Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: editor Candas Cason, joined today as usual by start writer
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. Hey, Candice, Hey, Candice, who you're gonna vote for?
Speaker 1: I'm kidding. I wouldn't really ask you that, although I
Speaker 1: did hear recently that, um, there were some Hillary supporters
Speaker 1: who said that they intended to vote for Hillary in
Speaker 1: the general election. Have you heard about that? Um? No,
Speaker 1: I heard there were some Hillary supporters who were going
Speaker 1: to vote for McCain. Uh, and some who for who
Speaker 1: will vote for Obama too, sure, but there are some
Speaker 1: who plan on voting for Hillary. And of course you
Speaker 1: you say, why would you do that? That's a waste
Speaker 1: of a vote, right, sort of like a vote for
Speaker 1: someone like Bob bar someone who's not one of the
Speaker 1: teen major parties, right, or Ross Perrot, who I heard
Speaker 1: was considering throwing his hat in the ring. Why not? Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's a great question. I mean, is it a
Speaker 1: wasted vote? Um? I've spoken to my wife about this. Uh,
Speaker 1: she's voted third party before and I'm like, wow, you
Speaker 1: really wasted your vote, didn't you? And I think her
Speaker 1: response with something along the lines of, how is it
Speaker 1: wasting a vote when I'm voting for the person I
Speaker 1: want to vote for rather than voting for someone I
Speaker 1: don't really like to defeat someone I like even less.
Speaker 1: You know, it votes a personal it's a personal thing.
Speaker 1: It's not to be used strategically. So I see that,
Speaker 1: and you know, I my hat is off to the
Speaker 1: Hillary supporters who are going to vote for Hillary no
Speaker 1: matter what. You know, I they're gonna have to write
Speaker 1: her in. Um. But it kind of brings up this
Speaker 1: question of, you know, just how much does a vote count? Like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's been several instances in the history of
Speaker 1: the US where people have voted for one of the
Speaker 1: two major candidates and you know, one of them gets
Speaker 1: the most votes but still doesn't win the presidency. Uh,
Speaker 1: you were around in two thousand, right, Yes, Okay, I
Speaker 1: was just a baby, but I was here. Have you
Speaker 1: Do you know much about the two thousand election? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I do. Actually, it all boils down to the fact
Speaker 1: that Gore won the popular vote and by like half
Speaker 1: a million votes, which is pretty close because there's like
Speaker 1: a hundred million votes cast that year. And then Bush
Speaker 1: went on to when they vote from the electoral college. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's funny because predictions said the exact opposite would happen,
Speaker 1: that Bush would win the popular vote and Gore would
Speaker 1: get the votes from the electoral college. Yeah, because this
Speaker 1: is back before you know Gore was the environmentalist that
Speaker 1: he is, or at least as well known as the
Speaker 1: environmentalist that he Isn't I remember him being looked upon
Speaker 1: as fairly stiff. Uh. There's this great Simpsons episode where
Speaker 1: Lisa Simpson buys one of his books, and the information
Speaker 1: that his book has been purchased as transmitted to the
Speaker 1: White House. Somebody comes running and goes, Mr Vice President,
Speaker 1: someone actually bought your book, and he goes, well, this
Speaker 1: calls for a celebration. And he turns around and puts
Speaker 1: the needle on a record player and it's cool and
Speaker 1: the gang celebrate good times, and he goes, I will.
Speaker 1: So he's kind of a stuff shirt. So I'm surprised
Speaker 1: to get a popular vote, or of your that I
Speaker 1: liked him better. He was sort of a solid wall
Speaker 1: of man, and now he's got kind of yeah, and
Speaker 1: he's I don't know, I got a little softer. Well,
Speaker 1: you know that that two thousand election was determined by
Speaker 1: two lawsuits that were filed in Florida. Florida was the
Speaker 1: point of contention for the whole thing. Gore wanted a
Speaker 1: recount of the popular vote, and Uh Bush um didn't
Speaker 1: want one. So they sued one another, uh and sued
Speaker 1: the state of Florida because you remember, this whole box
Speaker 1: of votes went missing from the polling station to the
Speaker 1: counting station, right. Um. So there was a bunch of
Speaker 1: contention and everything. Finally the U. S. Supreme Court said, no, Florida,
Speaker 1: you can't extend the deadline for the votes to be counted,
Speaker 1: which meant that a recount wasn't possible. And you know,
Speaker 1: by proxy, Bush won the state and the election, which
Speaker 1: kind of leads me to my question, is it fact
Speaker 1: or fiction that my vote, your vote, anyone's vote doesn't
Speaker 1: really count. That's a really tough question, and thank you.
