Sunday, June 22, 2008
Who gets your vote?
While roaming around the Onion's web site I came across this for a definition for the electoral college: "electoral college: A process by which the number of states in the Union is narrowed down to the most important seven or eight". Yes, the Onion is a comedic news network, but is their some truth in this statement? If not how else would elections like the 2000 election work? In American politics the whole strategy to winning is to please the states with the most electoral votes, not for getting more of the American people to agree with your campaign. Since the founding of the constitution technology has advanced enough to allow all the votes to be counted. If all of the votes had a fair share, then the candidates would be forced to touch all of the voters not some. Would that make things more fair.
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2 comments:
Thanks for the Onion link. We'll be talking more about the Electoral College in class tomorrow; just one quick point now -- maybe surprisingly, it isn't the big states that get the most campaign attention; it's the "swing states," which usually have an average-ish number of EC votes (about 10 or so) but can go for either party. Compare states like Texas and Ohio -- Texas has a lot more EC votes, but it's a pretty sure bet for the Republican Party. In contrast, Ohio has a more modest amount of EC votes, but can swing either way, which makes it more "valuable" to presidential candidates.
I think it's funny that a lot of people I know get some, if not all, of their news or current political information from entertaining sources, be it the onion or shows like The Daily Show or The Colbert Report.
Kinda makes you wish Question Time with the President could actually work, huh?
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