Mystery-lanche
This, my 900th posting in what will be exactly three and a half years of blogging one week from today, will simply remark upon a mystery.
Or "mystery-lanche"!
I recently saw from my traffic counter that on January 30th, I got about 500 visits and 800 page views -- about ten times normal daily traffic!
I didn't notice that, however, until several days went by, and the free statcounter only keeps info on the last 100 visits, so I have no idea where they came from and what they were reading! And nobody left any comments to give a clue what they were reading. I wish I knew who posted a link here, and to what.
Or maybe, but less likely, everyone just was interested in the electoral college and found me by googling about it (one of my perrenial high-traffic google-search postings), because of Super Tuesday perhaps?
Oddly, the same thing happened about a year ago in December 2006 -- the reason also still a mystery!
Or "mystery-lanche"!
I recently saw from my traffic counter that on January 30th, I got about 500 visits and 800 page views -- about ten times normal daily traffic!
I didn't notice that, however, until several days went by, and the free statcounter only keeps info on the last 100 visits, so I have no idea where they came from and what they were reading! And nobody left any comments to give a clue what they were reading. I wish I knew who posted a link here, and to what.
Or maybe, but less likely, everyone just was interested in the electoral college and found me by googling about it (one of my perrenial high-traffic google-search postings), because of Super Tuesday perhaps?
Oddly, the same thing happened about a year ago in December 2006 -- the reason also still a mystery!
posted by RDS at 3:15 AM
3 Comments:
Hi! To aid in demystification, I visited your blog for the first time by googling "electoral college," as you surmised many had. Back in 2004, I, like many, thought the electoral college was dumb and pointless. That was until I saw a map on Rush Limbaugh's website that had the U.S. divided up by county, with each county colored red or blue, red being a county that went to Bush and blue, to Kerry. The map was almost entirely red. Obviously it made quite an impression, demonstrating that though the vote was close in terms of the percent of individual votes cast for each candidate, the vast majority of counties went to Bush. Without the electoral college, a few urban centers on the east and west coast would make all the decisions for all the farmers, medium to small cities, and rural areas in the U.S. based on THEIR agendas. Whole demographic groups would effectively be unrepresented. Three years later, last semester, I found myself in Spanish 150 at Grand Valley State University trying to explain to my French-born professor, in Spanish, the reason for the electoral college. This did not go over well. Even when he permitted me to continue my explanation in English, all I could do was try to explain the red and blue county map. His logic was, "One person, one vote, like we do in France." I made a mental note to look-up more info on the topic. I'm saving your blog post in my personal files to reference for the next time a Frenchman asks me to justify the electoral college in Spanish.
Hello, and thank you for letting me know!
I've seen that map you mentioned, and it is certainly illuminating!
Yes, the point that's certainly mystifying to foreigners (as well as too many Americans) is that the States, as Sovereigns unto themselves (rather than mere subdivisions of Federal power), ALSO get a vote! It's the same reason (and using the same formula to combine "people" representation with "State" representation) that we have a Senate.
In other words, we have "one person, one vote" PLUS "one State, one vote", combined by the electoral formula!
That makes sense as both groups ceded power to form the Federal government.
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