 A group of people who gather to cast their votes for presidential candidates  When we Americans cast our votes, (the popular vote) we are actually voting for electors, who will cast their votes for the presidential candidates

 2 reasons our Founding Fathers wanted one:  1. to give states w/ small populations more of an equal weight in presidential elections

 2. they didn’t trust the common man to be able to make an informed decision on who would make the best president

 But rather, when the Constitution was written,  not many people knew a lot about gov’t, politics, or presidential elections  Many were farmers & lived in rural areas, where they were much more concerned with providing for their families than with who was running for political office

Who’s she?!  Awww

Pre- nose job  Very pre- nose job 

 The Founding Fathers thought that these “common people” wouldn’t necessarily make the best decisions,  so the Electoral College was born

 In Congress, you have the Senate & the House of Representatives › How many senators does each state get? › # of representatives each state gets in the House is based on…  Example from 2000:  in the Senate, CA had 2 senators & CT had 2 senators  In the House, CA had 52 reps  & CT had 6 reps

+ # of reps in the House  Formula for electoral votes in each state: › # of senators

 But if the census finds that the population of one state has decreased over the last 10 years,  and the pop. of another has increased,

 the # of electoral votes that state gets changes, because  electoral votes = senators (2) + reps

 If there are always 435 reps in the House of Reps,  and each state has 2 senators,  how many electoral votes are there? 535 plus 3 from Washington DC so /2=269 Thus, a candidate needs at least 270 votes to win

 If, in CT, 60% of the people like you & me voted for Alex Trebek,  & 40% of the people voted for Will Ferrell,  our 7 or 8 state electors don’t have to cast their votes for Alex Trebek  Technically, the electors for your state don’t have to vote for the guy who won the popular vote in your state

 The Electoral College meets a few weeks after the presidential election › Since they almost always vote the way the majority of people in their state voted, the meeting is more of a formality  We know the outcome before they meet

 Usually, the candidate who wins the popular vote also wins in the Electoral College  When all of the electoral votes are counted, the president with the most votes wins

 Republican: George W. Bush  Democrat: Al Gore

 Many states were decided by only a handful of votes  The one state that seemed to keep flip- flopping was Florida Morning After the Election

 In the end, Gore won the national popular vote by nearly 540,000 votes  But he didn’t win the electoral vote

 The vote was so close in Florida that a recount was necessary Not to mention the so- called “dimpled” chads, or “pregnant” chads

 Computer recounts gave Bush a 327- vote lead for the state  (which altogether cast 6 million votes)  Because the difference was so small, Florida officials ordered another recount by hand

 Florida Secretary of State Kathleen Harris set a deadline for the recount  Although election officials worked tirelessly, the Florida Supreme Court later had to extend that deadline

 Eventually, the US Supreme Court ordered an end to the recount and ruled that the most recent vote total, which favored Bush, be certified the official

The day after that:

 Bush was ruled to have won Florida by 930 votes  He was then awarded all of Florida’s electoral votes, giving him 271  Gore had 266

Almost as likely as:  Well, if it is written into the Constitution, what would it take to get rid of it?  An amendment would have to be proposed by 2/3 of the House of Reps and the Senate,  then ratified by ¾ of the states

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