Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How the Electoral College Works

Episode Date: October 3, 2020

When you vote in an American presidential election, you're not voting for your candidate - you're voting for a group of people you hope will in turn vote for your candidate. Listen in to learn more about the strange process for electing the president, in this classic episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi there, it's Josh Clark, one half of stuff you should know. And I'm here to present our episode on the Electoral College, a convoluted flawed system, one that's shown its inherent problems in the last couple decades.

In fact, the Electoral College is frequently cited as the most undemocratic aspect of our democracy. I hope our episode on it gives you a good picture of it and hopefully charges you up to vote because our ability to vote is not only a right, it's an imperative. So please vote this November, and anytime you have a chance to vote

because that's how America moves forward. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. We'll be right back with another episode of Stuff You Should Know. We'll be right back with another episode of Stuff You Should Know. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,

and you put us together a couple of microphones, some cameras. You get something called Stuff You Should Know. Cameras? Yeah. What are you talking about? Oh, yeah. There's nothing here.

Everything's very normal. Just proceed. Chuck. Yes. Election time is nigh. I'm getting over my cold. Yeah, you sound good. Do I?

Yeah, well, you sound better than he did last week. Yeah, I'll give you that, but I don't feel like I sound 100%. Not 100%, but compared to the swimming and snot phase, I will take this. Man, it got really bad. It's pretty snotty. I'm not going to go into it here, but...

Wow. Yeah. Okay, yes. Election time is nigh. I know. I tried to get right to it. Yeah, and I blocked you. So, yeah, that's why I wanted to do this one,

because people perennially ask for the Electoral College, and other people say, I don't know what that is, but I want to hear about that too. And then people in other countries just say, you guys do what? Yeah. It's kind of depressing. Actually, I meant to look up to see what other countries did

with their elections. It's all like kings and birthright and stuff like that. Is that what it is? The House of Votes. No. Okay. That's just the USA that does that. Good.

Good for us. Yeah. Chuck. Yes. I don't really have much of an intro here. All right. It's more of a can you believe this kind of thing. Okay.

How long have you thought that you went to the polls and cast a vote, and the vote you were casting was for the candidate that you were casting that vote for, that that's who that vote went to? Every time up until yesterday. So like you didn't have much of an idea about the electoral call? No, I did.

And I knew sort of how it worked, but until you really get down to it, you don't realize that, wow, I'm voting for a person that's going to vote for a person. Yeah, exactly. You know? Yeah. Because in some cases like it's not even on the ballot. Like the person who you're actually voting for.

Okay. So we did what I like to do. We confused everybody. And now we're going to go back and explain what we're talking about. Okay. So actually, I'm going to be ashamed myself. Okay.

Right out of the gate when it said every four years on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November, I was like, why don't they just call it the first Tuesday in November? But then I realized that I guess if November 1st is a Tuesday, then it won't, the election won't be until the following Tuesday. Yeah.

Because they got to get the Monday in there. It gets even crazier than that with the electoral college. They go the first Monday following the second Wednesday in December. Yeah. I think everybody had like gout or something like that back then. It's just passed out.

Consumption. Right. Yeah. That's what it was. So that is when the actual presidency is decided. Yeah. In December. Yes.

Although everyone knows. Well, you would think. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about this. So the electoral college, the whole thing, like why don't we just stick to the popular vote, which is what everybody thinks they're doing anyway?

Where did this come from? I have an answer. Okay. Back in the day when our founding forefathers and mothers were doing their thing here, they decided, you know, I think I don't trust a regular popular vote. It's reckless. Yeah.

As described in this article. And then another camp said, you know what? We sure as heck ain't going to let Congress decide the president. Right. So why don't we come up with a really confusing wacky system called the electoral college? Yeah.

Because it's like compromise. Do you want to have a bunch of uninformed rabble rousers who just revolted against the king of England a few years before voting? Or do you want a group of elites voting? It's like Citizens United. You don't want either of them. Yeah.

