this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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politics

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[–] AncientFutureNow 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The USA votes it's president in with the Electoral College. Every poll talking about "voters ... tie ... blah ....blah ...blah" doesn't mean shit, cause the voters don't get to pick the president. Their representatives do. And guess what, their representatives don't have to represent them. They can vote however they want. They can even get elected and then switch parties to the bad guys team. Also, fuck the GOP.

[–] GiddyGap 14 points 1 year ago

Fun fact: As of 2023, the 2004 general election between Bush and Kerry is the only Presidential election since 1988 where Republicans have won the popular vote.

Yay for American democracy.

[–] Maggoty 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In 200 odd years there's been something like 1 case of a faithless elector. For all intents and purposes it's a filtered general vote. The electors just carry out their district/state's will.

[–] visak 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's not the issue so much as the "rounding" in the way electoral college votes are distributed. Plus states that do "winner take all". It has the effect of skewing the results away from being proportional to the popular vote.

[–] Maggoty 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay? That's not what they said though. They said elected representatives choose the president. That's just completely wrong in every sense but the most technical.

[–] visak 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was more replying to you, that it's the filtering I have issue with. I'm other words I agree that "faithless electors" is not really an issue rather my problem with the electoral system is that it's not a passthrough and does change the outcome.

[–] Maggoty 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah. I'd love to see a system that represented people and not land. But we didn't keep up with the whole Constitutional Convention every 20 years thing. And the founders were dealing with 13 governments that had their own national egos. So they had to play to those governments instead of the actual people and now we're stuck with the system. The proportional representation pact is the current best shot. Followed by an amendment and then rolling the dice with a modern Constitutional Convention.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That would be true if electoral votes were proportional to states' populations. As it is now, your vote counts (I think) six times more if you live in Wyoming vs if you live in California.

[–] Maggoty 1 points 1 year ago

I didn't say it was a good filter. Just pointed out that the people sent to the electoral college do not have any agency to select the president.