Expert: Lane - 11/4/2007

Question
QUESTION: If the Electing of a President consists of a 100 electoral votes, whats the point of having 300,000,000 people waste there time voting at all if there votes don't effect who is elected president?

ANSWER: This is a great question, and one which I have pondered over myself many times. The answer is that although it is true that the electoral college does make the final decision as to who becomes the president of the United States, they (usually) base their vote off the popular vote held in their respective state. In fact, many states have loose laws or pledges which require electors to vote in certain ways (A list of these states can be found here: http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/laws.html). Now, it is possible for one person to "win" the presidency by popular vote but for another to win by electoral vote. We saw this in the 2000 election when Al Gore did receive more popular votes than George Bush, but less electoral ones. This happened though because the popular vote totals were so close it was almost split 50/50.

Also, there are 538 electoral votes, not 100, and these votes are broken up per state depending on the population of each state. I would encourage you to visit the website of the electoral college (http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/index.html) because they have a lot of good information you may be interested in. I hope I was able to answer your question, please ask a follow up if I didn't. Thank you and have a great day!

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QUESTION: Just so that I'm 100% clear on this... The 2000 Election for example.. Gore vs Bush... Lets say for the sake of agument, Gore recieved 100% (300,000,000) of the popular votes but not 1 out of 538 electoral votes and Bush recieved 538 electoral votes but not 1 out of the 300,000,000 popular votes... Would Bush still win?

ANSWER: Even though that is nearly an impossible hypothetical, if it were to have occurred the answer is yes. Bush would still have won the presidency because he received the required amount (and more, in this case) of electoral votes needed. Thank you for you follow-up, I hope I was able to answer your question. If not, feel free to ask another. Have a great day!

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QUESTION: Just One Last Question... Was It Always Like This? Even When Abraham Lincoln, a common man, ran for presidency of the United States of America...

Answer
Yes it has always been like this. The founding fathers created the Electoral College System when they wrote our constitution to share power between the states and the national government. This is also part of the reason we have never gotten rid of it, because it is part of our constitution and an amendment would be required to end the system, which is very hard to pass. Thank you for your follow-up, I hope I was able to answer your question. If not, please ask another. Have a great day!