And here is my continuation.
First, Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidentail Elections is an excellent source of data. With the Bush v Gore election, it is very interesting to look at the map and see that most of it is blue (Bush color). Some would point to things like this as a plus for the electoral college. More states wanted Bush even if fewer people did. Of course it is also one of the faults.
The electoral college was somewhat born of the compromise that created the House and Senate. The number of electors a state gets is equal to the number of senators and representatives they have. The initial college was also intended to allow a president to be elected without national campaigns or politcal parties That was changed some after the 4th election, and the 12th amendment was born that tweaked things a bit. Again Dave has links with more of this information.
I would suggest just looking through all the history links on Dave's site. They cover a lot of the details.
Keep in mind also that the vote is for the electors. If you read the ballot carefully while it may have said George W. Bush or Al Gore there is fine print (or not so fine print) that reads something like "The slate of electors pledged to XXX". We could go back to voting directly for the electors. This was done because Joe Frontiersman knew about Joe LocalSmartGuy but had no idea about the presidential canidates. Joe LocalSmartGuy knew the canidates and knew Joe Frontiersman so he in theory knew who Joe Frontiersman wanted for president. During the early elections Joe LocalSmartGuy would be listed on the ballot as would lots of other electors. Then Joe Frontiersman could vote for him, feeling that Joe LocalSmartGuy would pick the right president. Things got confusing with this, and parties made it even worse. So this whole vote for the slate of electors is where the "all or nothing" tradition came from. Again, there are some laws governing it for some states, but not for all.
The analogy that I wanted to make though, is the US election would be like Europe picking a president, and your current leaders now simply become governors. Would you want it done by popular vote then? I don't have all the information on populations for European countries, but do you think someone from a smaller country would be really happy with it being popular vote? The larger countries would have so much more power then. The US states really were that powerful when the system was created, and they still hold a fair bit of power even now, though the county continually becomes more homogenous in that respect. But when you consider that, do you really want popular vote as the deciding factor? Even with modern communications do you think most people would vote for the best canidate or for the person from their home country?
Many of your other questions are about the primaries, which are not federally governed and are all about how a party chooses a canidate. I would like to see a third or fourth strong party come forth, or for all parties to go away again (our system is built to handle lack of parties you still techincally are voting for the electors and not the canidate) but that isn't human nature.
I think that covers more of what I wanted to cover, I have to run again.
First, Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidentail Elections is an excellent source of data. With the Bush v Gore election, it is very interesting to look at the map and see that most of it is blue (Bush color). Some would point to things like this as a plus for the electoral college. More states wanted Bush even if fewer people did. Of course it is also one of the faults.
The electoral college was somewhat born of the compromise that created the House and Senate. The number of electors a state gets is equal to the number of senators and representatives they have. The initial college was also intended to allow a president to be elected without national campaigns or politcal parties That was changed some after the 4th election, and the 12th amendment was born that tweaked things a bit. Again Dave has links with more of this information.
I would suggest just looking through all the history links on Dave's site. They cover a lot of the details.
Keep in mind also that the vote is for the electors. If you read the ballot carefully while it may have said George W. Bush or Al Gore there is fine print (or not so fine print) that reads something like "The slate of electors pledged to XXX". We could go back to voting directly for the electors. This was done because Joe Frontiersman knew about Joe LocalSmartGuy but had no idea about the presidential canidates. Joe LocalSmartGuy knew the canidates and knew Joe Frontiersman so he in theory knew who Joe Frontiersman wanted for president. During the early elections Joe LocalSmartGuy would be listed on the ballot as would lots of other electors. Then Joe Frontiersman could vote for him, feeling that Joe LocalSmartGuy would pick the right president. Things got confusing with this, and parties made it even worse. So this whole vote for the slate of electors is where the "all or nothing" tradition came from. Again, there are some laws governing it for some states, but not for all.
The analogy that I wanted to make though, is the US election would be like Europe picking a president, and your current leaders now simply become governors. Would you want it done by popular vote then? I don't have all the information on populations for European countries, but do you think someone from a smaller country would be really happy with it being popular vote? The larger countries would have so much more power then. The US states really were that powerful when the system was created, and they still hold a fair bit of power even now, though the county continually becomes more homogenous in that respect. But when you consider that, do you really want popular vote as the deciding factor? Even with modern communications do you think most people would vote for the best canidate or for the person from their home country?
Many of your other questions are about the primaries, which are not federally governed and are all about how a party chooses a canidate. I would like to see a third or fourth strong party come forth, or for all parties to go away again (our system is built to handle lack of parties you still techincally are voting for the electors and not the canidate) but that isn't human nature.
I think that covers more of what I wanted to cover, I have to run again.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.