[Magdalen] Stupid question

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

The original concept was to have a trusted group of people elect the
president. It was too important to leave to the electorate only (by which
is meant male property-owners over the age of twenty-one years).They named
this trusted group the electoral college.

The electoral college was and is formed by people chosen by each of the
states.  They were the ones who cast the vote. The number of
representatives from each state is determined by statute, based on size and
other factors.

Since each state has a certain number of voters and its own method of
selecting delegates for the electoral college, it is quite possible that
you can have one candidate win the popular vote and lose the election, as
was the case recently when Al Gore won the popular vote by a couple hundred
thousand votes, yet lost in the electoral college.  But, hold on, before
you say that's not fair.  The central or federal government is built from
top to bottom with a bunch of assumptions designed to level the playing
field between large states and small states.  In some instances, there is a
disproportionate power given to the smaller states in view of the obvious
fact that if there were not such checks and balances, the larger states
would always have their way, and the smaller states would be reduced to
utter impotence. The most obvious example of this is the Senate, where all
states have an equal voice.   Choosing the president is not merely a matter
of popular vote; it has to do with that, but also with the will of the
individual states as well.

People sometimes say that times have changed, and it's time to sweep aside
all that antiquated stuff and bring the nation to a pure popular vote
governance system.  However, that's not really true. Look at the States and
you see some profoundly different ways of running things.  I am not often
very happy with the way this plays out, but it still is a matter of
respecting the will of the people, as represented by popular vote, but as
expressed by the will of each state as well.

The attached URL discusses one aspect of how this is playing out in our
land which causes me to think we may be closer to a fracture than we know.

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/01/southern_values_revived/

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 11:05 AM, Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I feel very ignorant in asking this, but I wonder if someone can explain
> to me--or point me to a source--why we don't elect by popular vote?  Why
> can't they just add up all the votes in the primaries and declare the
> winners in each party based on the totals?
> Then do the same with the general election--the one with the most votes
> wins. Then you wouldn't have the ridiculous situation we had with
> Bush-Gore.  And wouldn't that be likely to bring out more voters, since
> they would feel their vote actually counted?
>
> I'm sure there is some historical reason, and it may even be a good one,
> but I don't know what it is...
>