Longer travel times and no electronic communication. So there'd be the general election to choose the electors, then the electors would have time to get their shit together and travel to vote as the electoral college, then time for news to propogate back, and arrangements to be made, etc. Though it was a smaller country then, it was still pretty big by the communications and travel technologies of the day.
Note that technically, Obama is the presumptive president-elect: he hasn't technicaly been elected yet because the college of electors hasn't met yet. It's just that in this era of instant communication, folks directly voting for pledged electors, and measures to prevent 'faithless electors', we're able to know this early what the result will be on 2008-12-15, so nobody bothers sticking in the word 'presumptive'.
(For folks concerned that a more reliable ballotting method would 'take too long to count', it's worth remembering that the US used to not know who the net president would be until the electoral college had met; it didn't kill us to wait a month back then, so it shouldn't be too awful if we were to have to wait until dawn nowadays.)
I keep hearing folks on the telly refer to Obama as "our new president", and thinking, "No, he's not; he's our next president." On the other hand, one of the late-night comics did follow that phrase with a remark along the lines of, "Well not actually, not until January, but I don't think most people would mind if he got started a little early." And yeah, I'm itching for 2009-01-20 to get here the way I used to get anxious for Christmas to hurry up and arrive most of December when I was a kid.
[sorry for repost; had typos to fix
Note that technically, Obama is the presumptive president-elect: he hasn't technicaly been elected yet because the college of electors hasn't met yet. It's just that in this era of instant communication, folks directly voting for pledged electors, and measures to prevent 'faithless electors', we're able to know this early what the result will be on 2008-12-15, so nobody bothers sticking in the word 'presumptive'.
(For folks concerned that a more reliable ballotting method would 'take too long to count', it's worth remembering that the US used to not know who the net president would be until the electoral college had met; it didn't kill us to wait a month back then, so it shouldn't be too awful if we were to have to wait until dawn nowadays.)
I keep hearing folks on the telly refer to Obama as "our new president", and thinking, "No, he's not; he's our next president." On the other hand, one of the late-night comics did follow that phrase with a remark along the lines of, "Well not actually, not until January, but I don't think most people would mind if he got started a little early." And yeah, I'm itching for 2009-01-20 to get here the way I used to get anxious for Christmas to hurry up and arrive most of December when I was a kid.