The Electoral College & More

Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: The Electoral College - I have received a number of questions lately about why some states are seemingly more important than others in winning the White House. The answer is the Electoral College.

In a time when there is so much focus on popularity, the Electoral College seems out-of-date to many. But the Founding Fathers had very legitimate reasons for creating the Electoral College.

In cobbling together the new nation from very diverse states, one issue that frequently arose was the concern that the large states would dominate the new country. So compromises were reached.

One of which was a Congress with two houses -- one house with representation based on population (the House of Representatives) and another house where each state had equal representation (the Senate).

Another compromise involved the election of the president, and it borrowed heavily from the concepts that led to the creation of Congress.

The Electoral College was also designed to prevent large states from dominating the election. Each state is awarded votes in the Electoral College based on its total representation in Congress -- the number of House members plus its two senators.

So California with 53 House members plus two senators has 55 votes in the Electoral College. Delaware with one at-large representative and two senators has three votes. It takes 270 votes in the Electoral College to win the presidency.

The Race To 270 - In the race for 270, Barack Obama has the advantage. He starts out with a solid base of Blue states like California and New York, which gives him 201 Electoral votes. Governor Romney's Red state base has 191 Electoral votes.

There are approximately 10 "purple," or swing, states with 130 Electoral College votes that will decide the election: Colorado (9), Florida (29), Iowa (6), New Hampshire (4), Nevada (6), North Carolina (15), Ohio (18), Pennsylvania (20), Virginia (13) and Wisconsin (10).

The most likely scenario for Governor Romney to win involves carrying Florida, North Carolina, Virginia and Ohio, plus one more state. The first three states are leaning in his direction, while Ohio is a toss-up. Thus all the focus on Ohio.

If he loses Ohio, he must flip another state like Pennsylvania, where I am today rallying values voters. And he must still carry an additional state, most likely Colorado. By the way, today's Time poll finding Obama up five points in Ohio is garbage.

Why You Must Vote - There is one last point I want to emphasize: You must vote! Just because you live in a liberal Blue state like California and New York does not mean your vote doesn't matter.

While the Electoral College results usually mirror the popular vote, on rare occasions a candidate can lose the popular vote and still win the right combination of states to reach 270 Electoral College votes. This last occurred in 2000 when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore despite losing the popular vote.

There is growing speculation that Barack Obama could lose the popular vote this year, but still eke out a win in the Electoral College. If that happens, it will be impossible for him to claim a mandate for his left-wing agenda, having just lost the popular vote. That's why every conservative must vote no matter where they live.

But more importantly, if there is a strong conservative turnout, it is far more likely that Mitt Romney will prevail in the key swing states, and we will end the Obama nightmare on November 6th!

Whom Do You Trust? - Barack Obama's latest pitch to voters is trust. Seriously. Here's what he told a crowd in Ohio yesterday: "There's no more serious issue in a presidential campaign than trust. Trust matters. You want to know that the person who's applying to be your president and commander in chief is trustworthy, that he means what he says, that he's not just making stuff up depending on whether it's convenient or not."I don't have enough space in this report to list all the ways Obama has misled the American people. But how about Obama's deception on marriage? How about Obama's repeated lies about Obamacare? And can you really trust this commander-in-chief when it comes to Benghazi?

Democrat Voter Fraud - Whenever Republicans push ideas like voter ID laws to make our elections more secure, Democrats http://arkansasgopwing.blogspot.com/2012/10/voter-fraud-son-of-controversial.htmlalmost always respond by saying that voter fraud is a myth and conservatives are just trying to suppress minority turnout. How quickly (and conveniently) they forget the ACORN scandal.

Last month a Democrat House candidate in Maryland dropped out after it was learned that she was also registered to vote in Florida and had voted twice in 2006 and 2008.

Yesterday news broke that Patrick Moran, the son of a Democrat Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA), was busted in an undercover sting operation by Project Veritas. Moran was caught on tape explaining how utility bills could be easily forged in order to cast 100 fraudulent ballots.

Yes, voter fraud is real and the Democrats are the ones doing it!

But, again, this only reinforces why it is so important that every conservative votes. Cheating only works in close elections. That's why we need every conservative to vote so that we win in a landslide!
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Gary Bauer is is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families.

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