I suspect it's just easier, although as election day approaches I suspect that what you'll see is a focus on the popular vote in the handful of states that are actually up for grabs and will actually decide the election by who they give their electoral votes to.

It's similar to the focus of pollsters on the popular vote in Canadian elections when it's actually seats in Parliament that determine who governs.

The only media outlet that I've come across that has been focussing on the electoral vote is the Huffington Post. Right now they have Obama at 281 certain and likely electoral votes and Romney with 191 with 66 still in play. It takes 270 to win.

HP is focussing on electoral votes.  Interesting.  If, according to the HP, Obama is 'certain' to get 281, doesn't that mean that he has the election tied up?  If so, or even if it's remotely that certain, why doesn't the other media outlets even mention it?  It's like they're choosing to not even mention it because keeping the candidates neck-n-neck is much more attention grabbing.

Not "certain." "Certain and likely."  Actually their definitions are "strong" and "leans." They have 240 "strong Obama" and 41 "leans Obama" with 191 "strong Romney," 0 "leans Romney" and 66 "Tossup." So in their projections, Obama needs to hold on to the "leaning Obama" states. If he does, he wins.

The problem that the electoral college system has created (and I don't think it's what the founding fathers intended when they came up with the system) is that the election now comes down to a few "swing" states that have significant electoral votes and whose populations are fairly centrist and can therefore "swing" either way (e.g. my neighbours South of Lake Erie in Ohio).

The Republicans assume that they have a lock on the traditional "red" states (e.g. many of of the Bible Belt states), the Dems ditto on the "blue" (e.g. New York and the New England states), so a lot of attention gets put on the few states that traditionally can change from election to election.

If I was an American, I'd be thinking it's high time for the electoral college to go, but I'm not. Instead, being a Canuck, I get to fret about first past the post versus proportional .

Mendalla

Mendalla, if you're able and it's not too much trouble, could you explain what you mean by 'first past the post versus proportional'?   I'm just trying to get a firm grip of the political system, both American and Canadian.

Also, if someone could help me to understand the reason for the electoral college, it would be appreciated.  I understand that it was created to give more power to less populated states, but why? 

In theory the electoral college system ensures that states with less population also get attention since they have at least 3 electoral votes [in the electoral college a state gets on elector per senator and one elector per seat in the House of Representatives]  In practice I don't think that happens.  Why spend a bunch of time in a state with 3 electoral votes when you could instead go to California or New York there there are so many more votes in play.

And the real problem, from a 21st century POV, is that the electoral college votes are an "all or nothing" proposition. Which means that if you get 50.1% of the vote in the right states you can win the whole ball of wax while technically losing the popular vote (case in point--2000 where if Gore could have won his home state he would have won the election).  But of course to assign the electoral votes proportionally in p[ractice means that you may as well as dispense with the college altogether.

I also believe (but can not cite a source) that the Electoral College was in fact a step to ensure teh "unwashed masses" were not electing the PResident directly.  In other words it was a touch of classism.  If memory serves there have been cases of "rogue electors" -- people who, when the college officially cast its votes, voted against the results in the state that sent them.  It is my understanding that technically the POTUS is not elected finally until the Electoral College meets--although that is largely seen as a formality these days.

Ok, so the EC gives at least 3 votes to states with a small population.  Have a look at this map; the states with low electoral votes are red.  How is it then that Obama is winning by a significant margin in the EC vote race?

http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2012/Pres/Maps/Oct09.html

In this scenario, who would have been the 'unwashed masses'?  The urbanites?

Actually, in practice, it means that nobody even bothers going to states like Texas, California or New York (3 of the largest states in the Union) because the results in those states are a foregone conclusion and the literally millions of people who are going to vote for Obama in Texas or Romney in New York or California simply don't count.

As to proportional representation it's no more democratic than any other system; it's just democratic (or undemocratic, depending on your point of view) in a different way. First past the post gives way too much power to larger parties (so, the question, why should the Conservatives have a majority with only 38% support?) but under a proportional system way too much power goes to the smaller parties (why should a party with 15% of the vote get to decide who governs?) The other problem with PR is that decisions about governance get made in the backrooms behind the scenes, with secret deals between parties so that really voters have no clue what they're actually voting for. At least under FPTP if I vote Conservative or New Democrat or Liberal I know basically what I'm voting for and I can hold those parties accountable.

Of course, the Weimar Republic had a system of proportional representation. A guy named Hitler (not well known as a democrat) was able to manipulate that system to his advantage, to say the least, and to everyone's surprise became Chancellor. The rest, as they say, is history.

In US Politics Red is for Republican and Blue for Democrat (so the opposite of REd and Blue in Canada).  And if you take all teh small EC states but the opponent takes California and NEw York and FLorida and Texas (although the same candidate takeing all 4 is unlikely in today's reality) then they win.  Then again you can have an anomaly like REagan in 1984 who took (as I remember) 49 states.

The poor.  The working class.

I agree completely Steven.  And the Ontario compromise of a few elections back which mixed FPTP and PR was almost incomprehensible.  In the end those areas of low popultaion (who are already largely forgotten about at times under a representation by populatin system) can get royally screwed under PR because they may have NO local representation.

HOwever a system for teh Electoral College where teh EC matcvhed the Popular Vote would look fairer to teh average voter I suspect (how it would change results is anybody's guess).  And maybe some states send electors based on that way I don't know (it is hard in the US to remember what gets set by the state and what gets set federally when it comes to the "how" of an election).

I don't see how the EC would ensure that the poor, the working class were not electing the POTUS.  Doesn't the poor living in populous states as well as lesser polulated states?

The founding fathers thought only educated white land owners should be able to choose the president, and so created the electoral college.

