USS Lamson, a US Navy ship of the era to which Romney referred. (1916)
As we all should know, national popular vote polls are legally meaningless since the US constitution dictates that elections for president and vice-president are in the electoral college by electors chosen by the states however they choose to do so. This is system will not change. A change would require a constitutional amendment ratified by 2/3 of the states.
The states are more or less free to decide the manner of their choice of electors. Currently only Maine and Nebraska use something other than a "winner take all" method in the popular election in the state concerned. The two exceptions choose electors on the basis of the popular vote in each US House of Representatives congressional district. How they apportion the two electoral positions derived from the the state's US senators is not clear to me. Close popular elections in several states can easily result in the election of someone other than the candidate who, across the country, had the most citizen votes. This has happened several times and may again this time.
The purpose of this indirect system of election was and is to emphasize the continuing federal nature of the United States.
Who won the debate on foreign policy? I think that the president easily mastered his opponent in this contest. Aside from the "horses and bayonets" moment, the most interesting thing said was Romney's insistence that a psyops effort should be mounted to change the mind of the Muslims about Islam. I wonder if he actually understood what he had been briefed to say. pl
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/23/us-usa-campaign-poll-idUSBRE89K0A920121023
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_electoral_college
