Electoral College Map Will Tell the Story

As the Presidential election heats up this summer, rolls into the conventions and then heads down the home stretch in the fall you will see a lot of national polls saying Obama is at X%, Romney at Y% in the polls. And that'll be OK for what it is. And you'll hear plenty about those numbers.

But, as we all know from our civics class (and as was so dramatically brought home to us in the 2000 election) who gets the most overall votes is not necessarily the winner. In fact, that's not a measure of winning or losing at all in U.S. Presidential elections.

Nope. Let me re-introduce you to "the electoral college." While there are a lot of details to it, basically, each state counts for a certain amount of "electoral votes" based on the number of Congressional seats and Senatorial seats it has. So, a state like California has a lot of electoral votes while a state like North Dakota has very few.

Anyway, the way you win the Presidency is you win enough states to get you to a majority of the electoral college - 270 electoral votes.

This means that it's not really one big race the two Presidential candidates are running, but rather 50 separate races...focusing on whatever strategy and states they think will get them to the magical 270 vote electoral vote count.

All that to say...one way you can keep track of how things are going for real in the race is to look at an Electoral College Scoreboard map and track how things are going for your candidate over the next few months. There are quite a few out there. The one I'm currently looking at is HERE.

You can see that based on up-to-date polling in all the states that Obama would win more electoral votes than Romney at this point, but not enough to get 270 electoral votes. Not surprisingly, we see several key states with lots of electoral votes are in the "tossup" category. If one candidate were to win a few more of these than the other...that candidate will be the next President.

It's also kind of fun to see where each candidate has their strongest support. For example, check out the huge lead Obama has in California, NY and Washington State. Makes sense. Then look at Romney-land. Big leads in the South and rural states...also not surprising.

Here's to some interesting map watching.

Fraud About Fraud

In the 2000 and the 2004 presidential elections there were - to say the least - major questions about voters being turned away at the polls and purging of voters off the voter roles in key states...all of it conveniently occurring in districts likely to vote Democratic and in key battleground states (Florida and Ohio) run by Republican administrations. Hmmm. Guess who ended up winning those states? Right. Bush.

Conservatives do this in key districts because lower turnout favors their candidates, and if they can manage to get the "right" type of voter from their perspective to not have their vote counted (i.e. minorities) they stand an even better chance of winning. Problem is, this is pretty un-American and definitely not "country first" behavior. More KKK-like behavior. And, as a kicker...these incidents were not investigated because, guess again...who do you think runs those districts and states? Right again. Republicans. So, they don't investigate "their own." This was especially true in 2000 as Bush's brother was the governor of Florida.

Anyway, in 2000, 2004 and ever since, conservative groups have tried to "muddy the waters" to help minimize their pretty obvious disruption of elections by asserting that Democrats have systematically have perpetrated voter fraud by trying to get bogus voters registered so more votes can be cast for Democratic candidates. As in, hey, they're doing crazy stuff too!

Mind you, there have been no findings of "voter fraud" in places charged by conservatives. But hey, little things like facts don't stop "true believer" conservatives. And, the few among the American public who actually do pay attention to news and politics are unclear on exactly what's happening and just kinda give up trying to figure out who is to blame...or they feel good enough to blame the other party.

Now, this election year conservatives are doing it again but smarter. Instead of just their own voter suppression activities along with assertions of voter fraud, conservatives are now proactively planting voter fraud cases to set up the possibility of contesting close elections in battleground states later. 

A good overview of what's happening now is here. 

And here.

The idea for them is to raise the question of voter fraud in key districts of key states that are expected to be close on election day. In my opinion, to get all this going I think conservative groups may be actually manufacturing and submitting the false forms that are submitted to liberal voter registration groups. 

At any rate, if certain state races for president do turn out to be close, they can go back and say, "see, it's voter fraud by Democratic-leaning organizations" and make their legal and political case that certain large blocks of votes are not counted...or are at least taken out of the official tally while they are questioned or examined. In a close election, that could very conceivably give them room to declare victory in those districts and states.

And if the election is close but they are denied none the less, conservatives can again use the "muddy the waters" strategy to shuck the blame again.

So, how about this...how about we not make this a close election?