November 30, 2012
Red State, Blue City: How the Urban-Rural Divide is Splitting America The new political divide is a stark division between cities and what remains of the countryside. Not just some cities and some rural areas, either — virtually every major city (100,000-plus population) in the United States of America has a different outlook from the less populous areas that are closest to it. The difference is no longer aboutwherepeople live, it’s abouthowpeople live: in spread-out, open, low-density privacy — or amid rough-and-tumble, in-your-face population density and diverse communities that enforce a lower-common denominator of tolerance among inhabitants. The voting data suggest that people don’t make cities liberal — cities make people liberal. Read more. [Image: Robert Vanderbai]

Red State, Blue City: How the Urban-Rural Divide is Splitting America

The new political divide is a stark division between cities and what remains of the countryside. Not just some cities and some rural areas, either — virtually every major city (100,000-plus population) in the United States of America has a different outlook from the less populous areas that are closest to it. The difference is no longer aboutwherepeople live, it’s abouthowpeople live: in spread-out, open, low-density privacy — or amid rough-and-tumble, in-your-face population density and diverse communities that enforce a lower-common denominator of tolerance among inhabitants.

The voting data suggest that people don’t make cities liberal — cities make people liberal.

Read more. [Image: Robert Vanderbai]

12:45pm
(Notes: 509)
  
Filed under: State Electoral College Election 2012 Politics Map 
November 7, 2012
The 2012 Election Results: Obama’s Win in 1 Map In the end, it wasn’t even that close. Here’s how the electoral map has looked since 2 a.m. Wednesday. Barack Obama captured 303 electoral votes, while Mitt Romney has 206. The race for Florida’s 29 electoral vote is still too close to call. But the only question at this point is how large Obama’s margin of victory in the electoral college will be. The president also leads the popular vote 50 to 48 percent. Obama performed very well in swing states. Excepting Florida, he lost only Indiana and North Carolina from his huge 2008 victory, in which he took 365 electoral votes. We’ll update this map as results from Florida come in.

The 2012 Election Results: Obama’s Win in 1 Map

In the end, it wasn’t even that close. Here’s how the electoral map has looked since 2 a.m. Wednesday. Barack Obama captured 303 electoral votes, while Mitt Romney has 206. The race for Florida’s 29 electoral vote is still too close to call. But the only question at this point is how large Obama’s margin of victory in the electoral college will be. The president also leads the popular vote 50 to 48 percent.

Obama performed very well in swing states. Excepting Florida, he lost only Indiana and North Carolina from his huge 2008 victory, in which he took 365 electoral votes. We’ll update this map as results from Florida come in.

11:31am
(Notes: 169)
  
Filed under: States Election 2012 Obama Romney Electoral College 
March 6, 2012
America the Fixable: The Electoral College

justanotherbildungsroman writes: 

Is the Electoral College a law? It’s probably more of an institution, isn’t it, but it must have been ordained by some sort of law. And it’s what I would get rid of. We are all taught in school that America was the first real democracy since the Ancient Greeks, but that isn’t really true. The Greeks had a direct democracy (despite their restrictive understanding of citizenship), where every person had one vote on each issue. What we have is a representative democracy where we elect a small group of representatives to make decisions for us. Except that we don’t even directly choose our representatives. My understanding is that my vote instead goes to a middleman who has pledged a vote to a certain party or person. But only if enough of the rest of the population votes with me does our middleman get to vote for our representative. What?

The reason I, and many others, dislike the electoral college is simple. It distorts what the populace wants into what those already in power want. It was put into place at the inception of the United States simply because the Founding Fathers did not truly believe in their own decision to create a democracy. They worried that the uninformed citizenry would be too stupid to make the right choices so they created impediments. But those impediments are no longer necessary. The level of literacy in America has been very high for a long time now, and with the advent of the internet there can be even less of an argument for an uninformed populace. 

I am not saying that people won’t make stupid decisions in the polling booth. I do not expect that if the electoral college were to be removed today that all of a sudden everyone would agree with me politically. The change I expect to see would simply be a more true reflection of what the population wants in its representatives. I think everyone remembers that Bush would not have been reelected if the popular vote was the only vote. And if this change could take place, I think it would have ramifications for all parts of the government because we would be fixing the root of the problem: our flawed voting system. Unfortunately, everyone in power was elected through this process and I cannot imagine that they would be happy to get rid of it since it might endanger their position. Which is really all the more reason to get rid of it. Catch-22.

Interesting points. Do you think that the electoral college is obsolete? (Or, is there another bygone law worth eliminating?) Submit a post and let us know. 

Read more from America the Fixable at The Atlantic

12:33pm
(Notes: 47)
  
Filed under: America the Fixable Letters Electoral College Politics Elections 
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