Blog 2.4

1. How does a candidate win in the Electoral College system?

2. When people cast their vote for president, what are they actually voting for?

3. When will the actual Electoral College vote count take place?

4. What 3 problems with the Electoral College does the article identify?

5. What are the penalties for an elector that does not vote as their state voted?

6. Why haven't there been many faithless electors before?

7. Why did the Framers choose to use the Electoral College?

8. How did political parties change this process?

9. What does the article say are the 3 reasons the Electoral College is a good system?

10. How do the American people feel about the Electoral College?

11. Explain how the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would work

12. Which states would be opposed to this plan?

Answers:

1. A candidate wins when 270 or more electors (that are picked by the popular vote) vote for a single candidate.

2. When citizens vote, they are actually voting for which party should send electors to vote for a presidential candidate.

3. On December 19th, the vote by the electors will take place.

4a. Candidates ignore non-swing states, for it is almost certain that there is a large number of states that will vote in their favor or their opponent's favor; this number is so large that it is not strategic to go attempt to win them.

4b. Electors don't even have to vote the way that the popular vote wants them to vote; there is such thing as faithless electors, who can vote rogue.

4c. This system was developed back when our country was created and hasn't really been altered to accommodate how times have changed.

5. Most states merely fine faithless electors, and in the cases where the state's penalty is not just a fine, no one has ever really upheld the stiffer penalties that states have.

6. Faithless electors are never really a problem because the parties almost always make sure during their vetting processes that the electors they send will not vote rogue.

7. "The founding fathers specifically did not want a nationwide vote of the American people to choose their next president. Instead, the framers gave a small, lucky group of people called the “electors” the power to make that choice. These would be some upstanding citizens chosen by the various states, who would make up their own minds on who should be the president."

8. "Political parties began to nominate slates of electors in each state [they won] — electors they believed could be counted on to vote for the presidential nominee [they wanted]."

9a. "Swing states tend to swing along with the nation rather than overriding its will, [and] the popular vote winner almost always wins."

9b. "The Electoral College ensures regional balance, since it’s mathematically impossible for a candidate with overwhelming support from just one region to be elected. "

9c. "The most serious objections to reforming the Electoral College come from rural and small-state elites who fear that under a national popular vote system, they’d be ignored and elections would be decided by people who live in cities."

10. "Large majorities of Americans would prefer a popular vote system instead of the Electoral College."

11. It sounds like it's saying that all of the votes in states where the NPVIC has been signed into law will be pledged to whoever wins the popular vote, if and only if the other states signed on to the NPVIC number 270 electoral votes total.

12. Republican and swing states would not sign this into law, though, for the states that have signed the NPVIC now are all Democratic, it would be a sign of big government (which Republicans don't like), and swing states like being able to flip flop when they want.