Results of the election...

[mittmaman]

We are not Americans, so please forgive my ignorance...

 

When can we expecte the results of the election? I obviously remember the fiasco four years ago, when it took days (...or was it weeks...?!?!) to have official/reliable results, but I would think this was a unique situation...?:D

 

Do results usually come out the same evening - or rather during the night? Is there an official "timetable" that will be followed? (we will watch Cnn...)

 

I am looking forward to your replies - and seeing whether this will be a very, very long night for us in Europe...or no night at all;)

 

...believe me, the world is watching...:001_unsure:

 

...OMG...just now saw the "no-politics post"...I hope this doesn't count...it really is a purely technical concern...

Edited November 1, 2008 by mittmaman

[TeacherZee]

I am in the same time zone as you. I am going to get up at midnight and start watching. Some of the smaller east coast states might start calling the results around that time. But I would prepare for a long night:D

 

As I said I am getting up at midnight. I have a class at 10:30am and I figure I will sleep for a few hours in the afternoon after that.

 

As to when it will all be over, I don't know. I do know that a friend of mine who works for congress sent out a message to the press this week telling them not to call the election before it was over. Hopefully they will have listened to her. :001_smile:

[melissel]

Usually, sometime in the middle of the night (for us), enough polling places in enough states have reported that there's a relatively good idea of who the winner will be. However, I don't consider it official until I see the news the next morning. The election you're referring to was the exception rather than the norm, but because of the heat and racial issues involved in THIS particular election, many are worried that there might be some trickery involved, so I think there will be very close scrutiny and possibly some arguing afterward (though I really hope not). In any normal election, I'd say you'd have pretty firm results by noon EST. Who knows what to expect this time?

 

Hope that helps!

[coffeefreak]

:smilielol5:

Your guess is as good as ours! My hubby thinks it will be a week before it's "Official." I think it will be 2-3 days. Where we live, they've already started counting the absentee and early voting ballots to try and avoid a long delay. They aren't allowed to discuss any results until 7:00pm on election day, but I keep waiting for it to leak out. I think this election is closer than 2000, and has more controversy. Therefore, I wouldn't expect any results for a couple of days.

[asta]

The vote is not official until the Electoral College meets on December 15, 2008, and their vote is certified.

 

Although the "the people of the states voted a particular way" portion is normally known within a couple of days of election day (November 4th), that vote is not binding, as the United States is not a direct democracy, but rather a democratic republic.

 

It is not until the members of the Electoral College have cast their votes, and those votes have been counted that we know who our next President will be.

 

 

asta

[Renee in NC]

The vote is not official until the Electoral College meets on December 15, 2008, and their vote is certified.

 

Although the "the people of the states voted a particular way" portion is normally known within a couple of days of election day (November 4th), that vote is not binding, as the United States is not a direct democracy, but rather a democratic republic.

 

It is not until the members of the Electoral College have cast their votes, and those votes have been counted that we know who our next President will be.

 

 

asta

 

Has the Electoral College ever voted differently than the way they were expected to?

[asta]

According to Wiki:

 

While not involving a "faithless elector" as such, there have been two instances in which a candidate died between the selection of the electors in November and the Electoral College vote in December. In the election of 1872, Democratic candidate Horace Greeley passed away before the meeting of the Electoral College; the electors who were to have voted for Greeley, finding themselves in a state of disarray, split their votes across several candidates, including three votes cast for the deceased Greeley. However, President Ulysses S. Grant, the Republican incumbent, had already won an absolute majority of electors. Because it was the death of a losing candidate, there was no pressure to agree on a replacement candidate. Similarly, in the election of 1912, after the Republicans had nominated incumbent President William Howard Taft and Vice President James S. Sherman, Sherman died shortly before the election, too late to change the names on the ballot, thus causing Sherman to be listed posthumously. That ticket finished third behind the Democrats (Woodrow Wilson) and the Progressives (Theodore Roosevelt), and the eight electoral votes that Sherman would have received were cast instead for Nicholas M. Butler. Electors pledged to a dead candidate are free to vote for whomever they wish just as electors pledged to a live candidate are.