So yeah, they just went and got confusing. Yeah. I imagine it was more confusing back then than it is today. You think so? Or maybe not. Maybe it made more sense back then. I think it probably did.

Okay. So what did they come up with? What was the compromise? Well, the compromise is when it comes election time, there are these people called electors who actually decide the presidency and they represent, it's equal to two U.S. Senators that every state has. Right.

Plus the number of representatives that each state has. Yeah. So that comes to 538 total. Yes. And three of those are part of the 23rd Amendment from 1961 that gave three electors to D.C. Yeah. And since everything's based here, we might as well toss

them a few votes. Right. It seemed like the right thing to do. Right. And did you say that was the 23rd Amendment? Yeah. Okay. So they actually cast the vote.

When we vote for the president, we are voting for the electors. Right. And like you said, they're not always even on the ballot. Sometimes they are. Right. Sometimes they're not. Right.

And like, I bet you anything, 90% of the people who vote have got to be in that position. Right. They're like, I'm going to vote for Barack Obama, but who is this Todd Vine maker in parentheses next to him? I have no idea who that is. Or in some ballots, you'll go to the end and it's like County Commissioner, you know, dog catcher, and then

electors. And then there's a list of people's names by party. Or like you said, it's just not on there at all. Yeah. And one thing I was surprised to learn was my, our own electors here in Georgia, I looked them up just because I thought, you know, I might as well know who they are. And their addresses are in there.

Like I can go knock on the dude's door indicator, like eight blocks from me and say, you sir, have a great responsibility at your hands. Are you going to do that? No. Okay. But I could. You could.

I think maybe you should reconsider. I'm just surprised. I don't know. Well, we know where the president lives, so that's not a big deal, but I guess I'll surprise it. All that stuff is common knowledge. I thought they would be like secret. Yeah.

I think they want that to go the opposite way. Well, no, it makes sense now that I figured it out. Like they do want everything out in the open so everyone knows, but it just seemed a little weird that the guy voting for the president is actually like half a mile from my house. Right. Or one of the guys.

No, I'm with you. All right. So you've got like this group of people who are actually voted in and they meet after the popular election is certified. Yeah. The secretary of each state certifies the vote. The governor whips up a certificate saying here are all

the votes that each candidate got. And then based on this, the electors go and cast their vote the first Monday following the second Wednesday in December. That's right. I couldn't find why. Oh, I don't know. I guess it just falls somewhere in between the election

and January 20th. I guess. And that's when everybody, it's like, wait, wait, wait, Christmas, Christmas. We've got to make sure we're done in plenty of time. Yeah. And then they cast the vote and then it's unsealed, right? And red.

That's right. Even though barring any surprises, you pretty much know election night from either exit polls or whatever, you know, Dan rather tells you or whoever does it these days. You would hope because that guy who lives a few miles away from you or blocks or miles. I think I charted him out. I'm stalking him.

It was less than a mile. That's my house. That's really neat. Yeah. So that guy, you want his name? Yeah. John White. That's his name.

So John White, the elector, right? One of them, yeah. It's perfectly legal for him to say, you know what? Supposedly I am supposed to be voting for Barack Obama. Yeah. But I really like the cut of this Mitt Romney's, Jim. Yeah. That doesn't really happen though.

It has. But not quite like that. But in the modern times. I think one of the reasons why they published their addresses is so, you know, it's kind of throwing you out there like, hey man, you can vote however you want, but everybody knows where you live. And if you think they get mad about, you know, referees

making bad calls, Faithless Elector. That's what they're called. Yeah. Which is a great band name. You think? Faithless Elector or the Faithless Electors? No? I don't think so.

It's too, maybe for like a DC law school band. Right. The Faithless Electors. I can see that. Plains almost, St. Elmo's Grill. They have no future whatsoever unless they turn it into something like Scorpions or something like that. That's right.

And actually, Faithless Electors have no future as electors because one thing you can probably be sure of, if you change your vote, then you're not going to be asked back to be an Elector in the future. No. And you could possibly be fined depending on what state you're in. Yeah. And you're probably going to be kicked out of your party.