Speaker 1: I can't be miss history today. I think that that's
Speaker 1: really an ideological debate, and but I will be miss
Speaker 1: history for for a few minutes. Actually, I can't say
Speaker 1: whether I'll say it's faction. There you have it, it's faction. Um.
Speaker 1: It all boils down to the actual creation of the
Speaker 1: electoral college, and it wasn't something that we made up willingly.
Speaker 1: The framers of the Constitution put the electoral college in place,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of a compromise between essentially Congress designing
Speaker 1: the next president of the United States or a popular
Speaker 1: vote choosing the next president of the United States. And
Speaker 1: you have to, you know, sort of put the electoral
Speaker 1: college in context and think about the United States. It's
Speaker 1: as a nascent nation. And essentially the opinion among the
Speaker 1: framers of the Constitution was that people in general were
Speaker 1: not educated and informed enough back then to definitely before L.
Speaker 1: Gore invented the Internet, precisely to really make a good choice,
Speaker 1: a good, sound, informed choice for the president. There wasn't
Speaker 1: this widespread dissemination of information. You know. Today, you can
Speaker 1: go on the internet copyright al Gore. You can pick
Speaker 1: up a newspaper, you can download a podcast. There's so
Speaker 1: many ways you can find out, you know, what's really
Speaker 1: going on candidates. But back then they thought people you know,
Speaker 1: far flong across the coast wouldn't really know. So I
Speaker 1: can see this kind of necessary elitism right back then,
Speaker 1: Well I think that's a charged word. Maybe I don't
Speaker 1: know if I would say elitism. I would say, I
Speaker 1: mean they were doing this as the founding fathers, they
Speaker 1: were doing it as a fatherly gesture, and you would
Speaker 1: have to ask yourself, is that still impoor it in today?
Speaker 1: Is that? The second part of my question is is
Speaker 1: it anachronistic? I don't know. Again, I think that's a
Speaker 1: personal choice. I mean, do you honestly believe that everyone
Speaker 1: out there voting is making an affirmed choice, or do
Speaker 1: you think people are saying, well, I like Sarah Palin's hair,
Speaker 1: or I think that Barack Obama's kids are cuter. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it does seem like, especially in the circus that
Speaker 1: the two thousand and eight uh elections become Uh it does.
Speaker 1: It does strike me that people are making kind of
Speaker 1: shallow judgments about candidates rather than on the issues. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of that is coming from the
Speaker 1: candidates themselves. No one's willing to discuss the issues. Um.
Speaker 1: I was watching the Daily Show last night and they
Speaker 1: had a generic off on the topic of the economy,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to see who could be more generic,
Speaker 1: and uh, actually I think it was a three way
Speaker 1: tie between Obama, McCain and Biden and Sarah Palin actually
Speaker 1: came out sounding you know, the most specific. So, um,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's really discussing the issue. So how
Speaker 1: can a public be informed about where candidate stands on
Speaker 1: the issues if no one's discussing them at the same time, though,
Speaker 1: this electoral college that you're talking about, who who's who?
Speaker 1: Comprises that? How does that work? It's made up of
Speaker 1: electors and essentially each state has a number of electors
Speaker 1: that are equal to the number of representatives in the House,
Speaker 1: and then the number of senators representatives. Every state has
Speaker 1: two senators and then say a state head five representatives,
Speaker 1: they'd have seven electoral votes, right, okay, which means that
Speaker 1: it's a weighted system. If you're a state that has
Speaker 1: a greater population, you're going to have more, say, you know,
Speaker 1: as far as the electoral college vote goes. So that's
Speaker 1: why when candidates are out stumping, you hear them, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to win a state like Ohio or you know,
Speaker 1: it being really important for them to get the public
Speaker 1: riled up in California. Right, these are the states that
Speaker 1: have the most day, which could be fair or unfair
Speaker 1: depending on where you live. I mean, if you're a
Speaker 1: call Foreignia, and you may feel that you're represented. But
Speaker 1: if you live in a state with a very small
Speaker 1: number of electoral votes, you may feel that your vote
Speaker 1: really doesn't count. But it boils down to two different
Speaker 1: types of electoral votes, and the most popular one is
Speaker 1: called the winner take all system, and forty eight states
Speaker 1: use this. And essentially, when you vote in these states,
Speaker 1: you're casting a vote for the electors, and then the
Speaker 1: electors in turn cast their vote for the president. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it does because then you know you you've you've
Speaker 1: cast a vote for say the Republican, and you're actually
Speaker 1: voting for the elector right to vote for the Republican Canada, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so if enough people elect the Republican, then that Republican
Speaker 1: elector goes to vote. And so it follows the popular vote,
Speaker 1: right most of the time. How when does it not
Speaker 1: when you have what's called a faithless elector, And this
Speaker 1: is when the elector casts a vote that's different from
Speaker 1: the popular vote. And most electors won't do this, and
Speaker 1: there are some states that actually have fines imposed to
Speaker 1: electors who do. I think North Carolina imposes like a
Speaker 1: ten dollar fine. But this is a state law and
Speaker 1: it wouldn't hold water against the constitutional law which says
Speaker 1: you can't do that. So again, I mean if elector,
Speaker 1: if an elector wants to be taken seriously and he
Speaker 1: or she is elected by the state party, they're probably
Speaker 1: going to stay true to that particular party line, but
Speaker 1: they could conceivably betray the vote of the people who
Speaker 1: cast the popular ballots. Yes, I got you. Now. The
Speaker 1: other system that's used, and just Maine in Nebraska is
Speaker 1: called the district system, and this one is like the
Speaker 1: popular vote. The elector follows the popular vote, so that
Speaker 1: one was a little bit more closely aligned. I understand,
Speaker 1: I understand. So I know two thousand wasn't the only election.
