You really really believe you elected your President?

I've put this question here, because for me, it is utter madness...

Not being from the USA, I began to wonder how the POTUS was elected. In movies, the President wannabes always go and "court" powerful people from every states until they are told whether they would get their votes or not...

I was filled with the question: Why is it important to receive this indivudual's vote, if it is wholly democratic?...

So I began to look for the expression POTUS, and I found something about Electoral College on Wikipedia. ( I know, I know... )

"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)"

Rather than directly voting for the President and Vice President, United States citizens vote for electors. In many states electors are technically free to vote for anyone eligible to be President, but in practice pledge to vote for specific candidates[2] and voters cast ballots for favored presidential and vice presidential candidates by voting for correspondingly pledged electors.[3]

Electoral College. ( It's funny, because in the mini-series Rome, a College was crime instituted... )

Anyway... Electoral College. So Americans vote for somebody that pledges to give his vote to a particular candidate.

With the vote being secret, and the apparent level of corruption in all political spheres, you really really believe you elected the President? I mean, what's a pledge for a politician, really? With the vote being secret, and all the corruption, you are really really confident the Voter will honor his pledge? How do you find comfort in this situation?

Don't worry, where I live, corruption is just as bad. Our voting system is simply totally different, and we get screwed another way. Thanks for your inputs!

Aresh

PS: I had to give the link to the page the way I did because the link was only bringing to a "disambiguation page"...

Just to sum up what others have talked about every time elections come around...

Electoral College Vote Threads by the 100's

reply to post by prionace glauca


Gee... Thanks... That'll make a lot of reading for tonight! But you didn't tell me what YOU thought about it... if you are American, that is. the 3rd rock is big, you know...

As I said, not being an American I have difficulty believing my vote would mount to anything as it is indirect.

There's no telling how long it has been since the will of the American people has actually put a man in the white house, if ever. Between subliminal propaganda, intimidation, vote-rigging and outright BS that we haven't even heard of yet, I'm sure that Bush II stole two elections, and Obama used lies and Chicago-style political crookedness to get elected. Of course, the point is all moot, as Obama will be the last president of the USSA.

reply to post by warpcrafter


LOL That's what I don't understand; with all the pixie dust used, why not use a system that gives the impression the vote has any real importance...

[edit on 22-5-2010 by Aresh Troxit]

I imagine that this has been covered numerous times on these forums and I, myself, have even authored a thread regarding the electoral college.

1) Electors are not politicians. They are bound by the laws their respective states write, i.e. 'You, as an elector, will vote as the majority of the state/district votes.'

2) There are two ways the electoral college can be handled; winner take all, by means of national or statewide votes (There are states that have adopted the idea of the winner of the national popular vote will recieve all of that states electoral votes), or winner of district popular vote, Nebraska and Maine have this system.

So, really, the idea that we don't elect anyone confuses me. When a majority of people vote for someone in a certain state the winner of the votes will get the electoral votes. This has some inherent issues, but to avoid problems with gerrymandering or doing away with the college all together we have to stick with it.

reply to post by links234


Thanks for the info. Where I live, we vote for a "deputy". If he/she wins, they get to sit in the Parliament. The party that has the most deputy elected gets to be the ruling party for the next 4 years. But the candidate won't get all the votes, those that went to the loosing candidates "stay" with the loosing one. It gives you an idea of the candidate's strength and favor from the public. So one who isn't popular better speed his/her number.
We can have independent parties, meaning they have not enough candidates to become the party with the Prime Minister. Some of those tend to be absorbed by bigger parties over time. You can have 4 to 6 parties that present a deputy for any given conscription. We have parties present in only one conscription... Those are the ones with the less political experiences, but they would get elected to prevent the manipulation on a certain topic that big parties can be subjected to.

It seems to me that there are less chances of stealing the elections with that system. Because when someone is favorite, it is talked about a lot and you can kind of know who will eventually win. ( Thru 100% pure untainted polls... as if... )

As for your college voter, does he/she not have the technical capacity to choose for who they will vote, regardless of their "pledge"? That's the part I find hard to feel confident with. To me, it looks like this is a "blind spot" on which it is, or would be, easy to have influence in order to manipulate the votes.
But you say that some States passed law to "force" the College Elector to follow the people's will? Doesn't that mean they are not confident of the elective model? At least, not confident of the College Elector to be honest?...

