[thechat] Bowling for Columbine

[Erik Mattheis]

On Monday, January 27, 2003, at 03:26 PM, Madhu Menon wrote:
> If CandidateX gets more votes than CandidateY in StateZ, he or she
> wins in
> that state. Why not?

A few reasons:

1. Because if the fed government had no say in how states cast their
vote for pres, Gore would now be in the WH.

2a. Because we're dumb enough to think the "Electoral College" is still
the fairest way to elect a President.

2b. Here, when one votes in a Presidential election, one is not
actually voting for the Presidential candidate, one is voting for
someone to vote in the Presidential election (called an "El;ector" and
the Elector can vote for whoever they want ... although I think there
have only been one or two cases of this happening) (An Elector from
Washington DC threatened to do so in 2000 in protest of the fact that
because our capital city is not a state, DC has proportionately less
influence in Federal government. How ironic. Well, maybe not - DC has
no energy or pharmaceutical industries that I know of). The Electoral
College has it's roots from the time when people actually had to
physically travel long distances to convey information. An explanation
of how it works: <http://www.fec.gov/pages/ecworks.htm>
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Erik Mattheis
(612) 377 2272
<http://goZz.com/>
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