 

Faithless electors have not changed the outcome of a presidential election in any election to date. For example, in 2000 elector Barbara Lett Simmons of Washington D.C. chose not to vote, rather than voting for Al Gore as she had pledged to do. This was done as an act of protest against Washington, D.C.'s lack of Congressional representation.[23] That elector's abstention did not change who won that year's presidential election, as George W. Bush received a majority (271) of the electoral votes.

 

 

asta

[LizzyBee]

After the 2000 election in which the media announced FL for Gore while the polls in the panhandle were still open (because they're in a different time zone than the eastern part of the state) and then had to recant when the numbers starting shifting toward Bush (and then the fiasco that followed), the media agreed not to announce any state for a particular presidential candidate until the polls are closed in CA. Depending on how close the election is, we might know by midnight EST Tuesday night. And then of course, there's the whole question of whether the media will do what it said it will do.

[Renee in NC]

After the 2000 election in which the media announced FL for Gore while the polls in the panhandle were still open (because they're in a different time zone than the eastern part of the state) and then had to recant when the numbers starting shifting toward Bush (and then the fiasco that followed), the media agreed not to announce any state for a particular presidential candidate until the polls are closed in CA. Depending on how close the election is, we might know by midnight EST Tuesday night. And then of course, there's the whole question of whether the media will do what it said it will do.

 

I was sure that during the Bush/Kerry election they were calling states - am I remembering incorrectly?

[H.S. Burrow]

I was sure that during the Bush/Kerry election they were calling states - am I remembering incorrectly?

 

I remember this too. I think the media agreed not to call a state until all the polls in that state were closed.

[Chika]

What about the whole mail-in ballot thing? Won't that (eventually) start making it impossible to determine the popular vote winner the day after the official election day? In our state many of the counties are now all mail-in -- so those votes will continue to come in up to a week or so after the election. Hmmmm ....

[sassenach]

What about the whole mail-in ballot thing? Won't that (eventually) start making it impossible to determine the popular vote winner the day after the official election day? In our state many of the counties are now all mail-in -- so those votes will continue to come in up to a week or so after the election. Hmmmm ....

 

I have no idea how it works in other states, but in California, your ballot must be recieved by 8pm on election day. Post marks do not count.

[TeacherZee]

I have no idea how it works in other states, but in California, your ballot must be recieved by 8pm on election day. Post marks do not count.

:iagree:

 

My absentee ballot in PA actually had to be with the election officials yesterday by 5pm.

[Chika]

I'm pretty sure ours have to be postmarked by the end of election day ... that's how I've always done it anyway, lol. But perhaps the rules changed when they went to all mail-in voting.

[Guest Virginia Dawn]

According to my ds, who is a number cruncher, pre-determining a winner is usually about statistics. Supposedly after a certain number of votes have been counted it can be possible to statistically determine who will win without counting the rest of the votes. In the past, the media has used that info to call the winners of elections. The problems arise when the count is very close, which it has been alot in recent years.

 

ETA:This is not to say that all the votes are not counted, just the criteria used by the media.

[Melissa in FL]

What about the whole mail-in ballot thing? Won't that (eventually) start making it impossible to determine the popular vote winner the day after the official election day? In our state many of the counties are now all mail-in -- so those votes will continue to come in up to a week or so after the election. Hmmmm ....

 

I'm not sure where you are. But, here in FL if it is not in by the 4th it does not count. I was at one of the campaign offices this past week calling people that had requested a mail in ballot. What we were doing was making sure that they mailed it in that days mail, had someone drop it off in the lock box at the early polling place, or took it to the election office on the 4th. A lot of people I was speaking to didn't realize that it had to be recieved by the 4th to count, they thought they just had to be mailed by then. It's probably different in each state, but that's what FL is.

Melissa

[Chika]

I just pulled out the ballot and looked ... it does say to have it postmarked the day by the day of the election. This is probably true all over our state, so millions of ballots could come in after election day. As more and more locations go to all-mail balloting, it seems that eventually we may not know by the next morning who the winner is .... unless, like some have said, the deadline is having the ballot turned in the day of the election, not just postmarked.

