Can someone please explain to me what the fuck are "electoral votes"? All the Americans I've talked to in real life don't know shit about the election or how it works.
In the end it's only the 538 people in the Electoral College votes that matter, right? Then what's the fucking point of everyone else voting?
What a stupid fucking system.
Also, vote for Trump, please.
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>people vote
>electoral colleges collect votes and cast votes based on those
Thats how its supposed to work, but voting is pointless because the colleges pick whoever they want regardless
Whoever in the popular vote wins the states electoral votes (based on states population).
Dems have a handicap since California/NY have heavy immigrant populations and dems literally want to destroy america by bringing in more losers to vote democrat.
The system sucks and should not even be past-the-post voting.
Numbered choices would work better.
whats the point of even having the popular vote then
is this why americans dont need ID to vote, because their vote doesn't matter anyway?
This all you Normie faggots wakeup. ECollege Docks when?
Exactly the system is fucked
It's a side effect of the fact that communications weren't great when the Constitution was written.
It's also a side effect of the fact that the US is a collection of independent states working together, in other words "united states"
Each state gets a certain number of electors based on population.
People vote in each state. doing so determines which electors are used (either the ones from party x or party y).
After the election, electors gather in DC and vote for president/vice-president.
In theory, it does the following...
1. Forces the states to act as a single unit (though this is changing with proportional distribution).
2. Gets the vote out of the way without having to track every single vote in the sticks (doesn't apply in modern times)
Because the EC follows the popular vote in each state and has done so without fail for the past 100+ years. You cannot even imagine the shitstorm that would ensue if the EC just decided to pick whomever they want regardless of vote.
You mean like when Kerry won the 2004 election with the most votes? Oh wait
Because electoral college still follows popular vote out of obligation. It was originally created as a compromise to not give common people direct democratic powers.
It gives power to smaller states with less population. That's one of the reasons it was created.
Holy shit, that's so fucking dumb.
Who would be the popular vote in this election, you think? I'd say Hillary, but Trump might pull a victory.
This
They aren't bound to it but if they didn't go with the electorate they'd stir up a storm so big they'd dieded.
It's one step away from a democracy that allows for the possibility of ignoring the people's will
"Welcome to Whose Vote Is It Anyway, the election where the scandals are made up and the votes don't matter!"
Electors vote on behalf of their constituents for president.
The popular polls express opinion to those electors.
Regardless of the ability, electorates defying the popular vote is extremely rare, and yet to affect an outcome.
The founding fathers knew that your average joe, who doesn't understand shit about politics, shouldn't really make the final decision on who rules the country, so they made the electoral college to have the final say in who gets elected.
The popular vote only weighs down on the decision.
So, for example, even though the bush family is rich and influential, nobody really wanted JEB, so if the electoral college decided to put him in power, people would riot. They wouldn't do that. But if JEB and Trump were neck to neck, they could maybe elect JEB instead, because he is clearly the better choice
The fuck are you talking about, you moron?
Bush: 62 million votes, 286 EC
Kerry: 59 million votes, 251 EC
Everything is working as intended.
That's bullshit and you know it, the electorates vote for who the people vote for 99%+ of the time
On the surface it is, but it is reasonable considering how America was formed and the population density of the time.
Not all the popular votes count the same. On a per state basis the electoral college voted based on the popular vote in that state.
Based on those "Primary Model" calculations, Hillary is predicted to get between 56-58 million votes and Trump about 72m, I believe.
doesn't the popular vote elect the electors because the party selects who casts the vote based on who wins the state?
Kerry lost the popular vote by three million, lad.
does this mean that all but the swing states are pretty much irrelevant?
Yeah, but this was fucking 200 years ago or more, why don't they change the system?
>m-muh founding fathers
This.
It means the opposite of that. If you live in a state like california that's almost guaranteed to go democrat, then your vote doesn't matter.
If you live in a swing state (florida,ohio) that could go Rep or Dem, then your vote matters more than nearly anywhere else in the country
It was Gore who got more votes than Bush you stupid fuck
under rated
Yea but this election is different. Hillary has the influence to make electors choose her. She's willing to risk rioting.
