Northton

The electoral system was a safeguard put in place by our founding fathers to, in part, prevent what has begun to occur more readily with the voting public (illegal registrations, Panthers at the polls, early voting, et al).

Northton, you might be well served to study American History 101 and American Government 101. And, by the way, you forgot Nixon losing to Kennedy.

For me, the bottom line is that the Constitution should be rarely and carefully ammended. I was reading it today and the last ammendment (1933) was repealing an earlier ammendment of prohibition.

To imply that our vote doesn't really count because of the Electoral College system established by the Constitution also implies that no individual's vote has EVER counted in the history of our country.

We are a representative democracy or republic. The Electoral College is just an extension of that system was use and readily accept to establish the laws of the land.

I'm not complaining. I voted for Obama, but I find it distressing that, several times, the real winner of the popular vote lost, and third party candidates had their votes taken from them and given to another candidate! That doesn't seem right at all. I believe our individual votes should count, period.

Hey Dida!

Let me show YOU a simple concept:

Gore had the majority of the popular vote nationwide by half a million votes, however Gore lost in Florida by 500 votes, giving Bush all of the Florida electoral votes. 271 to 266.

As a note, "One elector from the District of Columbia left her ballot blank to protest the city's lack of representation in Congress, leaving Gore with 266 electoral votes instead of 267." So an elector, in DC, tossed a whole bunch of people's votes out the window to make a separate political statement! That's crazy!!! (That one electoral vote did not cost Gore the election, however it seems to be a complete abuse of power for the sake of city politics.)

MOB RULE??????????????

Half a million votes is MOB RULE!!

Boy have they got you fooled.

"Under democracy (i.e. mob rule) the most populated handful of states would elect every president, while the small states would have no say."

Noooooooooo.... The majority of Americans would have the say, not the states.

Northton: What I see is twenty million people voting for Ross Perot and then someone saying, "Uuuhhh let's give these votes to someone else."

Sounds familiar...like something we all heard during the campaign "Spread the Wealth". The taking from one to give to the other. Someone's earned success taken away and given to someone who hasn't worked for success.

TM, I feel ya, but this isn't about voter fraud, this is about our legal election process. I'm sorry you are so bitter about your candidate losing the election. I have dealt with similar feeling for eight years now as Bush has run amok creating havock.

Sence, you make a good point but in this case they took away votes from the guy who had the least and gave them to someone who had more. What is that, trickle down voting or something?

DKS, that's the thing. If we counted individual votes, it wouldn't be about one state getting over on another, it would be about the majority of voters getting the president they voted for.

If someone, like Ron Paul, runs as an independent he has no chance of winning in our electoral system, and he won't make it past the primaries as a Dem or Rep because he doesn't fit their mold. So how, in the current system, could someone like Ron Paul get elected?

After 1872 almost every independent candidate was given zero electoral votes. Is that really a good thing, that no one can get out from under the rule of Democrats and Republicans? I mean, instead of furthering freedom, doesn't that just make us slaves to a select few and their way of doing things, as they keep passing the baton back and forth without regard for anyone else?