[OFB Cafe] Electoral College (was Re: Bio Fuels)

[Timothy Butler]

> I understand that.  However, I think if a president managed to get  
> elected
> with say 25% of the national popular vote, people might seriously  
> start to
> wonder if there's not something wrong with the system.  I don't know  
> the
> numbers (I wonder how many Americans do), so perhaps it's not  
> possible that a
> president could be elected with such a small vote, but it's certainly
> possible to do it with much less than 40%

	Quite true. I'm not sure, off hand, if such a scenario would be  
possible. It might be, if the candidate who won only won each of "his"  
states by a slim margin and lost all of the opponents states by a  
landslide. Of course, while the coasts and the midwest vary a lot in  
opinions, for the most part, the differences are not so extreme as to  
bring something like that about.

	Also, it helps balance things that the biggest states seem to have a  
nice distribution of between left and right leaning.

	I admit there is the possibility of problems, but I'm not sure a  
straight popular vote would really accomplish a whole lot in the  
scheme of things. In fact, it would mostly yield more power to a few  
concentrated areas (like New York City) which have a much denser  
population.

	-Tim


---
Timothy R. Butler | "Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in.
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