I have heard it said that some states legally bind their electors to vote for the popular winner.

Quote from: jrientsI have heard it said that some states legally bind their electors to vote for the popular winner.

Interesting,  I haven't heard that but I can see why the states would want to since a lot of people get offended by the thought that the electoral vote isn't really the same as the popular vote.  Fortunately most of the voting public is less informed than the average RPGsite poster and doesn't even know what the electoral college is anyway.

I think if the state ever tried to enforce the law they would run into problems though since it is a federal election and therefore federal law would pre-empt state law if there is a conflict.  It would be an interesting case to watch.

The one that made it's rounds right afer 2000 is the idea of proportional electoral college voting. I think a couple of states have that.

So if a state goes 60/40 democratic, then 60% of it's electoral votes go to the democratic candidate, 40% republican. The idea is to more "democratically" represent the state's voting.

That's not the way the US is set up. It's a federal republic.  This "weird" electoral college represents the same things that the split Congress does - if you want to look at it that way.  It's a mix of population-based and state-based representation.  It's why you have the House based on population, but the Senate based on 2-per-state. It's a neat little balancing act to address the fears of the small states (population-wise) from being pushed around by larger states.

And, as has been noted elsewhere, electors can vote for whomever they want once the college is convened.

In regards to the article in the OP, I don't understand why a Bloomberg/Hagel would even need to go third party.  Its not like anyone on the GOP side has a hammer-lock on the nomination.  And the bit about "Hagel's out because he talks against Bush and the war in Iraq," seems silly too -- no one, outside of Guilliani in reference to Sept. 11, has exactly endorsed Bush either.  Tancredo, admittedly a long-shot at best, in particular has said some anti-Bush remarks in regards to immigration.

For all intents and purposes, the United States--at the federal level--is a strict two-party system and the parties do cooperate to keep it that way.

The reason I relentlessly vote Libertarian is to break the 2-party stranglehold on America. We won't have a shot at a 3rd party candidate until the debates are open to all parties instead of the big 2. And that hasn't happened to my knowledge since Ross Perot, whom I also voted for.

And I think of Ross Perot every election year, because of a cartoon from that era: "I just can't get excited about the elections this year. I wish an insane gnome was running."