FoxNews has reported on this several times. They have an online report at http://foxnews.com/fn99/election_night/112900/electors_martin_serrie.sml .
As some of you may have heard, we--the citizens--do not actually elect the president. Instead, we cast our votes to indicate our preference for presidential candidates. Those votes are then used by each state to select a group of "electors" who vote for president. Each state has a number of electors equal to its total representation (Senate plus House) in Congress.
Electors are usually chosen for party loyalty. A few times in the past, an elector has "strayed" from his position and cast a vote for someone other than the candidate to whom he was promised.
I'm not trying to belittle our electoral system. For all its strange ways, I think it works out pretty well in the end.
However, this year the "Citizens for True Democracy" are urging people to contact Republican electors in order to "convince" them to change their votes and vote for Al Gore instead of George Bush. This organization has even listed the address and telephone numbers (sometimes the home address and telephone number) of the electors. Their website is at http://www.claremontmckenna.com/ctd/index.html . In addition to listing the Republican electors (no Democrats are listed), it contains a fair amount of their political B.S. about how to replace the electoral college with "proportional representation" systems. I was particularly unamused by their three proposed systems: Party List (commonly seen in Parliamentary systems), Choice Voting and Cumulative Voting. Pay 'em a visit and see what you think. Don't forget to take their polls (near the bottom).
By the way, did anyone know that one of Arizona's Republican electors is a man named Joe Arpaio? He appears to be a sheriff in Maricopa County, AZ.... Some of you may have heard of him?
As some of you may have heard, we--the citizens--do not actually elect the president. Instead, we cast our votes to indicate our preference for presidential candidates. Those votes are then used by each state to select a group of "electors" who vote for president. Each state has a number of electors equal to its total representation (Senate plus House) in Congress.
Electors are usually chosen for party loyalty. A few times in the past, an elector has "strayed" from his position and cast a vote for someone other than the candidate to whom he was promised.
I'm not trying to belittle our electoral system. For all its strange ways, I think it works out pretty well in the end.
However, this year the "Citizens for True Democracy" are urging people to contact Republican electors in order to "convince" them to change their votes and vote for Al Gore instead of George Bush. This organization has even listed the address and telephone numbers (sometimes the home address and telephone number) of the electors. Their website is at http://www.claremontmckenna.com/ctd/index.html . In addition to listing the Republican electors (no Democrats are listed), it contains a fair amount of their political B.S. about how to replace the electoral college with "proportional representation" systems. I was particularly unamused by their three proposed systems: Party List (commonly seen in Parliamentary systems), Choice Voting and Cumulative Voting. Pay 'em a visit and see what you think. Don't forget to take their polls (near the bottom).
By the way, did anyone know that one of Arizona's Republican electors is a man named Joe Arpaio? He appears to be a sheriff in Maricopa County, AZ.... Some of you may have heard of him?