You're putting a lot on the line. Yeah. And see, this is the thing that made it all clear to me. Each party has its own Elector, so that's why no one's going to turn. Like the people that are put in the place as electors are like staunch party line people. Right.

You know, they're not going to turn and vote. Like the reason they're there is because they know that they're going to vote for either the Republican or the Democrat. They know where their bread is buttered. Exactly. Okay. So let's talk about these people. How are these people elected?

What do they have to qualify for? Obviously, everyone has to have at least a Juris Doctorate, if not a PhD in law of some sort, like a Juris Doctorate, some sort of political science degree, and probably they have to have like several hundred hours of community service under their belt. No. That is not true.

Are you sure? Very nice setup though. Thank you. You're being coy. There actually are no real strict outlines per the Constitution as to who these people are. Yeah. They are usually nominated by a state party committee.

It says in here, usually as a, or sometimes to reward many years of service to the party. Yeah. They could be like big on the campaign trail for you or activist maybe for your party. Or like a robo dialer. Yeah. I guess so.

Yeah. Like the all-time robo dialer. But they cannot be senators or representatives. Yeah. And I would imagine former too, although I didn't see that. I don't know. I think active is what it is. Oh, really?

Yeah. Okay. You can't be a high-ranking official in a position of trust or profit. Makes sense. Yeah. And this one, I love that they actually had to specify this. He or she cannot be someone who has engaged in insurrection

or rebellion. Well, this obviously was put in by the people who were like, we can't just live into a popular vote. These people are crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Like I saw a musket in that guy's hands last week. Right.

Aimed at my office. And now he's an elector. Right. He can't vote. I like that it's still in there though. Yeah. That insurrection rebellion thing definitely helped form this country. Okay.

So you've got people who are active in their party, who have been rewarded. Maybe they're activists. Sometimes they know the president or president-elect. Right. Like they met him on the campaign trail. Yeah. And that's really about it. Each state has, I think, probably a different nominating process.

But overall, when you have a candidate who's running for Green Party Democrat-Republican, you take your, as your party, as your Green Party, you all go down together. You pile into like the camper and go down and register. The one that runs on veggie oil. Exactly. And you're all very depressed because you don't have a shot at winning. You know, Roseanne's running for president for the Green Party. Roseanne Barr?

Yeah. Really? Yeah. That's not a media play. So they all go down to the Secretary of State's office and say, hey, these are our candidates. There are electors for, or candidates for electors. Yeah. So when you vote for Roseanne, it should have all those people's names next to hers.

Or on, like, by party, it might say, like, Green Party electors. Here's all the people. Or it might not say anything. Right. But when you cast that vote for Roseanne, you are voting those electors. Yeah. That's who you're voting for. That's who the vote goes to.

Not Roseanne. Right? It goes to John Goodman. Yeah. I would be, that's who I would have as my elector if I was Roseanne. What about Tom Arnold? No. You don't want Tom Arnold.

They had a messy divorce. He'd be the party press, though. Well, John Goodman was never married to, there's just TV. No marriage, though. That's like sacrosanct. That's just my opinion. Okay. All right.

Well, now, when you're on the road, driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. All right. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and

dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Is that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

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All right, so where are we? We're talking about how the vote goes toward not Rosanne where you wanted it to go. Right. Not Tom Arnold or John Goodman, but to Todd Vinemaker and all the other electors, right? So, what's going on here? What's this process? Well, I mean, they literally just make their vote supposedly in accordance with the people's popular vote.

Right. And I think, what do they give to the Secretary of State? Right, that's who's, like, it's registered before Election Day. Right, like your name's on the list. Yes, so at the very least, if it's not printed on the ballot, the Secretary of State knows who the electors are. Right. And there's two ways to do it.

48 states have a winner-take-all system. I get that one. And then Maine and Nebraska have a district system. I'm just confused by that one. Okay, so the district system actually more closely follows the electoral college system than the winner-take-all. Now, is this to vote for the elector only? No.

