2008 Election

When candidates for the 2008 Presidential election started to announce their candidancy, it was one of the largest fields ever seen. Almost a dozen candidates for each party started out and now we are down to three. With John McCain having the Republican nomination pretty much sown up, more attention will be placed on the Democratic side. With Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama in a virtual tie in delegates, primaries and caucuses that occur late in the election process will now place an important role. And if the election is still not decided by then, which is likely, superdelegates will decide who the Democratic nominee will be. Most people have never heard of superdelegates because they have not played a big, crucial part in deciding a parties nominee.

My question is why do we decide big, national elections by delegate count instead of popular vote. This method already cost someone the Presidency in 2000 and it could do the same to either Clinton or Obama in 2008. In what other election does popular vote not count. At the local, county and state level, all elections are decided by popular vote. School board elections are not decided by giving certain parts of a town more influence then others based popular or income. If the delgate/electoral college method was used in statewide South Dakota elections, Minnehaha and Pennington counties would be the only ones that would matter.

I think one reason why the system isn't changed is because it has been used for over 200 years and it is easier to figure out what state a candidate needs to win when going by the electoral vote instead of popular vote. If a candidate is so many delegates behind, it is easy to look at the map and say "Candidate A needs to win state A, B and C to win the election." If popular vote was the deciding factor, it would be less interesting to watch the election all night if one candidate had a decisive lead national wide of a few million votes. To throw in a sports analogy, it would be like counting all field goals in a basketball game during the first quarter worth one point, in the second quarter worth two, in the third quarter worth three, and during the fourth quarter worth four points. Or in a simplier analogy, the way that the CBA did quarter points.