Masterkoki, don't listen to FreeInTX, next he'll try to have you believing that the mothership is on the way and he's going to get spirited off to Haley's comet.  He's what we in the US call a conspiracy theorist, and they are normally at best unbalanced. 

The short answer is that a when states hold elections for the President each state has a specific number of delegates, or as your friend said, points.  These delegates are assigned by the population and some other metrics.  Now, when the ballots are all counted the candidate with the plurality or most votes in that state gets all of those delegates assigned to it.  For example if Texas has 25 delegates and a Candidate A wins the popular vote in Texas, Candidate A gets all 25 of those delegate votes when the electoral college convenes and technically elects the president. 

However, this process has good and bad points.  The best point about it is that the candidates generally have to visit every state.  If we did not have the electoral college the only people that a presidential candidate would have to woo would be those in the major population centers of the country.  Which would be the Northeast and the California in the west.  This would disenfranchise a lot of voters in what we call "fly over country" which by and large has a completely different set of values than those who are in the urban population centers.  The downside is that occassionally a presidential candidate does not have to receive the popular vote to get the presidency. 

For example, take a look at this map http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/election/map.htm.  This is a map of the 2000 election for the presidency.  You'll notice that the only states which went for Gore (blue) are those in the North Eastern part of the US and on our western coast.  These are heavy population centers in our country and have a completely different set of values than those who are colored red.  Gore won the popular vote, but Bush won the necessary amount of delegates.

Finally the United States is NOT a democracy.  Our system of government is a representative republic.  We elect our representatives through a democratic process and they are expected to represent our values when they go to Washington DC.  Although it doesn't always turn out like that. 

It has

These delegates are part of the electoral college 

I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. -- Benjamin Franklin

I imagine old Ben was just a shade smarter than you, or any one of us here so I'll think I'll side with a strategy similar to his.


Fixed it for you.  Oh, and btw, do you kiss your momma with that mouth?

Do it again!  Daddy likes a good spanking.

A person should never have their income taxed more than once.

The democrats have gotten themselves into a nice little mess with this superdelegate situation.  Coupled with the fact that Florida and Michigan primary voters have been quasi-disenfranchised this election season, they've really dug a hole that they will have a hard time climbing out of.  Expect HC to try to find a way to seat those delegates at the convention.  As a side note should Florida and Michigan actually be counted as part of the popular vote, the race is MUCH closer.

As it stands BO and HC have to win with the votes of the superdelegates.  If Obama loses the Democrat Party stands to lose 95% of the voting bloc that keeps viable as a national party, the African American voter.  Similarly if the superdelegates go for Hillary they stand to anger a large bloc of women voters.  My guess is that the democratic leadership will side with Obama because of the fact that in my observation the black community has a loooooong memory of what it considers to be injustices perpetrated against it.  Civil rights leaders such as Rev. Jackson and Rev. Sharpton will make sure that the injustice is shouted from the mountaintops.  The democrat leadership will gamble that the white female voter will let bygones be bygones and come back into the fold, because for the most part white women do not have the institutionalized political machine woven into a large part of their culture. 

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about how Bush was appointed by the USSC, yet the democratic leadership (see superdelegates) is going to be the party that gets to appoint their candidate to run for POTUS.  Irony... thou art crispy and good with ketchup.

Should McCain actually win the general the collective aneurysm on the left will be fun to watch.  These last 8 years will look like a Hello Kitty marathon.

I wonder how long it will be before we can start calling murders post birth abortions.

There were some rumblings about that somewhere... I'd been meaning to check back for a while but real life has been in the way like crazy.  I imagine since i posted here last I've gotten married to a wonderful woman, who amazingly enough is completely apolitical and has somehow discovered how to put up with my quirky behavior.  Somehow the crazy woman thinks its charming.  We'll be having a son in late august or early September.  I've gotten a kick ass job working as a network admin for one of the biggest credit unions in South Texas.  I'll also finally be graduating from Del Mar with two associates (Network/Information Security and Network Support) and will be finally finishing up my bachelor's degree at A&M Kingsville in about a year or a year and a half after that.

I just thought I'd take a peek in on everyone to see how they were doing and perhaps spread a little conservative common sense around here like butter on toast.  Yummy.

No, but oddly enough they were on their way to extinction until white-tail hunting began to be regulated.  Since the regulation of hunting ie licenses (and bag limits) who's fees are used to fund state conservation projects etc.  The white tailed deer has become the most abundant big game animal in North America. 


To be honest with you I don't know anything about whaling and what is done with the whale parts.  As long as the majority of the animal is used and the catch is regulated accordingly, i don't have a problem with it though.  There is a difference between hunting an animal and over-hunting though. 


Don't even get me started on the EU.

A beached whale benefits no one.  It just sits there on the beach and rots.

When the Japanese hunt them it's for the purpose of whatever those guys do with the products made by bits and pieces of whale.

White tailed deer are a fairly majestic animal in my opinion.  That doesn't mean they taste any worse. 

Hahahhahahaha!!!

The 5th Horse of the Apocalypse has arrived. 

Ya'll miss me?  I heard ya'll were being naughty little monkeys and decided to take a peek and check for myself.