That's what confused me, I think. So, let's say you have a, let's do the winner-take-all system. Okay. Which is so easy. But think about it, so let's say you are in Arizona. All right. Oh, it's hot. Right.

And you've decided to stay. You're not moving. Yeah, that wouldn't happen. You've got, like, you have 10, there's 10, well, in 2008, and I believe it's the same in 2012, there's 10 electoral votes. Yes. Right? So, the Green Party candidate, Roseanne, should have 10 electors associated with her.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. And Obama should have 10 electors. Yeah. Mitt Romney should have 10 electors. So, when that person wins the popular vote and that's certified, then those electors are the ones, those 10 associated with that candidate are the one that should go down to the state

capital on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December and cast their vote. Okay. I get that. And also, we should point out that in this system, that is the reason why sometimes the vote is on the ballot because there's something somewhere in their state constitution that says, a vote for Barack Obama is a vote for these 10 people. You don't need to know who they are. Just trust us.

Right. Exactly. Okay. That's the winner-take-all system, right? Yeah. The other system in Maine and Nebraska is the district system. Right. So, the winner-take-all system, that's a lot like a popular vote.

Yeah. In the district system, you get two votes, the guy who won, the guy or the lady, or the gender-neutral president, depending on when you listen to this episode. Whoever got the most popular votes in the state gets two electoral votes, the two associated with the Senate. Right. Then, the other electoral votes that are divvied up by congressional districts, whoever won that congressional district gets that vote.

Yeah, I get that, and I looked it up a little further and saw that there are scenarios in Maine and Nebraska where you could have three different votes cast for three different candidates, but they said it's never happened. Yeah. It's just theoretically possible, mathematically, statistically possible. All three. Okay. I don't know.

It just seems like everyone should just be all in the same system. It makes sense though. But think about it, the whole reason you have the Electoral College, or one of the big reasons, is to prevent one region or one part of the state from wielding enough power to vote for everybody else. I think that's what the district system is set up to prevent too. It's kind of like, hey, man, you voted for this person, and we want you to have your say in the Electoral College.

I think it's smarter. Oh, yeah? I think so. Well, then I do too. You swayed me. Good. Now we just have to sway John White. I've got his number.

You know, he could use this as evidence one day. For what? I don't know what's going to happen. What are you going to do? I'm curious. Okay. But if something happened, then everyone would point their fingers at me. Yeah.

It's like we heard him say it so on his podcast. Yeah. All right. I won't testify against you then. I appreciate that. Should we talk about some of the hinky results over the years? Yeah. When things don't go quite as planned?

Or go exactly as planned. Very true. That's a teaser. There have been four presidents. Is that what they call them? Four potuses. Potai. Potai that have won their post without the popular vote.

I mean, that's happened four times in this country. And all the ones up until 2000, we probably weren't as concerned with because you're like, who cares? They're all old-timey. They're all old-timey. They were wearing knickers. They were just working it out back in 1824 when John Adams' son, John Quincy. The Q.

The Q. He received 38,000 fewer votes than Andrew Jackson. This one was definitely hinky because neither one of them won electoral college. So if that happens, you defer to what? The 12th Amendment. And that's when the House of Representatives decides who the president is. Yeah. Which would be really weird these days.

Yeah. Don't you think? I think there'd be a lot of... They'd just be bad news. Yeah. That would be bad news. In some time, this is 1824, and there were still a lot of insurrecting, rebellious people. Yeah, true.

So I'm sure it was a little nervous back then. Yeah. So who won? JQ? JQ. Yeah. 1876, brother for B. Hayes. He apparently...this is the first time, and I think the only time that small states actually swung the election.

Yeah. Hayes carried a bunch of small states, and basically combined their...with their combined electoral votes gave him the electoral vote. Yeah. Although he lost the popular vote by a lot, by like 109,000? No, 264,000 votes. He lost the popular vote. Yeah, we almost had President Samuel Tilden. Yeah.

