BBC

[den]

I can't help feeling the BBC has jumped the gun. Is this a projection or has counting actually finished?


2PM AEST

Comments

[beki.livejournal.com]

The counting is still ongoing. How we do our elections is screwy. The "popular" vote which is going on today is really to select the folks for the electoral college. The electoral college will be the ones who actually vote for the president.

I don't know if you remember all the talk going around on the pages of some of your American friends, but the "delegates" and "super delegates" are the folks who are going to make up the electoral college. They will actually vote for the president.

IIRC, the Kerry Bush election was a rarity in that the outcome of the electoral college was the opposite of the popular vote. The folks in the electoral college do not have to vote for who they say they are. They can change their mind at the last minute. So it's really all up in the air.

[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

McCain is giving his concession speech right now.

[hafoc.livejournal.com]

What they said. They're still counting the votes. The short version, though, is that the President wins not through popular votes, but by electoral votes that go by states. In some of the states it's pretty obvious to anyone, not just a pollster with reams of statistical analysis, that the state is going to go one way or another. So in those cases it's easy to project which way the state is going to go even with most of the votes as yet uncounted.

Interesting and frustrating thing, the Electoral College. Each state gets a number of votes equal to its combined number of legislators- two for the two Senators each state gets regardless, and then more equal to the number in the House of Representatives, which are divided up according to the population of the states (except each state gets at least one). Plus the District of Columbia, the DC of Washington DC, which isn't a state at all, gets some.

So it's quite easy, mathematically, for the President to win while losing the popular vote. If for example he won by one vote in each state he won and got no votes at all in the states he lost, he could end up having about 3/4 of the voters against him.

There have been two Presidents who won in the Electoral College but lost the popular vote: Grover Cleveland, and our own beloved George W. Bush. Dubya lost the popular vote in his first election. He won the popular vote in his second election-- if there was no significant vote fraud involved. (whistles innocently)

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

No, the delegates go to the conventions and nominate who runs for the parties. The electors are the people who vote for president and vice president after the general election. Electors are bound very tightly to how their states vote. Delegates and super delegates not so much.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

Electors cannot change their minds.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

I think I prefer our Westminster system. Everyone votes for the member in their electorate. The party with the most members voter in goes into power, and the leader of that party becomes Prime Minister.

When we become a Republic the president will either be a political appointee by Parliament, or someone voted in by popular vote, or the office of Prime Minister will be re-named President. Whatever method is chosen, we will maintain a healthy disrespect for the leader.

[pure-agnostic.livejournal.com]

There have been two Presidents who won in the Electoral College but lost the popular vote: Grover Cleveland, and our own beloved George W. Bush.

Ah, don't forget Rutherford B. Hayes lost the popular vote in 1876 but still got into the Whitehouse. The 1876 vote was a fiasco worse than the mess in Florida 8 years back. 3 states (Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina) could not declare a victor even though polls predicted wins in all 3 for the Democratic party. A commission of mostly Republican party hacks gave all the disputed electoral votes to Hayes. Oh, and this election had ballot problems akin to those in Florida in 2000 whereby the Democratic ballot was made to look like a Republican ballot. (Some states had separate ballots for each party then.)

[pure-agnostic.livejournal.com]

Actually, they can change their minds, but there are penalties. Anyhow, no faithless elector has ever changed the outcome of an election.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

And they're only committed to the first vote. But I don't believe there's ever been a tie, has there?

[pure-agnostic.livejournal.com]

Yes, there was a tie once among electors - and that threw the election into the House of Representatives. The confusing mess in the house led to the 12th Amendment requiring electors to cast separate votes for President and Vice-President.

In 1800, the candidates of the Democratic-Republican Party (Jefferson for President and Aaron Burr for Vice President) each tied for first place. However, since all electoral votes were for President, Burr's votes were technically for him being President even though he was his party's second choice. Jefferson was so hated by Federalists that the party members sitting in the lame duck Congress tried to elect Burr. The Congress deadlocked for 35 ballots as neither candidate received the necessary vote of a majority (8 out of 15 states) of the state delegations in the House. Only after Federalist Party leader Alexander Hamilton - who disliked Burr - made known his preference for Jefferson was the issue resolved on the 36th ballot.

The election of 1824 was also thrown into the House because none of the 4 candidates received a majority of the popular vote nor the electoral vote.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

Thank you :). I wasn't too lazy to go Googling, but I've got about 40 tabs open and am involved in other things.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

When you untie the statistical fraud (which is easy enough to do, and has been done), Bush lost the popular vote in 2004, too. And, of course, he ALSO would have lost the electoral vote - making him the second person to lose *both* and still occupy the office.

[dancinglights.livejournal.com]

The counting for historical record won't be over for weeks when all the absentee ballots come in (mine included!), but for all intents and purposes, the counting was mostly done when enough counties in Ohio were counted to tip it blue (liberals with a math background started celebrating about then), and done for certain when preliminary numbers came in from the West Coast, ensuring enough of an electoral vote landslide to avoid questioned results like the Bush elections.