Obama Campaign: We are playing more offense than defense in the final 11 days

The Obama-Biden campaign hosted a teleconference on the state of the race and how they believe they are winning in the final days of the campaign.

Campaign Manager, David Plouffe, said that they are forcing the McCain campaign to spend money in states that they thought they were secure in. Plouffe believes that Obama is in good shape in states that were thought to be won by McCain. "If you look at the facts, it's a daunting task for McCain to win," Plouffe said.

National Field Director, Jon Carson, said that when looking at the Electoral College, "we are in good shape." Carson went on to state that Democrats are voting at a significantly higher rate than Republicans when it comes to early voting. He believes that early voting will help when election day comes.

Battleground State Director, Jen O'Malley, said that Sen. Obama's campaign is doing everything they can to sway independent voters to vote Democrat. "We have 1.5 million volunteers who are making more than 400,000 contacts a day in battleground states. These contacts will help Obama win the battleground states," O'Malley said.

With only 11 days to go till the election, O'Malley stated that a lot could still change but she believes that Sen. Obama has a good chance of taking many of the battleground states.

How does the electoral college work?

The Federal Reserve makes sure that individual states "know their responsiblities" in pledging their electoral votes, said the Federal Register's Director of Legal Affairs and Policy Amy Bunk in a lecture at the National Archives.
According to Bunk, the electors of each state act as "go betweens" of State and Congress. The number of electors is determined by the number of representatives and senators a state has in Congress. There are a total of 538 electors in the U.S. every presidential election year.

Although electors almost always pledge their vote to the candidate that wins the popular vote of the state, Bunk said there have been cases of "faithless electors." She said that one example occurred in 2004 when one of Minnesota's 10 electors gave their vote to John Edwards for president instead of John Kerry.

On January 6, "Congress will meet to count the votes" of this year's electors. Bunk said that while the electors determine the presidency, the public's "votes do count" under our current system.