Sammy Tilden. Too bad. The haymaker, I think was his nickname. I feel bad for the haymaker all of a sudden. Yeah, well, I mean, everybody liked him a lot more, but Hayes cobbled together a win from small states, and Colorado had just been let in. This is the hinky part. And they didn't have any popular vote. There was no vote whatsoever.

They just did some electoral voting, and it went all to Hayes. So he put it together with Colorado, so with very little popular vote, and then in one state, no popular vote. Isn't that crazy? Anyone, anyone on to be the greatest president this country's ever seen? I mean, Colorado, I guess they were just like, we don't even have pens and pencils. Can you give us like, can we get a buffer? We're just like, we're all boxes over here. We haven't even started unpacking it.

Exactly. So they said, oh, well, let's just give it to Hayes. Yeah. Good on you. Yeah, who you got next? 1888, Benji Harrison lost the popular vote by more than 95,000 votes to Grover Cleveland, won the electoral vote by 65. And this is one of the cases where they say it worked exactly like the plan, like we planned it to, with electoral college, because you can't just overwhelm someone in one region and get the presidency.

That's what happened. So in six states in the South, so the whole campaign pretty much was based on, we want the tariff, we don't want the tariff. Well, the North and everybody else wanted the tariff. South didn't want the tariff. So Grover Cleveland was like, no tariff whatsoever. And the South voted as a block. They had a bunch of people. He won the popular vote by like 65%.

Huge number, yeah. But in the other 32 states, he lost by 425,000 votes. He lost by 300,000. He had won by 425,000. Okay. So 32 states were against him combined. Six states were for him. And the electoral college steps in and prevents the South from picking the president for the rest of the country.

That's right. Flawless. And then not flawless. Let's go to the year 2000. Yeah. So Bush v. Gore. Yeah. I was driving across country, moving to Los Angeles during this election.

And I made a self-made video of my journey, which most of which was me singing along the songs on the radio in my U-Haul. Yeah. And I've still got this. I should like get it digitized and post it at some point. It's pretty funny. But I remember very specifically one part in the thing. I woke up in New Mexico and I'm, you can tell I'm all sleepy. You don't remember going to sleep.

I remember going to sleep. But I woke up and I said, yeah, you know, here I am in New Mexico. It's weird. I woke up this morning and they don't know who the president is. Yeah. And it's like captured in time this moment. Nice. Where I realized with sleep in my eyes, like, that's weird.

Yeah. I went to bed expecting, because, you know, that night everybody was going toward Gore. Well, I think it was called a couple of different ways, a couple of different times. It went back and forth. But when everybody went to bed, it was like Gore all the way. He'd won the popular vote. They knew it was close, but everybody had called Gore. And then they woke up and they're like, wait a second.

Yeah. And then a huge, huge mess cluster ensued afterward, which involved the court system. It involved hanging chads. Well, not only that, you remember, like there was this one county where like their votes just got lost for a little while on the way to be counted. They were just vanished and then reappeared later on. Like that kind of stuff, you should just basically be like, no, the whole state, everybody has to wait.

The whole state has to start over and vote again. Yeah. That might have been a good move. There were like accusations of disenfranchisement among black voters in black areas. Yeah. There were also, I mean, both sides had a lot of arguments. Yeah. Like when you really start peeling back the layers and researching this, they're like...

It'll make you cry. It will make you cry. And there are just like dozens and dozens of factors that many people never even saw on the nightly news. Yeah. You know, like military votes or disenfranchised voters in poor counties. Yeah. And then I think Gore asked for a recount in only four counties.

When people are saying, no, he should have asked for a recount in all the counties. Mm-hmm. And POTUS was decided for the country by less than 400 votes. Is that what it came down to? Well, I mean, it depends because all the different factors like, do we count these votes? What about these? These people meant to vote for Gore or Bush. Right.

And it was cloudy. And what about these hanging chads? So there's all different kinds of numbers. But I've seen one that said it was less than 100 votes was the deciding factor. Okay. So it came down to 100 votes. But Florida's winner take all. Yeah.

