Electoral Schmectoral
2004-11-05 18:35 - Rants
I hate the electoral college. The electoral college is a load of donkey's kidneys. The electoral college is held up by the constitution which I also hate. I found a new reason to hate it.
That reason is the 1992 election. It's a perfect demonstration of how foolish it is to round off our votes. It says this: In 1992, Clinton got 44,908,254 votes, Gore got 39,102,343 and Perot got 19,741,065. What does this mean? It means that discounting write ins and some other limited independents, there were 103,751,662 votes total. Giving Clinton 44% of the vote, Gore 37%, and Perot 20%.
But Clinton got 69% of the electoral college votes, Gore 31% and Perot got zero percent. Does that seem right? One fifth of America wanted Perot for president, and he actually got zero electoral college votes? Last week, before the presidential election, a coworker was asking people around the office who they would vote for. When he got to me, I replied, "I'm not registered!' To which he answered, "But every vote counts!" My obvious comeback was, "If every vote counted, Al Gore would currently be our president." There's no argument that Gore got more votes in 2000. He actually got 540,520 more votes than Bush. Yet, thanks to the wonderful rounding off that the electoral college brings to our vote, and a crazy mishap in one county of one state to exacerbate it, the people of America lost, and their votes did not count!