What I think has been missing in this debate is a simple matter of math:

While yes, the actual Electoral College vote is secret, the end result is not, we know how many people voted for whom.

However, the election for the electors is not secret by any means, the so-called "United States Presidential Election" which is actually the citizens of the US voting for the electors, has public reporting.

So to put it simply, we know how the people of the US voted for their electors and we know how the end result of the electors vote turned out. So thus, if any elector switches sides or gives their vote to another candidate, we will know about it, we just will not know which elector did so.

So look it up, if the electors vote matches the overall votes for the electors, the system is working. And this has been the case.

What I do not understand, and help out a Brit on this one, is why the United States uses such a complex system in order to elect their president? Would it not be easier for them to simply use the popular or geographically-based electoral count without using the actual electors? It seems like a step added for the sake of itself in the process to me.

Edit: This is of course, strictly looking at the Electoral College as an entity and process and not addressing any other theories regarding the rigging of elections or other tricks.

[edit on 23-5-2010 by ProjectJimmy]

My wife (an American) tells me this system is a last-ditch effort against the people making an irrational or uninformed decision. That the electors could vote against someone like say (for the sake of argument only) Hitler, even if the American people voted to elect him into office.

My response to this is that, while potentially noble, this is an affront to the people of the United States whom the government of their country is supposed to be comprised of and for.

If you make your bed with the devil, the spirit of republic representation dictate that you should then sleep in it I'd say!

reply to post by ProjectJimmy


Thanks! Your post has been very informative!

I am also puzzled by this step that is superfluous and most dangerous, in my mind. And if it can be known that an Elector switched sides, why the anonymity? Didn't they make a pledge? If everything else is public, then...

What happens with the votes that were not made? Are they automatically given to the elector or simply thrown out for the count?

One thing the electoral college does is make sure that candidates do not ignore the less populated areas of the country and only try to build up huge vote majorities in the urban areas and high population areas.

reply to post by ProjectJimmy


Knowing how the lobbies work in the States, what if instead of Hitler, the guy wanted to give free energy to the country? Would he be elected and then assassinated, or discarded because of being a potential danger to the economy?

I agree it is an insult to the American people. We elected morons or bad guys at times and either "made our time" or kicked him out of office. Period.

From the way I understand it, and I will leave this to an American with a good background in civics to flesh out more, the electors for the given candidate are carefully screened and highly loyalistic in their affiliations. Correct me if I am wrong on such, but I do not see any discrepancy within the recent election and electoral numbers that I am looking at (since WWII.) Apparently everyone votes, and everyone votes for their assigned candidate that they are loyal to.

So in essence, the American people are voting for highly partisan loyalists whom they have the utmost faith in regarding their ability to vote and their promise to vote for their candidate.

Even though it does not appear to have faulted in recent history, now that I am in fact looking more deeply at how the system works, it seems to be based on a great deal of faith and good-will. More power to the Americans if such a thing is true, because it shows a great honestly in the electors but I would still like to at least see some sort of check or balance on such a method.

Edit: Ok my wife backs me up on such an analysis, and she believes in it fully saying that "there needs to be some kind of faith in the system for it to work" but I still do not understand why the system is not based on a more concrete principal that values the individual voter's intelligence and rational nature more.

[edit on 23-5-2010 by ProjectJimmy]

reply to post by ProjectJimmy


My Faith is in God. My trust is in the candidate, not a "bought" pet dog, if you allow me the image.
So why the filter? Is it because the Electors are in a position of power to manipulate the people? Like having your boss telling you if "Raymond" gets elected, it'll be best?

I haven't slept all night and I fear I'm not as clear as I'd like...

( Following your edit: I couldn't agree more! )


[edit on 23-5-2010 by Aresh Troxit]

reply to post by DarkStormCrow


Ain't that a bit conflicting? Not ignoring the less populated area while "building" "huge majorities" looks like plain manipulation to me. Or at least the door is open to it and like ProjectJimmy said, it relies more on faith and good-will than a real capacity to elect who you want.
Hence the danger.

