@raphjd:
The total number of votes cast in Alabama is lower than the number of votes assigned to candidates. That is a fact. Even if we ignore who benefitted from it, the fact remains that more votes were assigned to candidates then votes were cast.
are you saying there is something nefarious because (324,050 + 318,303 + 237,981) is bigger than 564,478?
I think you are misreading the article, intentionally or not I do not know. You cannot add the numbers like that, because voters could legally vote multiple times!
You (and the article) are trying to get some sort of meaningful information about a popular vote from an election that does not really allow us to think in those terms. JFK and Nixon were not on the ballot. 22 electors (11 D, 11 R) were on the ballot, some of whom were pledged to a candidate and some were not. Every voter in Alabama could vote UP TO 11 times, and split those votes among electors in whatever way they wanted to, as long as they only cast one vote per elector. So it is impossible to tell how many actual people voted in the election, as some could have voted 11 times, and some could have voted only once. Wikipedia does not tell us the numbers for each and every elector, only the highest total for each. It assumes that those numbers are exclusive, that no one would have voted for both a Nixon elector and a Kennedy elector. But that is an assumption only, not a fact. In principle, every single voter could have split their votes among the D and the R almost evenly. Unlikely, but possible. The fact is that we DO NOT KNOW THE TOTAL. The only thing we can say as a FACT about the total number of voters is that at least 324,050 voted in the election, the highest vote for an individual elector. Everything else is supposition and conjecture.
as to the 324,050 + 318,303, it is also an assumption that the 318,303 (highest Kennedy elector) also contributed to the 324,050 (highest unpledged elector). Again, NOONE KNOW FOR SURE. Maybe some did and some did not. Wikipedia is not adding them together that way because they are assuming the redundancy.
All we know for sure (meaning the only useful fact for determining electors) is that the highest vote total for a Republican elector was still lower than the lowest vote total for a Democrat elector. In other words, in a contest among the 22 people actually on the ballot, under the up to 11 votes rule in play, the top 11 elector vote totals were all Democrat. So those people won the right to be AL electors that year. That is the electoral college. that is the end of it. We can use the number of various votes and make all sorts of assumptions to try and tell some story about the mythical "popular vote" in AL, but that is all they are; stories, not facts.
I will say this; the Wikipedia article does a very bad job of explaining their numbers, totals, and assumptions. They should not have a column called "popular vote" at all, and certainly not put the numbers in like they did, because it is confusing, making it look like more votes to candidates than votes cast. the whole thing is bubkis, Raphjd. But it is not anything like the Florida shenanigans.
