Aw, stop whining.
The Republicans stole this election fair and square. Turnabout for Kennedy/Nixon is fair play.
Seriously, though, if you're going to demand that the popular vote control, you're going to need to recount the whole country. According to Washington Post figures, Gore leads the popular vote by 201,596 votes out of more than 100 million votes cast. That's only about 2 tenths of one percent. Far below the level for a mandatory recount in Florida (1/2 of 1%) and below the level of a mandatory recount in many other states. I don't know how many precincts there are in the US, but in our little county of about 5,000 voters there are over 20. That's roughly 250 voters per precinct. If that average is roughly right nationwide, there are roughly 400,000 precincts. So an average change of 1 vote per precinct nationwide would swing the popular vote to Bush.
You've got to look at the design of every ballot used in the nation. You've got to consider all the spoiled ballots in every one of those 400,000 precincts. You have to ask how many people mistakenly voted for Gore in other states. And on and on.
That's one of the reasons I, frankly, don't support popular election of presidents. It would create a national nightmare in close elections. And if the parties realized that to win all they had to do was steal an average of one vote per precinct, what kind of shenanigans would go on?
The electoral college may not be the best way to elect a president. But it's better than any option I've seen so far. |