That's what he said.
Because it still works. The only time since the mid-19th century when a candidate won the popular vote but lost the election was in 2000. Other than that, the one who won the popular vote won the EC too.
Some states are changing. For example, the system originally said that the state had to portion all of their electors to a single candidate, but some are now switching over to a proportional system that more resembles the popular vote.
Again... it's a side effect of the nature of the relationship between the state and federal governments.
In many cases (for example, when the house of representatives vote to break ties in presidential elections), the state must speak in "one voice" so each state gets a single vote.
And again, it has to do with the fact that the "united states" are simply that... a group of sovereign states that act as a confederation.
This last point has fallen by the wayside since the civil war (which is partially why it was fought, eg: 'states rights'), but because this is the way the country was formed, the entire legal structure of the country (at least in terms of state to state relationships) is based on it.
I also dont understand the point of electorates.
In a real democracy, the popular win would be the only way to choose the next president. In a real democracy, Al Gore would've won instead of GW Bush.
Russian trolls....youtu.be
I believe this keeps the individual states in control of their part of the national election, a way of avoiding centralized counting by the federal gov't, right burgers?
Not a true democracy.
We are a Democratic Republic, but even then. The ignorant masses could be duped and the elites need to be able to override them. Therefore the electorate votes on our behalf but they always go with popular vote because if they don't the cities will burn.
It's also a way to weigh the say that each state gets based on population size. California has more than other states for this reason.
If they disobeyed the public mandate they would start a civil war. It's really not a concern.
but the combined population of current swing states is below 100 million. why do people who live in California, New York, Louisiana or Montana support this? The only thing they can actually decide is who wins the primaries, no?
Nothing would actually happen. Most people are apathetic. At most there will be a few riots.
Have you met most Americans? Most of them are uneducated, completely uninformed, and easily swayed by emotion. That's why the founding fathers went "wait, we don't want a shit load of dumb hicks picking whoever figures out how to inflame them first, right?"
Plus, nowadays the population is far too concentrated in a few key areas. The north Atlantic and south Pacific would dominate the country (sort of does, but total popular sovereignty would cement it).
>Have you met most Americans?
I doubt you've met 160 million americans
Democrats tend to support it (and heavily oppose secession movements) because their voters reside primarily in cities (small geographic areas can control entire states). Apportioning electoral votes by congressional district would massively fuck over the Democrats and should be done in as many states as possible.
It was more an issue of how imformation traveled back in the day. If you wanted all 13 states to vote together, instead of just the people in DC, you needed a good way of getting the information from the states to the capital. The way you do that is have the states sort out their elections, then send one guy to the capital to vote again. This way if there's a miscount or something, you don't ship all the votes to DC, the local government can sort out what happened, and then proceed from there. In the past it was less likely that the Electoral College would break with the people, because honor was still a large part of the culture at the time of the revolution. Now the only thing keeping the EC in check is the fact that the people would kill every politician we could find if they didn't. Even that looks like it's changing, so we'll probably be an outright oligarchy in the next couple decades.
>the numbered choices vote idea
lol fuck that, that makes shit way more complicated and in no way any better
Fucking kill yourself Drumpfnigger, he will lose the popular vote and the electoral college
this shit doesn't matter, your retarded manchild candidate never had a chance at winning anyway
Let's say there are 2 states of equal size, each have 1 million people and get 20 electoral votes (this is hypothetical). In state 1 the democratic candidate gets 500,001 votes, so since they have the majority, they get all 20 electoral votes. But I'm state 2, the Repiblican candidate gets all 1 million votes and wins all 20 electoral votes in state 2. Overall, the Democratic candidate had 500,001 votes and the Republican candidate had 1,499,999 votes, yet they still get 20 electoral votes because the candidate with the majority of votes for that state gets the electoral votes regardless of it was close or a landslide. The Republican had a million more votes, but they end up with the same number of electoral votes. You see the problem with this.
semi-democracy bullshit, basically each state has their own election
whoever wins in that state's election gets that electorate thus the "red & blue state" phenomena
It all actually makes sense.