The system I would like for Canada, and for our provinces is where about 80% of the seats are by FPTP and 20% on the basis of % pf the popular vote with the 20% allocated to losing candidates who got the most votes in their party.  This might favour candidates from ridings that have close elections -- lose by a few hundred votes and they would be in a strong position to get one of the pop votes seats.  With this system, a majority in parliament would probably need closer to 45% of the popular vote.  Knowing your vote would still count would encouage non-Conservative voters to vote, even when they expect their candidate to lose in Alberta ridings, and similarly for other voters in other ridings who expect their candidate to lose.  Such a system would probably also reduce strategic voting.

wikipedia has an overview of the benefits and costs of the Merrycan Electoral College system

First past the post is how we elect our MPs right now. Whoever gets the most votes wins the riding. Whichever party wins the most ridings forms the government. The problem is that with our multi-party system, you often win ridings with <50% of the vote (e.g. 30-40% is enough in many ridings). Which, when you work it out on a national level, means that we can get a government controlling >50% of the seats in the House with <50% of the votes. Harper, for instance, went from a minority to a majority in 2011 and yet his % of votes cast was still slightly under 40% and only rose a couple percentage points over the previous election. So, he has a majority of the seats in the house but not the support of a majority of the voters (and definitely not the support of a majority of the population given that voters are only c. 60-70% of the population at present due to low turnouts at elections).

Proportional representation is a system used in some countries where a party's representation in the legislature is tied to their % of the vote. So if you get 30% of the vote, you get 30% of the seats. To be a majority, you actually have to get more than 50% of the votes. The problem with this is that unless you only have two parties, you never get majorities and this results in endless coalitions where relatively minor parties end up having their agendas added to the governing party's agenda in order to buy their support in the legislature. So, it is arguably more democratic at election time but can actually be less democratic in the legislature by having small parties wielding disproportionate amounts of power as governments try to build a majority coalition. Conservative religious parties in Israel, for instance, have benefited from this phenomenon. Possible fixes are having fixed elections with minimal or no confidence votes or using a mixed proportional system where part of the legislature is elected on a first-past-the-post basis and the rest are "top-ups" to bring the mix closer to the % of votes.

In the end, both have their problems. I lean somewhat towards proportional in principle but I don't really see it happening anytime soon and with our current polarized, fractious Parliament I think it would be problematic.

Mendalla

Because the common voter does not, in theory, vote directly for the POTUS.  THe common voter elects the members of teh EC who then elect the POTUS.

All states use a "winner takes all" model except for Maine and Nebraska. In those states, the winning candidate in each congressional district gets one electoral vote, and the other two electoral votes (for the two senators) go to whoever wins the statewide vote.

One of the really confusing things in the U.S. is that each state basically sets its own rules for the presidential election. Aside from the specific requirements of the Constitution, there's no national election law in the United States.

In Canada, I would personally go with a mixed system, similar to what Jim Kenney proposes. So we'd have the current 308 members of the House of Commons elected on the first past the post system and an additional 100 members elected proportionally, to correct a bit of the imbalance of FPTP. Under that system, the Conservatives would have received an extra 40 seats, the NDP 31, the Liberals 19, the Bloc 6 and the Greens 4, so the party standings would be:

Conservative: 206

NDP: 134

Liberal: 53

Bloc: 10

Green: 5

Sill a Conservative majority, but a much smaller one.

Which is what really blows my mind and where our system really wins, IMHO. Here, the feds regulate federal elections, each province regulates its provincial elections. So federal election rules are the same across the country, but there can be differences in provincial rules from province to province (so if Ontario had gone MMP, it would only have affected Ontario provincial elections, not federal elections and not other provinces).

Mendalla

I thank you all for your efforts; my head is spinning but I am understanding the Canadian system a little more.  Still do not understand how the EC in the US was supposed to ensure that the 'great unwashed' wasn't able to vote in the POTUS.  If someone can think of a good example to get that notion across to this thick skulled person, it would be much appreciated and prove your skill as a patient and effective teacher.

It isn't making sense to you because it really doesn't make sense, especially now when the EC vote is (in actual practice) a mere formality, a rubberstamping of the voting day results.  But teh EC system takes the direct vote out of the hands of the public.  I do not vote directly for Obama or Romney, I vote in such a way as to instruct my elector how to vote.  So yes everyone who was eligible and registered under the law of the day could vote, but they did not vote directly for POTUS.  In theory, and this is where the "rogue elector" comes in, the elector could vote contrary to his/her "instructions".  If the EC is of the opinion that something has gone wrong with the election I suppose they could raise that challenge in their decision.

I think the closest equivalency in Canadian elections is the delegate political convention.  Members of the party elect delegates with presumed instructions of which candidate they will support (admittedly this was an older version of choosing party leaders, where each area would elect a slate of delegates based on who the members in that area supported for leader) but did not vote directly for the leader.

To the best of my knowledge the only time in living memory the EC meeting has had any real potential drama was 2000, when there was a mathematical possibility of a tie in the vote.

In the early days of the great republic to the south of us, the presidential electors weren't even elected by the people, they were chosen by the state legislatures.

A tie in the electoral college (or the lack of a majority if there happened to be three candidates) sends the selection of the president to the House of Representatives, where every state (regardless of how many Congressmen it has) has one vote, and a majority of states are required. So the 1 Congressman from Alaska has equal weight to the 40-some elected from California in that scenario. That's only happened twice - in 1824 when the House chose John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson, and in 1800 when the House chose Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr.

a little off topic, but I have to say I like Joe Biden despite his 'gaffes'in the past. I'm not sure how much he does behind the scenes of The POTUS, but I like him. People were saying after the debate with Ryan, that he was arrogant because he was laughing but I didn't find that. I found him natural and confident and seemed honest, and serious about what he had to say without being too somber or too stiff.