The Electoral College And Why It's So Important - In A Nutshell

I was just watching last night's Fox News Channel's RedEye program and TV's Andy Levy was the guest host and made a comment about not understanding why the electoral college was even needed... or something to that effect... so I thought I'd type it out in a nutshell in the same way I explain it to friends and family all the time.

The reason our founding fathers created the electoral college was for this reason...

Imagine a presidential candidate comes for a really big state with millions of voters... like New York, Texas or California... and after the voting is done, one candidate won 49 of the 50 states and won by a slim margin in each state but that other candidate from the really big state won that state by a landslide so that the popular vote had that candidate in the lead.  Is it fair or right that the candidate that won 49 states should lose to the candidate that only won one state?  NO IT IS NOT!!!!

This is the main reason for the electoral college... so that a candidate who wins the majority of the electoral college votes, which they garner when they win a state, wins the presidency and not the guy/gal that won only their home state by a large margin.

To make it simpler, say one candidate won 49 states by only 1 vote each and then lost to the other candidate in one state by 50 votes.  Should the guy/gal who won only one state but got 50 more votes in that state become the president when they lost the other 49 states? 

There you go... the electoral college in a nutshell... and why it's so important!!!

Lenny Vasbinder