What Happens When a High School Uses the Electoral College to Vote for Prom Court?

Right now, pundits are salivating over Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Colorado, and Nevada — because they are THE BATTLEGROUNDS. Everyone in all of the other states have accepted that during election years, we can all wear sweatpants whenever we leave the house since we almost certainly won’t be ambushed by CNN cameras eager to capture and broadcast our dumb opinions. Our reliance on the electoral college to choose the Presidency despite the fact that no one really likes the electoral college is a curious remnant of a bygone era. Just how impractical is it? Let’s take a look at a film that documents how the voting system would work in a different context — high school prom.

The 2009 documentary entitled “Electoral High School” applies the electoral college to a rural Wisconsin high school — the bureaucracy, the confusion, the unnecessary steps, the endless caveats, the inconvenience — and that’s only when voting is as simple as walking across the lunch room. As we eagerly anticipate election day 2012, it doesn’t hurt to brush up on the confusing clusterfuck of rules that govern how we choose the President.

The film is 37 minutes long, but when you have the time, it’s a fun look into both how the electoral college works and what sort of characters can be found in Frederic Area 7-12 School — which, full disclosure, is my old high school.