So that means that those 100 votes, since Bush got those 100 votes, he got all 25 votes in the Electoral College for Florida. Yeah. Which just so happened to put him at exactly the amount of electoral votes he needed to win the presidency, which was 271. That's crazy. I mean, I've seen, I've looked as many people have since then at like the independent studies they did afterward and it just depends on which ones you want to read.

Like I saw today, I saw like 10 independent studies and six of them showed that Gore was the definite winner. Four of them showed that Bush was. So it's just confusing and disheartening. Yeah. But what it did was shed light on a pretty flawed system and how we cast our votes, how they're counted. And it gave us the hanging chat.

It gave us the hanging chat joke. Well, now when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck. It's stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. All right. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever

you get your podcasts. I'll be there for you and so will my husband Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. So tell everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye-bye-bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikulur and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention.

Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed.

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. So there was also a bit of awkwardness that came out of that, just a bit. In one instance, there was an overlooked bit of awkwardness. When the electoral votes are unsealed, they're unsealed by the president of the Senate. The president of the Senate is the vice president. So in 2000, the 2000 election, remember Al Gore was vice president, he was president of the Senate. So he had to read his own defeated electoral college votes.

Did you just run away? Yeah. That's what I would have done. Yeah. And there was like something of an insurrection and a rebellion among black congressional members who were protesting the vote and protesting, including Florida's vote in the count. And he had to basically be like, it's over, it's done.

Right. For the good of the country, let's move on. But there was like no emotion, even the emotion you just had, it wasn't that. There was less than that. For the good of the country, let's move on. You know, Gore always got tagged as the robot, the robotron. But there was a video, I might have talked about it before, that Spike Jones made of Gore that never was released, a campaign video, that I think would have won him the election.

Oh yeah. Did he have his tie loosened? No, man. He was like way funnier and cooler than you would think. He was on 30 Rock. He did a good job on this. Yeah, but that was later. But this was before when he had the like the bad rap as like a robot.

But this like, he let him inside his home and it was just very casual, very laid back. And you're like, you saw him as a dude for the first time like cracking jokes and hanging out with his family. And it was like very endearing. And he was like, do not release this. Yeah, I'm sure. And he lost the election. Did you ever see that Simpsons where Lisa buys Al Gore's one of his books?

And like the information is transmitted and somebody runs into the, I don't know what the vice president's office is called, the trapezoid office. And it's like, Mr. Vice President, someone just bought your book. And he goes, well, this calls for a celebration. And he turns him, he turns on the record player and puts on a cool and the gang celebrate. And it's like, celebrate good times. Come on. And he goes, I will, it's perfect.

They nailed it. Oh, poor guy. Yeah. So that's Gore. Yeah, that's Gore. So I guess on both sides of the coin here, we have people thinking this is a great thing still and people saying this is not a great, yeah, for each instance, even the one we're saying like the electoral college worked perfectly, there are people are like, no, it's all messed

up. Like he clearly won the popular vote. However you want to put it, like in other people to say, like, calm down, let's all just calm down. Well, one of the knocks against it is some say it discourages voter turnout because unless you're in a swing state or a battleground state, it's quote unquote, pre decided. Yeah. And so it is like the two party system, we're in like a very, very red state.

So if we were to not vote red, we could make a case that our votes would be thrown away. And that could dissuade voters from turning out too. And the people for it say, no, this is exactly what we need because it's a wade system. The states that have the most, the states that should have the most influences are the states that are the most populated. Yeah. Well, that's how it's divided up. Like Alaska's great.

We love all that land, but land shouldn't be deciding who the president is. You know? Yeah. Right? Yeah. Okay. No, I'm with you. It's people.

It's people that counts, not mountains. People not mountains. People not mountains. What do we want? Time travel. When do we want it? It's irrelevant. All right.

