It is, because the number of representatives in the House of Representatives goes up and down based on the population of the state in question. It was a compromise between the more populous states and the less populous ones — the little guys were afraid that their concerns would be drowned out by the bigger ones, so it’s supposed to provide a balance of power.

But since every state has two senators, that means that their representation in the House of Representatives and their electoral votes are completely population proportional. Everyone starts with 2, and then get more depending on population.

I think the procedure you’re talking about is from the 12th Amendment, where the President of the Senate counts the electoral college ballots, and the House of Representatives votes by state in case of no majority in the electoral college. Is there a procedure in the constitution about settling state-level questions about electing the college members themselves?

That’s the exact argument that Bush v. Gore made to the Supreme Court: that Gore was trying to dictate how Florida appointed their electors by getting recounts. The talking heads newspeople were all freaking out and talking about how if neither candidate had the 270 votes required to become President, all hell would break loose and cats and dogs would start raining from the sky, even though it’s written right in the Constitution what you’re supposed to do in that case.

Our Constitution is actually a lovely and flexible document — the problem right now is that we have powerful people “interpreting” it in ways that are most convenient for them. The three branches of government are supposed to keep one another in check like a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, but once the legislative and judicial branches decided that , despite what it says in the Constitution, the executive branch should be allowed to control the other two branches, the whole thing fell apart.

Of course, once there’s a Democrat as chief executive again, suddenly Congress and the courts will discover that they have all of these powers that they were supposed to be using all along. It’s the eternal game of Calvinball that Republicans love to play: one set of rules for Republicans, another set for everyone else.

I think the procedure you’re talking about is from the 12th Amendment, where the President of the Senate counts the electoral college ballots, and the House of Representatives votes by state in case of no majority in the electoral college. Is there a procedure in the constitution about settling state-level questions about electing the college members themselves?

As an aside, here’s the article I tried to link to, since Pandagon ate my careful href attribute:

http://www.pbs.org/
newshour/media/media_watch/jan-june01/
recount_4-3.html

(Interestingly, it was Al Gore acting as President of the Senate who presided over the electoral college count that made Bush president. Or so sayeth the wiki, I haven’t found a footnoted reference.)

Sorry to wax all long-winded, I think the US system of government is very elegantly designed. Though in that way it’s like the Canadian constitution, their apparent purpose is possibly not their actual purpose. Another reason why I don’t think the 2004 election stole any level of democracy.

Each state gets X number of electors based on population, and that number can go up or down every 10 years depending on the census. So even if exactly the same number of people vote in Illinois and Indiana, Illinois has more say in who the president is because that state has 21 electoral votes and Indiana only has 11 electoral votes. In fact, even if more people turn out to vote in Indiana than in Illinois, it doesn’t matter, because Illinois has more electoral votes, and those trump the popular vote. When we cast our votes, we’re electing electors, not a president.

That’s why Bush was so desperate to hang on to Florida in 2000 — it was the only possible way he could win since he’d lost the popular vote. There’s only one other time in US history where the electoral and popular votes did not match up. What really pissed people off is that we have a procedure spelled out in the Constitution about how to handle that situation, but Bush forestalled it with his lawsuit.

You can see a chart here that spells out how many electoral votes each state has, and you’ll see why the candidates spend a huge amount of time campaigning in California, but not as much in Oregon, even though the states border each other.

Looking back, the Florida result was rather muddied even after the flying fur settled (PBS article). The margins at issue were or would have been hundreds (but not thousands plural) of votes in a single state depending on your favoured technique for counting. Given the bloody mess, and other issues such as the use of voting machines and disenfranchisement of certain classes of voters, I’m not convinced either way that Bush was or was not elected.

To the original post, voting away your democracy would imply that you have voted in the last American presidential election, which is obviously not the case. Maybe the issue is more that a plurality of American voters like American exceptionalism, corn subsidies, organizing other countries’ governments, voting chest-beating macho paragons of manliness into government office, having the biggest military, having dibs on client states’ oil reserves, ad nauseam. My own impression is that this is what many Americans are voting for, which is why I can’t reconcile the notion that what happened in 2004 was a vote to remove American democracy.

All that said, please vote for the candidate that isn’t going to start any more manly wars. It might be fatal to many people who don’t get to vote in your elections.

But because the founders of our country decided that elections should be decided proportionally rather than by the popular vote, Bush was able to bring a case in front of the Supreme Court and get them to shut down any further recounts. Which is why Bush’s limo was egged by protesters on the way to his inauguration.

So, to be perfectly fair, Bush has served two terms as president, but was only elected for one of them.

Trying this again:

Realize that “vast plural you” consists (in 2000) of 55% of eligible voters actually voting - and Bush got less than 50% of those.

Basically, Bush was elected by about 27% of the eligible voting public.

So the “vast plural us” didn’t vote for Bush, we just got stuck with him.

Given the continual effort (particularly by the “right wing”) to keep voting rates low (voting during the week, piling all sorts of burdens on voters in various states, “mysterious” voting machine malfunctions in predominantly-Democratic minority areas, etc.), I would say calling what we do “undemocratic” is a pretty fair evaluation…

Elections in the US right now are only a couple notches above the bogus phone voting in American Idol…

Realize that “vast plural you” consists (in 2000) of 55% of eligible voters actually voting - and Bush got American Idol…

Realize that “vast plural you” consists (in 2000) of 55% of eligible voters actually voting - and Bush got American Idol…

From my perspective, in the view of much of the American electorate, there is no bind. Judging by how they vote, they are quite happy with your country’s current leadership. They have thought about the issues, and voted in the manner that has produced the current government. Maybe you’re caught in a bind yourself, but I couldn’t say the same for the average Republican or moderate-right swing voter.

And to the thread more generally,

I wonder if this is something that the American right has figured out better than the American centre (I’m not sure Pandagonians would count as left in Canada or Europe). It’s not the level of your information on the issues that’s important, it’s the level of your political power that ultimately matters. If you’re not able to exercise political power, then your judgement on the “pluses/minuses, costs/benefits, and personal/societal impacts” matters only (within the usual constitutional limitations) as far as the incumbent thinks it does.

If you don’t like it… maybe you’d be better off with a government that thinks more like you? Vote for the ones that don’t start wars or shoot cruise missiles at people, perhaps?

And I still don’t understand the premise of the original post. You (vast plural you) voted for this, and keep doing so. How is this undemocratic?