>> David Goldfield
One of the most difficult things to understand
for foreign students, or foreign officials,
is our Electoral College system.
You mean to say, “You guys don't vote directly
for the President of the United States.
You the leading democracy in the world, how
can that be?”
Well, our founding fathers decided that we
would not vote directly for the president.
In fact, in those days in the first few presidential
elections state legislators voted.
There was concern that people might not know
the candidates; particularly people say in
Georgia might not know folks in Massachusetts
because the distances were so great.
Of course we have nothing like that today,
but we still have the Electoral College.
So when we go into a voting booth, we are
not voting for Barack Obama, or for Mitt Romney.
We are voting for the electors for Barack
Obama and Mitt Romney.
Our presidential election is not really a
national election.
I mean the popular vote is interesting, but
it's really meaningless.
It's an election of states, and we tabulate
the vote by the electoral votes that each
state has.
