Word: winner
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...impossible to explain to foreigners. Even most Americans don't understand it. It produced its first election crisis in our very third presidential election 200 years ago. As originally formulated, the electors were not to vote separately for president and vice president. The presidency went to the electoral-vote winner, the vice presidency to the runner-up. It was thus conceivable that a vice-presidential nominee could be elected president...
...both 1824 and 1876, the popular-vote winner was deprived of the presidency. But in neither case was the electoral college to blame. The House of Representatives denied the presidency to Jackson, and the rigged electoral commission denied the presidency to Tilden...
...first time the electoral college directly denied the presidency to the winner of the popular vote was in 1888. Grover Cleveland, running for re-election, beat Benjamin Harrison by 91,000 in the popular vote but lost, 233 to 168, in the electoral college. It was a confusing election. Fraud tainted both results. Yet nearly 80 percent of eligible voters had gone to the polls, and though the popular-vote winner lost the presidency, no one in 1888 seems to have questioned the legitimacy of the result...
...George W. Bush is confirmed as winner of the electoral college vote and the presidency, while Al Gore wins the nationwide popular vote, this result will undoubtedly revive the movement to replace the electoral college with direct popular election of Presidents. This sounds plausible enough, but is it really a good idea...
...abolition of state-by-state, winner-take-all electoral votes would speed the disintegration of the already weakened two-party system. It would encourage single-issue ideologues and eccentric millionaires to jump into presidential contests. The multiplication of splinter parties would make it hard for major-party candidates to win popular-vote majorities. Cumulating votes from state to state, they could force a runoff if no candidate got more than 40 percent of the vote - and then could extract concessions from the major parties. The prospect of double national elections could be alarming to a bored and weary electorate, especially...