Dear Founding Fathers: Wasn't the Electoral College supposed to... [View All]

[scottxyz]

...turn close election results into landslides or "mandates"?

Funny how it's nearly always done that - except in 2 recent elections: 2000 and 2004.

Just wondering.

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You can out the historical pie charts here yourself -
a POPULAR vote pie chart, next to an ELECTORAL vote pie chart
http://www.uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/
The ELECTORAL pie chart is always more "lopsided" (winner takes more)

Comparing the POPULAR VOTE pie chart to the ELECTORAL VOTE pie chart, you can see that the Electoral College "magnifies" the victory - giving the winner a bigger chunk of the pie (because of the winner-takes-all rule for most states).

I think I read somewhere the Founding Fathers did this on purpose, thinking a little extra show of unity couldn't hurt once the winner was declared. Little did they know that Karl Rove and the Urosevich brothers would learn to "game" this system - managing to boil it down to just a FEW states (FL, OH...) and a FEW counties in them (Cuyahoga, Palm Beach County...) where a little "tweaking" would be needed. And who knows - while they were at it, they could have easily thrown in a few "tweaks" in Blue states, just to get their boy's popular-vote totals up.

The minimally tweaked Rove-Urosevich-administered elections (2000 and 2004) are the FIRST ones in history where both halves of the pie for the Electoral College are roughly even.

Now what's all this babbling about your "Mandate," Bush?