Huh? What's the point of winning the electoral votes if they haven't voted? So they can change their mind before they actually vote?

I don't understand it either.

Buggery is afoot.

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

The gap in time leaves time to count votes, including recounts. Remember that you couldn't phone in or email or otherwise instantaneously transmit results in earlier times — they had to be physically transported across states and then the EC reps had to gather similarly.

And changing their minds was part of the idea. If your state voted in someone who would not have a chance at the presidency, its EC reps could wheel and deal support in exchange for some of the ideas campaigned on to be in play. Not that states were (or should be) winner-take-all.

Remember that you couldn't phone in or email or otherwise instantaneously transmit results in earlier times

Remember that we also didn't have the MSM telling us all what exactly was going to happen and then reporting on 'exit polls' within hours of the election's start.

Hours? IN, KY and VT along with almost all of the western states were called immediately after the polls closed.

Mainstream media is about earnings. Sadly, people eat that stuff up. Look at how many threads on this board were about predictions rather than policy or, y'know, actual politics. People who treat elections like horse races place their bets and listen to the commentary and odds religiously.

We have staggered voting hours here so that results from the East don't skew voting in the West, but I'd be in favour of numbers not going out until all polls closed.

I'd be in favour of numbers not going out until all polls closed.

They can wait until the next morning to announce who won.

It's not like the results should change with the passage of a few more hours.

I think it's disgusting how they actually discourage people from voting with their 'early guesses'........ and this goes on while they're complaining about voter intimidation and difficulties?

Agreed.

Here, you can't publish results in areas where the polls are still open. Opinion polls can't be published on election day (it used to be several days...) and all the pertinent details of opinion polls need to be published with it.

http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=med&document=mar2911&dir=pre&lang=e

It's not everything, but the process doesn't get treated like a horse race here.

It's almost as frustrating as the NFL's collusion with Fantasy Football/Gambling.

All I wanna know is the scores of the games......but NO!!! I gotta see the Stats for player after player cuz that's way more important than the score of the actual game. And those people NEED their Stats right away or else they'll somehow change overnight.

The handicapping, the odds, the spread... Yeah, it's not about the game.

Ever see Playmakers? Fantastic series, the first original drama for ESPN. The buzz is that the NFL pushed them to kill it because it cut too close to home.

Ever see Playmakers?

Never caught that one.

But I've always thought North Dallas Forty should be required viewing.

The buzz is that the NFL pushed them to kill it because it cut too close to home.

Wouldn't surprise me at all.

But they're in control of that Hard Knocks series now, no?

The NFL seems to like to control everything with their label attached. Even though they have been screwing up a lot of things they have direct control over recently. Deflategate being one embarrassing example of how they handle things.

Hopefully they will reconsider this madness of making Trump the next president
and selling our nation out to Exxon and Russia.

Donald Trump will destroy the United States with those foolish notions
that the GOP and Tea Party have come up with.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/estate-tax-repeal-under-trump-100000422.html

President-elect Donald Trump, who won the hearts and minds of millions of working-class voters, may help deliver a multibillion-dollar bonanza to America’s wealthiest families.

The Manhattan businessman’s election offers congressional Republicans their best chance in years to eliminate the estate tax, which he and others call the “death tax.” Abolishing it would save more than $20 billion a year for the millionaires and billionaires the tax applies to -- including the Trump family and several of the people he has chosen for his administration.

Without taxes to support our nation, the means to continue the freedoms that we all hold so dear may be gone forever.

Wiping out the estate tax has been a longstanding goal for Republican lawmakers, and the party’s sweeping victories in the 2016 election have brought them thrillingly close to achieving it. But there are potential stumbling blocks. Their narrow margin in the Senate leaves few votes to spare. And Trump may have a hard time reconciling his populist campaign themes with a tax break for America’s richest.

Under federal law, the tax, which is levied at a 40 percent rate, applies only to estates worth more than $5.45 million for individuals and $10.9 million for couples. Estates worth less than that may be passed on to heirs tax-free. Last year, just 0.2 percent of estates of people who died were subject to the tax, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington-based research group that’s a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution.

This comes as a huge slap in the face for the working class who were
duped into voting Republican because they thought that the benefits
would trickle down from their wealthy employers.

As if they thought that the 1% could ever be bribed with such empty
gestures of loyalty to bestow favors on their sad and pathetic lives.

This continued madness of helping our enemies to oppress and enslave us must end.

I appreciate your post, >>14. It reminds me that some Americans are still sane.

A lot of these electoral traditions are from the eighteenth century, when travel and communication were slower.

So yes, the EC hasn't met yet.