Speaker 1: There were three others as far as I understand, right.
Speaker 1: That was John Quincy Adams and eighteen Rutherford B. Hayes
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy six, and Benjamin Harrison in eighteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: all of whom were eventually elected by the electoral college
Speaker 1: instead of the popular vote. And you know, it's funny
Speaker 1: because today a lot of those presidents, maybe with the
Speaker 1: exception of Adams, there's sort of not inconsequential because I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say any of our presidents has been inconsequential. Everyone's
Speaker 1: done something to either get people riled up or pacify
Speaker 1: them or please them. But off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: you know, I can't name any great success that success
Speaker 1: is associated with those administrations. So I don't know. Who
Speaker 1: knows what would have happened if the popular voted one.
Speaker 1: Maybe the tides would have turned in some way for
Speaker 1: our nation. Maybe so maybe so that may have happened
Speaker 1: very recently too, You never know. And I mean what
Speaker 1: happens when there's a majority as well? I mean what
Speaker 1: happens when there's a tie in the electoral College, I
Speaker 1: should say, I mean there has to be a tiebreaker, right, yes,
Speaker 1: well sort of. Then the vote goes to the House
Speaker 1: of Representatives and that is sanctioned by the twelve and
Speaker 1: at the Constitution. And there have been two elections in
Speaker 1: history that have resorted to death and that was when
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr squared off in eighteen o one,
Speaker 1: victory went to Teach and then in eight when John
Speaker 1: Quincy Adams competed against Andrew Jackson, and it went to
Speaker 1: j Q Adams. So, so what happens in this instance,
Speaker 1: I mean, like if if there if the vote goes
Speaker 1: to the House of Representatives to pick the the president,
Speaker 1: I mean what happens that Does each state get it
Speaker 1: one vote basically yes, and then you just keep voting.
Speaker 1: If there's a tie, yes, I got you. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: So this sounds a lot like um, like delegates at
Speaker 1: a at a party convention sort of. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: something I like to think of it in my mind
Speaker 1: as the People's Choice Awards versus the Academy Awards. You know,
Speaker 1: which is more prestigious. I think most of us would
Speaker 1: say the Academy Awards. You know, people get more gussied
Speaker 1: up for the oscars. You know, they're considered a little
Speaker 1: bit more formal. Um, But you know, who would you
Speaker 1: rather be thought more highly of? Your peers? The people
Speaker 1: who actually in your industry are a very well informed,
Speaker 1: very educated body of people who know your trade and
Speaker 1: say you're the best of the best. For this, I
Speaker 1: still say it's the latest and outdated. But thanks for
Speaker 1: clearing it up formula. Well, let our our listeners decide,
Speaker 1: of course. And in case you were wondering how many
Speaker 1: votes it takes to get the majority in the electoral
Speaker 1: cop Okay, how that you go ahead, go ahead, I
Speaker 1: just wanted everyone to know that I knew already. I
Speaker 1: know it's two hundred forty three. That's not right. I
Speaker 1: was just tested. And now everyone, now we have informed listeners.
Speaker 1: Go forth and vote, and remember there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as a wasted vote as their candice no. And you
Speaker 1: can read even more about votes and whether or not
Speaker 1: they're wasted when you read how the Electoral College works
Speaker 1: on how stuff works dot com for more on this
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