I like that sign. So. Where was that sign? Oh, it was just some random guy who posted it on the Facebook page. Everyone thought it was me, though, I guess, because I had facial hair. Yeah. It's like, there's more than me. I see mustaches out there.

Yeah. I mean, they're all over the place. So over the past 200 years, over 700 proposals have been introduced to reform or eliminate this process. Is that right? Yep. The most proposals for any constitutional amendment. I could see that.

Yeah. I could see that. Probably because executive orders aren't in the Constitution and therefore can't be repealed. Maybe. I know that attorneys, by and large, are against it. The American Bar Association polled at 70 percent in favor of abolishing it, whereas political scientists have generally supported it. And then there, I could find three popular polls, opinion polls, over the years.

In 1967, 58 percent of Americans said they don't like it. In 1968, 81 percent, late 60s, theaters just like, what is it? Government? I don't want it. Oh, yeah. And then in 1981, that declined to 75 percent. But by and large, the people are saying, or at least up until 1981, we don't like this process.

Yeah. Don't make us insurrect. Yeah. But most votes should win is what many Americans believe. Yeah. Did we talk about the two... I can safely say that. The two elections that were decided by the House of Representatives, because there were

ties in the electoral... Well, we talked about the one, I don't think we mentioned the other. Oh, yeah. JQ. Yeah. But Burr and Adam, or Jefferson, 1801, right? Yeah. There was a tie in the Electoral College and it took 31 votes in the House of Representatives

to decide who was the president. And it turned out to be Thomas Jefferson. And then Aaron Burr was shot. That's right. That's the sad end of that story. No. Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton. That's right.

And he fled. That's the sad end of that story. Right. And that's the sad end to Electoral College. Yeah. Get out and vote, people. That's all we have to say. Even if you live in California and you're the Democrat and you think, hey, we're going

to lock up those 55 votes, even if I sleep in and go see my medical marijuana doctor, get out and vote anyway. Yeah. Or if you're in a state like Georgia and you're a Republican and you think, hey, we're going to carry this, you get out and vote too. It's pretty much the fable of the rabbit and the hare that you're talking about. Who's the hare? I guess the hare is the person who visits their medical marijuana doctor and oversleeps

rather than voting that day. And how do you oversleep? You mean like sleep until Wednesday, like not get up on Tuesday? That's happened. Yeah. Have you heard about Ohio? Well, that's a swing state. Yeah.

But have you heard what's going on there? No. Dude, the Secretary of State, a Republican, has decreed that counties that are typically blue generally blue counties are not going to have weekend voting and their early voting hours are going to be short compared to reg counties that are going to have weekend voting and longer early voting hours. And like there's no explanation for this whatsoever. See, that's my problem is like, I know you probably can't do it nationwide, everything's

the same, but within the state, every district should have the exact same procedure, the same machines, the same like, all of that should be the same. I can't believe there's districts that have, like here you do a punch card and here you scribble it in with the number two pencil and here you just say it quietly into a booth and there's someone on the other side. Right, or you blow out a candle, one of two candles. Yeah. That's another sentence.

It's pretty messed up though. I think at the very least we should be allowed to tar and feather elected officials who decide stuff like that. Everybody who's responsible for voter disenfranchisement, tarred and feathered, I guess that's it. And that makes you an insurrectionist. Yeah. All right. I always knew I was.

Okay. Well, if you want to know more about this weird process we have in the United States called the Electoral College, you can type those words into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. It'll bring up a handy and out of date graph of how the votes were distributed in 2008. Is it out of date? 2008 was four years ago. Yeah, but isn't it still the same? Well, then it's a snapshot of a moment in time is what it is.

Anyway, it's still a good article. Electoral College handy search bar howstuffworks.com and now it's time for List of Your Man. I'm going to call this an Englishman, the Englishman who went up a hill and came down a mole, came down a mole, dear Chuck, Josh and Jerry. And in parentheses, he actually says a small hi to guest producer Matt. Oh, nice. A small hi. Yeah.

