Election Methodologies Discussion WARNING: HERE BE DRAGONS!!!

[Steel General]

The system is fundamentally flawed, though better than most of the world. It is my understanding that the electoral college is not obligated to follow the popular vote, though they usually do.

[jfrazierjr]

The system is fundamentally flawed, though better than most of the world. It is my understanding that the electoral college is not obligated to follow the popular vote, though they usually do.

Yes, but that is fully by design. Let's just say for example that in New York City, LA, Miami, Seattle, and Philadelphia (I just picked a few cities) there are a combined 110,000 registered voters. Now, say that there is a total of 200,000 registered voters combined. With straight popular vote, if the voters in those cites when 100% for a single candidate for President and everyone else voted for the other candidate, 99% of the landmass of the country is totally unrepresented.

From my understanding, the Electoral college is apportioned almost exactly as the congressional seats are so that a State has an equal number of EC votes as they have Congressional representatives. Each state then has laws as to how they will appropriation those votes. Many states simply award the entire portion to whoever won that states popular vote, which gives some of the same effect as you mention. A few states can apportion votes split, ie part of their votes for one candidate and part to another based on the popular vote percentage. In my state, the ruling party recently changed from the first method (popular vote in the state winner gets all) to have the US popular vote winner getting all. Basically, this was a change since most of the presidential elections have gone opposite of their our state ruling parties favor for years. Not really fair, but hey, we elect these bozos. Hell, I would be fine if we could get a stalemate in the House and Senate and keep the whole damn lot from interfering in our lives, regardless of side....