Final thoughts on the election

As President-Elect Barack Obama continues to fill various cabinet posts and other positions in his new administration, I thought it would be interesting to look at some numbers from the election

The final electoral college vote count (270 needed to win) was 365 for Obama to 173 for McCain, now that Missouri's eleven electoral votes have officially gone to the Republicans. McCain carried that state by the narrowest of margins, winning the popular vote by only 3,632 votes (according to cnn.com.)

As of this posting, the final tally of popular votes went 53% (66,882,230 votes) for Obama to 46% (58,343,671 votes) for Mc Cain.

Nine states (FL, NC, VA, OH, IN, NM, CO and NV for 112 electoral votes) swung from Republican in 2004 to Democrat in 2008. No state that voted Democrat in 2004 defected to Republican in 2008.

The win for Obama wasn't as one sided as I had speculated that it might be but still much more comfortable than either 2000 or 2004, where the electoral votes in one key state made all of the difference.

I'd like to see the electoral college go away and have the popular vote be the only deciding factor. By eliminating the electoral college, I believe it would make it harder for the news networks to call states too early, which would benefit voters in the western states simply because of the time differences as you go west. Voters in these westren states can learn early who is winning and thus feel that their votes aren't as critical.

Another reason why the electoral college is outdated comes from my friend G, who has lived in Massachusetts his whole life. When I asked him which major party candidate he voted for, he said neither. He told me that he voted for the Libertarian candidate because he knew that Obama would carry Massachusetts, therefore making his would be vote for McCain useless.

If the antequated electoral college system must stay then it should be tweaked so that each states electoral votes could be split based on the percentage of popular vote in a state candidate. But if they did that it would still be useless.