Electoral system scrunitized

Indiana hasn't cast one vote for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson became president. But, every four years, thousands of Indiana residents vote for democratic candidates. \nThis is because the United States is the only democracy in the world which uses an electorate system.\nThe second article of the Constitution calls for what has since been dubbed the electoral college. Put simply, each state legislature must elect a number of electors equal to the number of congressmen representing that state. For example, a state with five representatives and two senators would have seven electors. This means a state's number of electors is somewhat proportionate to its population.\nIn 1996, President Bill Clinton beat republican Bob Dole 50-42 percent in the popular vote, but more than doubled the amount of votes Dole received in the electoral college according to www.historycentral.com. In the current campaign, according to politics.com, if the presidential election were held today, Texas Gov. George W. Bush would win the vote in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, while Gore would win in Illinois.\nProfessor of History Michael Grossberg said the electoral college was put in place to check the power of the people. Instead of voting for a president, the people would elect "wise people" who would, in-turn, vote on a president. Since then, the system slowly evolved until 1868, when all of a state's electoral began going to the party who received the majority of the popular vote. Essentially, the winner takes all.\nNow, 270 electoral votes are needed to win the majority necessary to become president. In 1996, president Clinton carried the state of California's 54 electoral votes -- 20 percent of the votes needed to win. At the time, California represented 11 percent of the nation's population according to Ellen Sung of policy.com.\n"It's an 18th century Constitutional idea about how you need to give people the vote but you also need to control them," Grossberg said. "Someone can get less in the popular vote and still have a massive electoral vote because they win big states. They might win New York, Texas and Florida very closely, but they get all those (electoral) votes."\nMany people contest the electoral college is flawed in that it doesn't let everyone's vote count as much, said IU Southeast Professor Emeritus Thomas Wolf said. He said a Democrat in Indiana can "forget about having any influence in the electoral college."\nHe said the argument in favor of the electoral college is two fold.\n"It gives smaller states greater influence," he said. "It secondly means that it's easier to determine the winner than if we used the direct popular vote. If you had a close election, you might have to wait several weeks to recount certain states or certain precincts."\nBut Wolf also said there are flaws in the system because it goes against what Americans believe about democracy. He said every vote should be equally important and geography shouldn't make any difference.\n"Finally it would mean, if every vote counted, everyone would make a great effort to see as many people vote as possible," Wolf said.