Thursday, November 26, 2009

November 26


We finished watching "Shipbreakers" today. I would like to take a little bit of time to properly finish off the "Globalization and Sustainability" PowerPoint presentation, so I will be doing that tomorrow, and as a result, I will not be sending this out by e-mail tonight.



After looking at the blog feed last night it was apparent that a lot of you didn't get a chance to watch the U.S. electoral college video that I posted a link to yesterday, so that's what I started with today. I then also went over some other concepts related to the electoral college system, and how it is possible to win the popular vote but not win enough electoral college votes to become president. Your textbook uses the 2000 U.S. Presidential election as an example of this. In that particular case the key state was Florida. I talked a little bit about the differences between the types of ballots used in Canada and in the United States. In many counties in Florida during the 2000 election they used what's called a butterfly ballot where you punch holes in the ballot to indicate which candidate you are voting for. I tried to draw it on the board, but I think the following graphic illustrates nicely what I was trying to draw on the board.

I think you can see how this might have caused some confusion. If you can't see the ballot clearly, just click on it and you should see a larger view. If you want to look at past U.S. Presidential elections and see the U.S. electoral college maps for the past ten elections, have a look at Real Clear Politics. Have a look at the 1984 election, that was extremely one-sided!

I'm adding some links under the Social 30-1 Links on this page to help you out with your USA-Canada Political System Comparison Chart assignment (which is due next Wednesday). Here some websites that I think will help (permanent links will appear on the right-hand side of the blog under Social 30-1 Links):

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