See
The electoral college was put into place waaaay back when most citizens were illiterate and believed in signs and shit. It was started so that they didn't try to elect a horse or satan. It has no use in present day and needs to be gotten rid of.
But state B doesn't get to decide for everyone else.
Each state gets representation based on their population. But each state must speak with a single voice on certain issues.
The great compromise was the solution to the problem you are mentioning. The large states wanted representation by population, the small states wanted an equal vote for each state.
So they created the lower chamber (the house) based on population and the upper chamber (the senate) based on an equal number of votes per state.
In your example to do things differently you would give state B a disproportionate amount of power than A.
Because Al Gore would have been president if we didn't have one.
The initial reason was to:
>Keep overpopulated areas from dominating every election on their own.
Unfortunately most follow a population proportion to electoral vote total with all or nothing elections. I'd be fine with it if everything was proportional to in-state voting like they do in Nebraska and Maine, etc. Democrats fight that because they'd never win an election if that was the case.
Except in reality state 1 would have a giant city that always votes democratic and removing the electoral vote would mean that city rules the vote and republicans would never win.
>Some states are changing
know which ones? genuinely curious
Electoral votes are number of house reps plus 2 for senate. Popular vote is tallied by congressional district, which are the congressional house districts in eaxh state. The candidate winning the most districts, wins the state. Thus, on rare occasions, a candidate can lose the state or national total popular vote and still win the election.
>It was more an issue of how imformation traveled back in the day.
No, the Founders deliberately made a republic to defend against one-party rule.
Nebraska and Maine
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It's much easier to understand when you realize the intention of the US was basically a bunch of mini countries with one central weak government forming the union between them for disputes between these mini countries and for common defense. The colonies were basically a bunch of mini countries, not really one unified thing with its own national identity. It took decades for any national identity to take hold. Our bicameral legislature is the way it is because large states and small states were at odds with how each mini country would get a say in federal affairs.
The federal government was never supposed to be this powerful. Since it is this powerful the electoral college system is retarded for us nowadays. California has the second most republicans of any state (Texas #1) , but they're drowned out by a larger population of democrats and faggots. Because of the electoral college, they end up disenfranchised and many want to split off and form the state of Jefferson.
Electoral college is representative of the number of congressmen each state has.
Many states require the people in the electoral college to vote as the state votes, but for "faithless elector" states they could technically vote for who they want but doing so would be political and probably literal suicide for the elector because everyone who voted in that state would immediately see that guy as a treasonous asshole.
Then why don't all the states have the same amount of electoral votes then, huh tough guy?
Czech'd.
Also, that idea seems to be out of date now, considering highly populated states have a large advantage in the EC.
Exactly. The electoral is a compromise on an old argument as to whether each state should have an equal say or whether states with more people should have more say. Hence a House and a Senate
That would give too much power to the smaller states. It would be unfair for the bigger states with high population
From what I understand the electoral votes make it so that the bigger states can't bully the smaller states.
I just did some math just to confirm what I believe in.
Wyoming has 3 electoral votes.
California has 55.
When you adjust for population, Wyoming is actually over represented.
California has more than 55 times more people than Wyoming. Actually it has roughly 65 times more people than Wyoming.
WY has more of a say about the election per capita than California.
This system makes the popular vote irrelevant by making smaller states more relevant.
I can understand where the founding fathers were going with this.
because the people of each state vote on who that state is going to vote for, and then that state votes. Remember america is not a country, its a union. each state is the equivalent of a country. Straight democracy would remove the sovereignty of the state.
Due to limits on the size of Congress and the Electoral College, states with low population still come out ahead. Each electoral vote from Wyoming represents 200,000 people, while each from California represents 700,000.
Consider this chart, which shows the population of the United States around the time the Constitution was ratified.
If we had set up a system that went strictly by popular vote, we would have a system where 4 states (Mass, Penn, Virginia, New York) could basically run the table forcing their will on all the other states.
Having just fought a revolution, the states were not about to join a system that put them under slavery again to a large national government.