Last night I watched CNN's analysis of what it would take for McCain to win. They had a map of the U.S. with blue, red and beige states. Blue for Obama, red for McCain, and beige too close to call. With the map they had in place, Obama has 273 electoral college votes from the solid blue states alone. Since you only need 270 to win, that means even if McCain takes all the beige states, Obama wins. So, this is why McCain is now pushing to turn Pennsylvania from blue to red, even though Obama currently has a double digit lead in Pennsylvania polls. If McCain can change the color of this one state he will win, even if EVERY SINGLE PERSON in all the blue states voted for Obama. So, there is a scenario whereby Obama could get 60% or more of the popular vote and lose the election. We all saw this in 2000 when Gore won the popular vote and lost. Gore held only a very, very slim lead in the final popular count, so it wasn't too big a deal. Actually apparently some contend that Gore actually didn't win the popular vote. With our pathetically shameful voting and counting system, no one will ever know for sure.

But I'm talking about a resounding popular victory, one that would clearly show the intent of the nation, being overturned by the electoral vote system. Could it happen? Yes. Will it happen this year? Probably not. McCain is not likely to take Pennsylvania. But the danger is there, and I fear for this country should a president get elected even though he (or she) is soundly defeated in the popular vote. The world will have a heydey with this. The nation will be in disarray. There will be a very strong movement to impeach the unpopular president from day 1. And I would be very surprised if there weren't some sort of revolt.

Are you thinking, "But that's totally hypothetical, there's only been three times (1876, 1888, and 2000) that the electoral victor didn't win the popular vote and even then, it was a very close, even contested popular vote. If it hasn't happened yet, it's not likely to happen in the future." That's what I thought until today when I stumbled upon a course of action that would cause a major discrepancy between electoral and popular votes. This is not a science fiction scenario. This is a very real possibility. If I could think of it, why wouldn't some of the wealthiest Republican individuals and corporations think of it???

Here's the scenario. What if about one year ago, Republicans had started funding an effort to relocate Republican voters from solidly blue and red states like California, New York, Illinois, Washington, Massachusetts, Texas, Georgia and Alabama to borderline states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Florida? Seem far-fetched? Not to me. There are enough Republican-run corporations to easily temporarily transfer thousands of employees from state to state. There is also plenty of money to help fund these efforts. Do you think that people wouldn't want to leave their home state? Well, check out the Residency Requirements for Voting. Establishing legal residency for the purposes of registering to vote is not difficult. It might require getting a driver's license in the state which you can do in Ohio by proving employment there. So, it might only require a committment of two or three months from the individuals being relocated. Apparently, this is already going on to some degree in Ohio.

In any case, whether this paranoid conspiracy theory happens or not, it points out the horrible flaws in the electoral college system. Putting the ultimate outcome of a presidential race on a single state, regardless of how the rest of the country votes, tremendously increases the potential for fraud and dirty politics. The electoral college supposedly gives power to smaller states and rural areas. But if this is the case, than why is it that in 39 of the 42 presidential elections, the popular vote agreed with the electoral vote? This fact alone would seem to prove that the popular vote is good enough and the electoral college should be disbanded. The potential of fraud and corruption under the electoral system is too great to allow to continue.

The other problem with the electoral college system is that if you live in a solid blue or red state, your vote means nothing. You can't change the outcome in your state, so why vote? It would be interesting to see if voter turnout increased dramatically if a true popular vote was put in place.

Click on the map to the right to see a fun interactive map you can play with to see how the current election would be affected if individual states changed color. You can also see color-coded results of historical presidential elections since 1789.

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History Lesson of the Day: Why Our Electoral System Sucks and How it Got to This Level of Suckage


UPDATE: Here's a link to someone who essentially calls me insane and an idiot: Most Insane Conspiracy Theory Ever