2020 US Election Thread

[Frownland]

^same

Originally Posted by adidasss

Without going into the mechanics of this convoluted system, is this ever going to change? Is that even possible? Don't people have a problem that a president can be elected even though most people haven't voted for them?

Yep, it's been heavily contested for a while. It's possible to abolish it, but this would have to be enacted by american politicians (2/3 of congress I believe). Not likely to happen since they don't operate in the interests of the people though.

Quick overview of the mechanics: each state gets a certain number of electoral college votes. Most states use a winner take all system where all of their electoral college votes go to the majority winner. This causes a popular vote/electoral college vote split because someone can win (for example) 40 percent of a state's vote which would go toward their popular vote figures, but these votes wouldn't be represented in their electoral college figures because the state's EC votes went to the other candidate.

It was partially designed to keep people like Trump out of office, but it was largely put in place to entice less populous states into joining the country since they were afraid of being drowned out politically by more populated (and urban) states (there are more layers but that's the overview). It's failed at the former and the latter has invalidated the concept of one man one vote. Pretty cool country huh.