Why we don’t get actual presidential campaigning in Alabama

  Donald Trump’s appearance in Tuscaloosa last month was less a campaign stop than an extended cameo. He appeared before thousands of Crimson Tide fans in a tie with the red of the University of Georgia; he left before halftime. As far as I can tell, he said nothing public about the campaign or plans for Alabama.

  That’s what happens in our state during presidential elections. We’re lucky to get a hand wave from the national campaigns.

  But there was one exception.

An unseen problem with the Electoral College – it tells bad guys where to target their efforts

  Over the past four years, Congress and state governments have worked hard to prevent the aftermath of the 2024 election from descending into the chaos and threats to democracy that occurred around the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

  A new federal law cleaned up ambiguities that could allow for election subversion. New state laws have been enacted across the country to protect election workers from threats and harassment. Technology experts are working to confront misinformation campaigns and vulnerabilities in election systems.

Why the US House of Representatives has 435 seats – and how that could change

  As the population of the U.S. has grown over the past century, the House of Representatives has gotten worse at being representative of the people it serves. That doesn’t have to happen – and it wasn’t always the case.

  The House is the one segment of the federal government that was created from the beginning to directly channel the views of the people to Washington, D.C. But over the past century, the ability of any individual members of the House to truly represent their constituents has been diluted.

The Electoral College system isn’t ‘one person, one vote’

  When it became clear that President Donald Trump would lose the popular vote in November’s election, questions again arose about the Electoral College and whether it is fair.

  A presidential candidate can lose the popular vote and still win the Electoral College vote, and therefore, the presidency. That’s what happened with Trump in 2016.

New electoral districts are coming – an old approach can show if they’re fair

  When the results of the 2020 U.S. Census are released, states will use the figures to draw new electoral district maps for the U.S. House of Representatives and for state legislatures. This process has been controversial since the very early days of the nation – and continues to be so today.

  Electoral district maps designate which people vote for which seat, based on where they live. Throughout history, these maps have often been drawn to give one party or another a political advantage, diluting the power of some people’s votes.

Electoral College benefits whiter states, study shows

  States can force members of the Electoral College to vote for the winner of the popular vote in their state’s presidential primary, the Supreme Court recently ruled. The July 6 decision removed one of the two reasons why the framers of the U.S. Constitution created this election system: to empower political elites who may know more about the candidates than ordinary voters. Now, the founders’ only remaining justification for the Electoral College is structural racism.

I asked people why they don’t vote, and this is what they told me

  At least 40% to 90% of American voters stay home during elections, evidence that low voter turnout for both national and local elections is a serious problem throughout the United States.

  With the 2020 presidential election approaching, directives for people to “get out and vote” will be firing up again.

  Some people might be indifferent or simply not care, but many who forgo voting have legitimate reasons.

Whose votes count the least in the Electoral College?

  In the days following the 2016 presidential election, many pundits and voters alike were stunned by the disparity between the popular vote, which went for Hillary Clinton, and the Electoral College, which favored Donald Trump.

  If the president were elected by popular vote, every voter’s ballot would have been given equal weight, or influence, over the outcome, and Hillary Clinton would have won. But, as evidenced by Donald Trump’s victory, the Electoral College gives different weights to votes cast in different states. What are these weights, and how can we best compare them?

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse - What does the presidential race look like nationally?

  Our presidential primary in the Heart of Dixie is less than two months away. We vote on March 3, 2020. President Donald Trump will be the GOP nominee. It is a foregone conclusion that Trump will carry Alabama in the November general election. 

  One of the most intriguing questions will be which Democratic presidential candidate will win the Alabama Democratic Primary. Longtime Democrat kingpin, Joe Reed, who heads the Alabama Democratic Conference, will have a lot to say about the outcome. It will be interesting to see how former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s late entry into the Democratic race for president fares. 

The Electoral College will never make everyone happy

  With the presidential election looming, worried observers of politics have already asked whether the Electoral College will again deliver a victory to the candidate with less than a majority of the popular vote.

  This has happened in two of the last five presidential elections.

  Critics like Vox’s Ezra Klein contend that this phenomenon is not only undemocratic but also politically biased because Republicans were the beneficiaries of both of these Electoral College hiccups. “American politics is edging into an era of crisis,” Klein writes.

Mel Jackson: Is the Electoral College outdated?

  In the infancy of the United States of America and while forming the Constitution, our Founding Fathers solved a dilemma - how to elect our very first president to lead a nation consisting of thirteen individualized states, distrustful of centralized governments, and desiring to have their own rights. The nation was small, with less than four million inhabitants of mostly rural communities, and relatively uneducated. Transportation, communication, and the daily news was slow. The Founding Fathers felt that the average citizen may not have been able to gather the needed information regarding the various candidates from the different states to select a president with the popular vote. It was assumed that each state would want to elect their "favorite son" which would give the most populated state the wining advantage. So, they created the Electoral College.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: What Congressional redistricting and the Electoral College mean to us today

  You know the outcomes of our presidential primaries yesterday. I do too, today; however, this column had to go to press a few days prior to the primary. Therefore, I will have to report and analyze your voting in a later column.

  One thing I do know is that we had a lot more attention paid to us in the Heart of Dixie because we had an early primary. The legislature is to be applauded for moving us up to participate in the March 1st "SEC" primary.

  It was fun while it lasted, but we can say goodbye to presidential candidates in the Heart of Dixie for the remainder of the campaign. Whoever wins the nominations will have to concentrate on the 10 battleground states during the fall.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: GOP primary a toss-up, but Hillary seems poised to win it all

  Folks, we are in the midst of a presidential race. It has been ongoing for well over a year. We will select a new president in November. Barack Obama has served his eight year limit. Thus, the parade of candidates seeking to occupy the Oval Office has been long, especially on the Republican side.

  You may have noticed that in the previous paragraph I used the word "select" rather than "elect." That would be the proper term since we do not elect our president. The Electoral College selects him or her. It does not matter if one person receives more votes than the other nationwide. The candidate who carries the proper number of states and garners the most electoral votes from those states is declared the president.

Larry M. Elkin: The Electoral College isn’t the problem

  You don't hear many people defending the Electoral College these days. But is it the undemocratic relic that its critics claim, or is it a constitutional bastion of federalism, a place where states can still flex their muscle over the most powerful office in Washington, D.C.?

  It turns out that where you stand on the Electoral College depends largely upon where you sit.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Countdown to election day

  The nation will elect our 45th president this Tuesday. The word elect is a misnomer. We do not elect our president. They are selected by the Electoral College. This is a travesty. It is amazing and appalling that in a country that espouses being the greatest democracy in the world that we do not have a direct election of the president in which the candidate who receives the most votes from all of the voters throughout the entire nation wins.

  If you are watching the election returns on television Tuesday night and you keep watching the tally of votes nationwide, you are wasting your time and the television network is wasting its time along with doing you an injustice.