gets the final vote. The Senate also confirms the Vice President, so should the electoral votes for President end in a tie and the Congress gets to appoint the new President, the Senate will get to appoint the new VP, which under current conditions would be Joe Biden since the Democrats control the Senate.

Then we would have a Republican President and a Democratic VP, Romney/Biden !

Among many things to hope and pray for today, let's hope that we do not end up with a complete tie among the electorals.

do you have an example of this happening? like in 2000 ohio popular was for this candidate, but the electoral went with the opposite? (hypothetical with the ohio, just picked a swing state)

I would love hear some more about examples of this. What a silly system if you ask me.

And more importantly, has this ever changed who was elected president?

And how the fuck are these people? I don't recall ever electing someone to make the electoral vote.

Was just reading that if you guys have the electoral votes as being tied 269-269 (how they couldn't have ensured that there was an odd number to begin with, is beyond me. Then the house gets to select the President, and the Senate the VP. So technically, you could have Mittens with Biden, or Obama with Ryan. Who the fuck came up with that system?

Are you going to think it is a silly system if Romney has more popular votes but Obama has the EC votes?

Example: 2000 Bush v Gore

Gore won the peoples vote but Bush was elected president.

:disgust

but that was the total country popular vote

i'm trying to find an instance where one state's popular vote went one way, and the electoral college cast their vote for the other candidate

I think you guys have it a bit wrong. There aren't people voting for the electoral college. Each state constitutes a certain amount of electoral votes. By winning the popular vote in that state the candidate wins those allotted electoral votes. The ultimate winner of the election is the candidate who tallies the most of these electoral votes.

Please someone explain to me if I'm wrong.

Yeah most thought it was silly in 2000 when that happened.

oh ok, so the popular vote of the state automatically allocates the electoral votes each state is entitled to?

from what i understood, there is a group of people per state that vote on the president, and it is supposed to be influenced by the popular voted but not tied to. this was because when the first election was happening, the government felt that they were not intelligent enough to make the right decision, so people were put in to represent them

I am wrong. I just read up on it and you've got it right. Sorry!!!!!

haha its all good. been a while since school so trying to remember everything:winkwink:

You are correct in that each state gets a certain number based on the number of people they have in congress but how electoral votes are tallied in each state is up to the states themselves.

This is another good example of what's wrong with the system. When normal people don't know or are not able to do a quick "back of the envelope" explanation of how it works.

A system that is so tricky and intricate that normal voters don't understand it, then people tend to have no ideas to reform it, since they do not understand that it is flawed to start with. Some say it's part of a "rigged system" to keep the elite in power, but most probably more so it's an old thing which has remained because few understands it and then even fewer want to change it.

But yes, the electoral college is indeed made up of individuals, who actually (believe it or not!) have the right to cast their vote on either of the candidates during the voting on December 17th. They are elected to do one thing and that is to cast a vote for the people of their state, but just like the people of a state can change their mind at the voting poll booth, so can the electorals also do and there is nothing that can be done about it right then, right there. They will be seen as illoyal and never elected again, but they might still do some damage or in a close election like this even swing the Presidency.

It has indeed happened, in fact nine times since the year 1900, and in that time we have had 27 elections. As I wrote in my first post, it's called "illoyal electorals", look it up if interested.

I wrote the correct answer already in my first post, try reading it again. Why people, who have no clue how the system works comes in and says that I'm wrong is beyond me. If you want to correct someone or say they're wrong - well then you better be right yourself. I just happen to hate it when people try to correct me in general and especially when they are themselves wrong.

Just to be nice, I will include two links for extra reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elector...aithlessnes s

Hey buddy...I made a mistake. I read Wiki myself just after writing my first post. Came back in and apologized. Sorry again to you.

adraco, can you point out two instances where the states have gone against the popular vote of that state? i understand at the macro level, i'm trying to find instances at the state level

While you are at it do you understand how the news outlets are able to project winners while sometimes also saying that less than 1% of the vote has been reported? That boggles my mind.

Illoyal electors have never changed the election. Normally it's only one or at most handful of electors who, for some reason, swing their vote. Once have all electors of Pennsylvania gone against the outcome of their state election, but that was more than 100 years ago. The intersting part is that it has happened nine times since 1900. It's often used as some kind of statement, to put focus on something in particular.


Some states have a long history of voting for either party. They might even have a remarkably higher number of party members as registered voters. Then when they get the number of total voters, it's fairly easy to run a statistical model with a 90-95 % confidence interval and see that with this amount of voters, this amount of registered voters on each party side, combined with the voting history of this state, add in factors like "white males in rural areas tend to vote republican" and "women in urban areas tend to vote democratic" and then run that model a few times through your regular desktop computer, with the statistical program SPSS and you too would be able to predict the outcome with say some 90% certainty.

I believe that CNN at the closing of the voting booths in Ohio, had nine states marked on their map as "battleground states". Many other states were fairly easy to call either way, due to their voting history, demographic, and the surveys done leading up to election day as well as some surveys done directly with voters during the election day after people have cast their vote. The number you need, is often the total amount of voters who showed up, then you can apply a statistical curve of how they likely voted. With a high enough sample (million of voters) the mass will become pretty predictable.

Compare to Mr Skincash
I have no idea the size of your program, but let's assume you do a decent enough amount of sales every day and that your program have been running for a good number of years. That would give you enough data to be able to predict the average number of sales for a regular, normal Wednesday like today to a certain degree. With a big enough sample to draw conclusions from, one can be pretty certain about the behavior of the mass, people are not as spontaneous as they like to think. :)

Well Mitt lost both.