President-elect

[pne]

I keep hearing Obama referred to as "president-elect".

Strictly speaking, though, he won't be until the Electoral College up and elects him, though, won't he? Right now, people have only voted for electors; they just (many of them) thought they're voting for the next president.

Though I imagine having an elector vote for someone other than they pledged to do (or not voting at all) is probably rather rare.

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

You are right. And there have been cases of electoral college members not voting the way they were assigned to, but never in a case where it would change the outcome of who is President. And the electoral college members are selected for party loyalty. Technically, we didn't even vote for either Obama or McCain, we voted for who our electors would be, except nobody told us who they would be (it's a fun system, isn't it?) but they are selected based on their ability to vote for exactly who we told them to vote for.

Although several states have laws that if enough other states pass similar laws their electors will not vote for who their state voted for but for whoever wins the popular vote... it's a move to make the President be selected by popular vote rather than the weird state breakdown we have now. But none of them are in effect as not enough states have such laws.

Anyhow, given the massive electoral college win in this case and that there would be a massive upset of the people if our process were mucked with to the extent that a clear winner of the election were not to become our President, it seems pretty clear he's our President elect, even if we haven't finished the formalities yet.

If it were close, maybe there'd be a possibility, but this was a really big win.

[node-ue.livejournal.com]

Actually, here in Arizona, I think we did know who our electors would be. I voted absentee, and on the ballot, above the name of the candidate and their running mate, in much smaller print, were the names of 10 people I'd never heard of and whose names I couldn't find online, with one exception (a local democratic politician).

I could be wrong, but I'm guessing that's who they were.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Oh neat. I didn't notice any such thing on my ballot, but also I'm legally blind, so it might have been there and I may have missed it.

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

I can confirm that there was no such thing on my ballot in MA this year or NH four years ago.

[bluewingedcat.livejournal.com]

The problem with going with a straight popular vote, however, is that the smaller population rural states will get disenfranchised. Possibly the best way to tweak the electoral college at the moment would be to adopt the system that Nebraska and Maine have, where their electoral votes are split up by counties.

This would also force the candidates to campaign in more states that they pretty much ignore. For instance, the western half of Washington state is pretty solidly democratic. The eastern half, however, is very very republican. Both candidates for the most part ignored Washington state though because it was a foregone conclusion for the democrats.

[leora.livejournal.com]

They still usually ignore small states unless they have some reason to think they matter. :/

That's one of the things I like about the 50 state strategy that Obama used more than most - whether or not it works politically, it does mean actually going and making your case aimed at more voters. And also, whether it works or not, it means that more voters hear your message and your message is crafted toward more voters, so I think it has a long term effect of slowly moving our country toward a bit more unity.

I was thrilled that Obama campaigned in some states he didn't have a chance in, because I don't like how states get written off. Of course, he could only afford to do that because he had a hell of a lot of money, but still... And campaigning in more states probably helped to make more people okay with this win.

There are a lot of unhappy McCain/Palin supporters right now, but four years ago the split was so close it was about 49% of the voters who were upset. Now it's a little bit of a bigger margin. A few more people are happy and a few less are sad.

Now, you can't just make differences go away by campaigning somewhere because some of our differences are very real differences of opinion. But I do think making the case to the people helps. I do think a better dialogue is a good first step, at least toward understanding and a smidge of empathy.

I'm not sure how to get politicians to really talk to all of the people, but I'd quite like to see them work more toward that.

[jixel.livejournal.com]

aren't there also a few states already that split the electors by proportion, or was that just during the primaries?

[leora.livejournal.com]

There is at least one state which does not necessarily give all of its electors to the same candidate. But it doesn't do it by proportion, it does it by regions within the state... like the election in miniature. I forget which state and as we haven't heard about it, I suspect it is all going the same way.

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

Maine and Nebraska both do this -- and Nebraska *almost* split for the first time ever. (The numbers were really close -- the last district wasn't called until the next morning, iiuc.)

[sedesdraconis.livejournal.com]

Latest word I've heard is the Nebraska 2nd district still isn't called, and is leaning back towards Obama.
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2835&u_sid=10480262

As crschmidt metions, if it is called for Obama it would be the first time either of the states which theoretically split their vote have actually split for different candidates.

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

"On 158 occasions, electors have cast their votes for President or Vice President in a manner different from that prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Two votes were not cast at all when electors chose to abstain from casting their electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 85 were changed by the elector's personal interest, or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless electors act alone. An exception was in 1836 when 23 Virginia electors changed their vote together." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector

[allegrox.livejournal.com]

I guess we've been calling him president elect because we don't have a term for what I'm going to start calling "popular president elect". Maybe it could catch on, except it's mostly useless for now.

There was talk a while back (around the primaries if I remember correctly) of requiring ballots to list electorates, but it only happened here in the primaries and only for presidential nominees. I'm not sure what happened to that.

Personally, I think the electoral college was the most ridiculous thing the founders ever conceived.