We all know the an election could be corrupted at many levels, yet there is no effort to improve certification and verification of the voting at the State level which directly impact Electors. What is amazing to is that elections have be done a certain way for decades/centuries and despite the improvements in computer technology they would rather deal with swinging chads and flawed methodologies which create significant doubt for the voting population.

It would be all to simple to implement digital signatures during voter registration and have the enitre vote stored in a read-only database for tally and verification. It's ridiculous that way things are done. With so much room human error and/or cheating, it only make sense to remove that element from the equation where possible. With a digital signature, users should be able to go back and query the voter database to see how they voted in any given election. The one thing computers do well, is give an element of accuracy and precision that will never be achievable with paper ballots. The same can be said for other government agencies such as Census... No reason why they could not have been done (to some degree) over the internet. I believe there is some lame law that requires they keep the paper tail for XX years which National Archive has to deal with. Whether they use paper, or plastic (CDs/DVDs/etc) for long term archives seems like a no brainer to me, but when it comes to the .gov brains are in short supply.
Until they have a decent voter database, the results will be hotly debated and contested. We all deserve verifiable realtime results.

reply to post by mapsurfer_


In my view, the very nature of this elective process prevents any form of tampering with it, even if it is to correct something that goes wrong. It is good to have fail-safes, until they start working against you.

And with the news of having political forums monitored by the government makes it less than likely it will ever happen ( a correction ), as only "comrades" of the leading party will say the Truth. It will not be long before the streets are considered a forum...

In my state (Nevada) in this last election Obama won the popular vote, that does not mean he won each district in the state he actually only won Clark County which contains Las Vegas and the majority of the population in the state. While Las Vegas was blue(Democrat) on the map the rest of the state was Red(Republican).

I would much prefer that electors be chosen by Congressional district and the winner of the popular vote of the state recieve the 2 votes for that state senators rather than a winner take all system.

By this method Obama would have recieved in Nevada 4 of the 5 electoral votes instead of just instead of getting them all and leaving vast areas of the state with no representation.

Obama would have gotten 2 congressional districts based on winning those districts and gotten 2 for winning the statewide popular vote. While McCain would have gotten 1 for the Congressional district that voted in majority for him.

While McCain would have picked up 1 vote in the college by this method in other states Obama would probably picked up votes while McCain lost votes.

I think by changing the way it is done as opposed to winner take all it would force the candidates to visit more states as they are trying to win districts instead of just states. With the present system all those folks in Red districts in states like California and New York have no representation and likewise folks in Blue districts in places like Texas likewise have no representation.

I prefer the electoral college and am not in favor of direct popular vote because of vote tampering and whatnot. I prefer a Constitutional Republic that operates on democratic principles as opposed to a direct democracy.

Originally posted by links234
I imagine that this has been covered numerous times on these forums and I, myself, have even authored a thread regarding the electoral college.

1) Electors are not politicians. They are bound by the laws their respective states write, i.e. 'You, as an elector, will vote as the majority of the state/district votes.'

2) There are two ways the electoral college can be handled; winner take all, by means of national or statewide votes (There are states that have adopted the idea of the winner of the national popular vote will recieve all of that states electoral votes), or winner of district popular vote, Nebraska and Maine have this system.

So, really, the idea that we don't elect anyone confuses me. When a majority of people vote for someone in a certain state the winner of the votes will get the electoral votes. This has some inherent issues, but to avoid problems with gerrymandering or doing away with the college all together we have to stick with it.

Ever seen an elector vote?.. me neither.. they could be raping the law & we wouldn't know it.

Who are these people?.. political party lackeys: "Electors are often selected to recognize their service and dedication to their political party.".. NOT to their country...loooll, the GOP & DNC are playing this nation for suckers.. and why shouldn't they?.. if people are really this easy to dupe, I need my own island of hot chicks who worship my junk like a god.

The link to the U.S. Office of the Federal Register is broken.

"Generally, the political parties nominate electors at their State party conventions or by a vote of the party's central committee in each State. Electors are often selected to recognize their service and dedication to their political party. They may be State elected officials, party leaders, or persons who have a personal or political affiliation with the Presidential candidate. Then the voters in each State choose the electors on the day of the general election. The electors' names may or may not appear on the ballot below the name of the candidates running for President, depending on the procedure in each State."

usgovinfo.about.com...

I voted for the opposition. Acorn voted for POTUS. they won