President Bush will leave one important legacy. Not the high gas prices or the blunder in Iraq. His mismanagement of this country has galvanized voters to vote.

People who have never considered voting important, which in my eyes is ridiculous, are getting motivated to vote this election. Arizona is almost at 80 percent voters ready to vote this election. Elsewhere the registrations are up also.

For once the system may work like it is supposed to work, for the people by the people

If the popular vote winner actually won? I might agree with you. I do think it's a good thing people are voting, but we all know that's not the problem. I waited in line two hours in the rain at the last election, as I live in a swing state. But the majority... the total majority... the one who earns that doesn't always get to win.

Halleluja!

you mean Americans will actually take time off from watching American Idol and go vote? I'm impressed!

hopefully they won't republican. if they do we would be with the same crap for another four years.

Haha... American Idol is at night. No time off needed!

I'm not a voter in that show, but I just could not resist...

That's a scarey thought, isn't it?

hell yeah

I disagree. Voter turnout statistically has no correlation with voter registration. If you look at voter registration over the past couple election cycles, you'll see that the percentage of younger people (18-24) as registered voters has gone down, and while voter turn out has indeed gone up in the aggregate, the numbers don't necessarily signal some sort of overwhelming electoral shift.

What should be talked about as more important is that more people have registered as independent over the last 16 years than in the last half century.

And finally, this isn't a democracy, this is a Republic. We don't want the "popular vote" to dictate the status quo--that's called tyranny of the majority, and our founders warned us of it many times in their writings.

I reviewed the electoral college for this phenomenon and if IF ALL voters in each state vote then the electoral college will work which in turn will make the president voted by popular vote.
The reason the electoral doesn't work as we would like is the voter turn out is low.

We sure as hell do want the popular vote

If we had had a "popular vote" determining everything throughout most of U.S. history when it came to key issues such as the Revolution, slavery, the Civil War, World War II and Civil Rights, our country would not have even survived into the present day. The popular vote is a good thing to have for insurance, but it has proven itself to cause much more problems than it solves. This is why we have a Constitution.

I realize what I'm saying may be considered political blasphemy by the mainstream, but I am only reiterating the same notions of the founders.

Sad to see such knowledge is considered a joke these days.

The majority of the time the electoral vote coincides with popular vote anyway. So I am not sure what you are talking about with the constitution not wanting popular vote.

http://www.usconstitution.net/elections.html

There has only been twice in history that the winner of the popular vote lost an election.

I wasn't so much referring to the popular vote as much as I was the electoral college. The point is that the electoral college is in place for a reason, and a very good reason at that.

And Fanta is right, however, it depends on what you mean by "popular vote." Lincoln only had about 28% of the vote in his reelection year. There's only been a handful of times any president in this country got a majority of the votes, George W. Bush in 2004 being one of them.

EDIT: Also the popular vote has been driving American politics for quite some time. I don't really know how you can say otherwise.

And look how that turned out.

This is exactly my point. The last thing America needs is more dumb Americans voting. If anything, I'd encourage LESS stupid people to vote, and MORE informed people to cast ballots.

Such is the two-edged sword of a free society, I suppose.

I feel that we need people to quit voting for the person that their church tells them to vote for and take the time to study the candidate's platforms and make their best educated decision based on that information.