Black Zarak wrote:

Frankly, I don't care enough about politics to let it fuck up a friendship, but I would like to stop hearing about how my choice was stupid and I was pressured into it by the force of the majority instead of making a conscious decision on my own based on my admittedly limited understanding of politics and my gut feeling (which I know is a terrible way to choice a president but I'm rarely wrong about my initial impressions of people.) Not saying you've been maliciously directing those kind of statements directly at me personally, but you know I'm not a stupid person and I would hope you would respect my opinions enough to not just lump me in as someone who voted Obama just because TV told me too.

I don't think you're a stupid person in any sense or capacity, nor do I think people for Obama are stupid in general. I don't think he's the best choice for the country, but I respect other people's rights to an opinion, and besides that, I'm in the minority.

I was teasing you the other night, I really wasn't trying to be a dick, and I'm sorry if I came off that way. But Massachusetts is a notoriously Democratic state, and there was no chance that McCain was going to win our 12 electroral votes. And then last night I see like 100 status updates from Massachusetts residents that are all some variation of: "WOO! WE DID IT! MY VOTE HELPED OBAMA WIN!"

And uh, no it didn't. I hate to spoil your high, but your vote absolutely did not matter. The Obama votes that mattered were the ones in states like Ohio, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia that Bush took in the last two elections. Those 105 electoral votes were the difference between a McCain victory and an Obama victory.

Maybe I'm just bitter. My guy will be in diapers in another ten years and your guy's barely out of them. This was McCain's last chance to be president. If Obama had lost, he would have plenty more chances.

But anyway, what's done is done. Come January, he's president. Maybe he'll do a good job. If he does, great. If he doesn't, then we can push some Republicans back into Congress in 2010 to prevent him from passing his intiatives and vote him out in 2012.

No, I understand what you're saying. It's a 24-7 job, shit could down at any momen, and you gotta be ready. And it definitely does take its toll.

It's hard to say if it would have harm him. We look at old people as being fragile, but we elect the same people into the Senate over and over again well into their 80s. Heck, Strom Thurmond was 100 when he retired. But I appreciate the sentiment.

I think we should keep the electoral system, but I think they should get rid of the winner-take-all approach that most states use. Right now, most states tally each voting district and whichever candidate wins the most voting districts wins all the state's electoral votes. The problem with this is that a candidate can several big states by a small margin, lose a bunch of small states by huge margins, and win the presidency without winning the popular vote. Apportioning electoral votes based on a candidate's success in each state would fix this.

The problem with using just the popular vote is that it gives too much power to populous states like Texas, California, and New York. The electoral college is designed to curb regional voting power and allow voters in smaller states to actually make a difference.

I disagree. A straight popular vote would essentially allow a tandem of the elitist Northeast and smug west coast liberals to pick our president every time and run our country into the ground with high taxes and activist government. It would completely fuck over Middle America, and create even more ill will between the red states and the blue states than there already is.

Touché, old friend. Touché.

Actually, smaller states get slightly more pull in the electoral system. Your electoral votes are based on total number of state reprensentatives and senators. Your total number of representatives is based on population, but every state gets two senators, and two votes to represent them. So each state is worth a minimum of 3 EVs, and that gives many smaller states a better deal than they'd get otherwise.

The important thing to remember is that we are a Democratic Republic, not a Democracy, and that's why we have this system.

Well, it would undermine the pull of California too. In the current political climate, the Dems have a guaranteed 86 EVs in New York and California. The Repubs have a guaranteed 34 in Texas, but if they don't take Florida and Ohio, they're screwed.

In an apportioned system, Obama would have only gotten 19 of NY's 31 and 34 of CA's 55. He still would have easily won, but the EV margin wouldn't have been as considerable.

I can kind of understand why they don't do that though. Calfornia has 55 EVs, Obama won 61% of the vote. 61% of 55 is 33.55. Do you round up, or not? In close elections candidates would be dragging each other into courts for recounts and demanding absentee ballots be counted. But at the same time, that would be pretty cool, because every vote would directly effect the percentage and thus every vote would count in some small way. In Massachusetts, there are conservatives who consistently vote Libertarian and liberals who consistently vote Green because they know the Democrats are going to win, so they just vote third party for fun. The other thing is that apportioning votes would allow third parties to build momentum. Most Americans don't take third party candidates serioulsy because they don't win EVs. Perot's Reform Party almost established itself in 1992, but after failing to garner a single EV despite getting almost 20% of the popular vote, America lost interest in them, allowing Dole and Clinton to lock Perot out of the debates in 1996.