[astrid]

I have no idea how it works in other states, but in California, your ballot must be recieved by 8pm on election day. Post marks do not count.

 

Here in CT, our Town Clerk makes a run to the post office at 5 pm, right when the P.O. closes. If your ballot isn't in that mail, too late!

 

astrid

[coffeefreak]

The media doesn't CALL the election anymore, but they "project" who will win. I know, it's a silly difference, isn't it?

 

Also, every state is different. In the past, absentee and provisional ballots in most states were not really "counted" unless the race was close. Each County Clerk knows how many and to whom the absentee ballots were sent out. So, let's say 1000 were sent out, unless the vote is that close, why wait for them to be counted? At least, that's the way it was before 2000. Now, all that has changed. Our state started counting them last week (as stated in my earlier post) to expedite the results as quickly as possible.

 

Anyone from Oregon? I think they have the right idea. They mail everyone a ballot, don't they? Do you even have to register?

 

I LOVE politics!

[keptwoman]

I'm intrigued by the fact that the US is a democratic republic and the Electoral College has the deciding say.

So what purpose is the actual public vote? Does this in some way dictate how the College should vote? And if so how does it dictate this? Does each member of the Electoral College represent a certain area for instance and should vote for who wins the vote in that area?

What stops them doing what they want rather than what the public wants?

This is all very new and interesting to me.

[asta]

What about the whole mail-in ballot thing? Won't that (eventually) start making it impossible to determine the popular vote winner the day after the official election day? In our state many of the counties are now all mail-in -- so those votes will continue to come in up to a week or so after the election. Hmmmm ....

 

The popular vote winner is irrelevant. The President of the United States is determined by the Electoral College.

 

Forty-eight states are "winner take all": whichever candidate has the majority of the votes takes all of the electoral votes for that state. Majority can be as slim as 50% + 1 vote or as seemingly incomprehensible as the highest of 3 or more (42%, 38%, 20%). Only Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes based on the popular vote in different areas of their states.

 

Your state can wait for ballots because, as I said in my earlier thread, the election is not decided until December, when the Electoral College meets. The month-long lag gives the states plenty of time to count all of the ballots.

 

 

 

asta

[Kathy in MD]

I'm intrigued by the fact that the US is a democratic republic and the Electoral College has the deciding say.

So what purpose is the actual public vote? Does this in some way dictate how the College should vote? And if so how does it dictate this? Does each member of the Electoral College represent a certain area for instance and should vote for who wins the vote in that area?

What stops them doing what they want rather than what the public wants?

This is all very new and interesting to me.

 

It might help to understand that the Electorial College is an artifact dating back back to the initial writing of the constitution. The Electorial College was part of an effort to reassure that the interests of smaller states wouldn't overrun by more populous states.

 

Also originally there were no primaries to narrow the candidates to 2 major contenders. Instead there would be multiple contenders and the electors might have to go through multiple "mini-elections" to get a majority for the President and the Vice President. Some states would bind their electors to vote as the voters did for the first ballot, but they were free to change their vote for subsequent ballots. Also originally the President and VP didn't team up for a ticket, so the individual with the most votes became President and the runner-up became VP, even if they were of opposing political views.

 

Today many states require that the electors follow their state's vote for the initial ballot and custom dictates that the rest follow the state's vote. But because we now have an extensive primary system and 2 very dominate parties, I can't remember any recent need to go to a second ballot.

 

Periodically there is discussion about doing away with the Electorial College, but the results rarely differ from the popular vote, though 2000 was a major exception. One thing it does do is force the candidates to campaign in some of the toss-up, medium sized "interior" states, instead of putting all their effort into the populous coasts.

 

The less populated states generally still like it because their electorial votes are boosted by 2 votes. The formula for the number of votes is the number of congressional seats (based on population) +2. So Wyoming has 3 votes instead of 1. The larger states also get the extra 2 votes, but it doesn't make as big an impact as for them as it does for the smaller states. Of course, the size difference is so great these days that I don't think it really makes any difference.

 

So unless we have a long string of elections where the popular vote doesn't coincide with the electorial vote, I don't think we'll ever go to the effort and expence of passing a constitutional admendment.