[extropy-chat] Electoral vote tracking site (was electing ideas etc)

[Brett Paatsch]

Mike wrote:
 
> ... the popular vote doesn't elect the president, the electoral
> vote does, sort of like the parliament elects the PM, except 
> the electors are generally obligated to vote the way the people
> in their district voted. Some states don't make this mandatory.
> However, this does mean that, as in 2000, it is possible for a
> candidate to lose the popular vote nationwide but win enough
> electoral districts to win the electoral college.

I found this site reasonably informative. http://www.electoral-vote.com
Its tracking the electoral vote dispersal based on polls that come
in from time to time onto a graphical mapping. 

This link
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/vote2004/politics101/politics101_ecmap.html
invites you to "be Karl Rove or Mary Beth Cahill" and to plot a winning 
strategy using graphical historical data.

I clicked on View Election Trends and found New Hampshire on
the list of yellow colored swing states. 

It says, among other things, that "New Hampshire is one of 2 States
in which George W Bush's margin of victory was less than the number
of votes for Ralph Nadar - the other was Florida" 

I noticed the state governor is republican and think I recall you saying
he is supportive of (or at least not opposed to the free state project).
Do you know what he as a republican thinks of Bush? Do state 
governors criticise presidents of the same flavour? 

When you vote in New Hampshire what names will you see on the 
ballat paper there? Will it be Bush, Kerry and Nadar's names that you'll
see or will it rather be the names of electors that you vote for that in 
turn have promised to vote for particular candidates? Will you get
offered a libertarian option? 

Brett