My sketchy understanding is that originally the purpose of the Electoral College was to allow the common people the ability to elect representatives who had the experience/education neccesary to elect the President. These representatives would get together, party, and listen to canidates. Then they would vote for who they thought was the best man for the job. [Or who paid them the most, depending on how cynical you are]
Now somewhere along the line, the States began passing laws that regulated the Electoral College. They could do this because the Constitution doesn't really have a lot to say on the regulation of the EC, thus that power falls to the States.
So is that anywhere close to correct? Can anyone explain how this thing used to work, how it works today, and when the change occured?
[US History]Electoral College
[US History]Electoral College
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Cain is a Whore
Instant Cash is a Slut
Cain is a Whore
Instant Cash is a Slut
For how it works today, the Electoral College for each state will vote according to the popular vote in each state. So if Illinois votes for the democratic candidates, the EC for Illinois votes for the democratic candidate. That's how a president can be elected while not having the popular vote. Certain states have more EC votes... hence why candidates will always hit California, Texas, New York, and Illinois heavily during the campaign trail.
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Serious Paul
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Except that for the moment, the electoral college serves an important purpose in federalizing our system. It insurses, for the time being, that a candidate can't win election by campaigning only in NY, SF, and Chi.
There is then a need to guard against a temptation to overstate the economic evils of our own age, and to ignore the existence of similar, or worse, evils in earlier ages. Even though some exaggeration may, for the time, stimulate others, as well as ourselves, to a more intense resolve that the present evils should no longer exist, but it is not less wrong and generally it is much more foolish to palter with truth for good than for a selfish cause. The pessimistic descriptions of our own age, combined with the romantic exaggeration of the happiness of past ages must tend to setting aside the methods of progress, the work of which, if slow, is yet solid, and lead to the hasty adoption of others of greater promise, but which resemble the potent medicines of a charlatan, and while quickly effecting a little good sow the seeds of widespread and lasting decay. This impatient insincerity is an evil only less great than the moral torpor which can endure, that we with our modern resources and knowledge should look contentedly at the continued destruction of all that is worth having. There is an evil and an extreme impatience as well as an extreme patience with social ills.