Not a full hello. My name is Jack Mead and I'm an avid fan from England. I just started listening in October of 2011. Just started in 2011. And tonight I've just finished the 452nd podcast. I wish we had the sound maker. The hay maker. From Grassalene with Josh and Chris Pallette, a parentheses terrible pre-Chuck days.

To the most recent Shark Attack episodes, it's been a wild and exciting ride. You guys have come a long way. I just listened to the first one to see the difference and not only is it missing the sweet dulcet tones of Charles W. Bryant, but Josh's voice sounds very weird. Yeah. And it sounded like we were recording in a can. And I was really aggressive. Oh, yeah?

Yeah. Like, hey, what do you think? Huh? I can't even listen to them. Yeah. You poked me once. Yeah. Sure.

Once. Anyway, I just want you guys to know your podcast has become a huge part of my life. Catching up with them has left me both a sense of achievement, but also great sadness. See, I listen to the podcast pretty much anytime when I'm not engaging with other human beings. I've listened to over nine days worth of your voices in the space of 10 months. I probably heard you two speaking more than my own fiance's voice. I was thinking, man, what a lonely guy, but he's engaged. Yeah.

Like, dude, you should prioritize here. Let's pause. Going from that amount of awesomeness to just two episodes a week is making me feel confused and frightened. It's OK, Jack. You know, it's strange. It's like, this is a pretty frequent report we hear. Yeah.

It's like a condition. Well, I just, yeah. When you stop, you bulk less, and then all of a sudden you have to wait like everybody else like a schmuck. I just did the Firefly Marathon. Yeah. It's good. Think how I feel.

You watch 14 episodes of that, then the movie, and then you're cut off after four days. Yeah, that's it. There's not another one coming every week. Yeah. So I'm just like looking at the walls now, wondering where Captain Typepants is. Is that what's been wrong with you? Yeah. I'm like sad.

I've been trying to figure it out. Everyone else that I've talked to has been like, oh yeah, I'm more in Firefly years ago, like everyone else. But we know your pain. Anyway, I'll be in my bunk. You don't have a bunk. I would like to think that I am your biggest fan in England, but I guess that is statistically improbable.

Very much enjoyed Chuck's terrible attempts at an English accent. And your attempts at pronouncing are place names. I've been wanting to email you guys since I got into the podcast, but wanted to catch up first. I think what you do is truly amazing, and genuinely enjoy life more with your podcast as a soundtrack. Isn't that crazy? I know you guys must get hundreds of emails a day.

That's not true. So I don't expect a reply, but I'm just glad to know that you will read this. I look forward to the day that I can contribute information and maybe even get on Listener Mail. Yeah. So if I may make a quick suggestion, I would love a special podcast hosted by Emily and Yumi. I have no idea how to spell your wife's names, but he actually nailed it.

Did he really? Yeah. Wow. And really? Yeah. Look at that. Wow. And then he wants to hear a podcast on how Chuck and Josh work with my wives.

He said it's a long shot, but you never know. It's a pretty long shot. I would call that the longest of shots. But a fun idea, nevertheless. It is a good idea. Emily would be like, get your beat button ready. All right. Let me tell you a thing or two.

Yeah, exactly. Well, who is that from again? Jack Mead. Thanks, Jack Mead. Wow, that's a pretty awesome British name, isn't it? Agreed. Jack Mead. Jacks and gloves.

Great to meet. Yeah. So if you are a fan who is going through, why should we call this commission? I don't know. I had an idea. Withdrawal. Stuff you should know. Oh, yeah, withdrawal.

Yeah. I guess that makes sense. Just call it what it is. Yeah. If you're going through Stuff You Should Know, Addiction Withdrawal, and you need help, we will look into forming some sort of support group for you. Let's do that. Agreed.

If you have any ideas on how to create such a support group, especially one that would have to be international and global and instantaneous, we're open to that. So we need to hear from you via Twitter at S-Y-S-K Podcast, facebook.com slash Stuff You Should Know, or you can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. All podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the

cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands

give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.