>>>>There are only two reasons I can think of for not voting in the Electoral College for the candidate to whom you are pledged.
>>>>
>>>>The candidate dies.
>>>>The candidate get convicted/indited/etc. involving something that would disqualify hir (him/her) from serving the term in office.
>>>
>>>...or 3 - the American public was too stupid and picked an obviously wrong person for the job.
>>
>>or 4 - the Electoral College is now the elite group running the country and this really is now an oligarchy, not a democracy or republic
>
>Hhhmmm,
>if you compute the statistical probability of people with close family ties (marriage or more than 49% genetic overlap) winning presidency or being in the primary circus democracy (wtih the corollary of equal opportunity in chances of being elected) might not be the term best to describe your findings.
>
>If you are only angling for the decision mode: as popular vote is not always synched to electoral distribution, that would argue the states are not a true democracy ?

Representative democracy is a kind of republic, so we are both. However, the real question is who are our representatives and who controls them? The people as it should be or big corporations and big $?