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The Electoral vote system
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| razmataz |
Someone please clarify this for me.
All done and dusted, what I have gathered from the American democracy is that the popular vote is redundant because ultimately it doesn't decide who wins the election. The Electoral college vote does. Basically, the people vote for the electors who then vote for the president. The winner of the election usually wins both the popular and electoral vote but this is not always so because the different number of votes per state and who the electors ultimately vote for.
Ahem, am I the only one missing the flaw in this "democratic" system? The only reason Bush stood for re-election was because he narrowly "won" the electoral vote in 2000 (having convincingly lost the popular vote) after a supreme court intervention to stop a recount.
I love Democracy! Such a theatre! |
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| George Smiley |
| Its no different really than any other democracy that does not have proportional representation (PR) which is the vast majority of countries. The reason it stands out more in America is because there are only two parties that get voted for (Nader doesn't count!) whereas in most other countries there are many parties to vote for. In many-party-systems its not that unusual for one party to win the majority but not get a simple majority (over 50%) of votes but in America as there are only two so it would be expected but doesn't always happen (like 2000). But saying that, in other countries, there may be 500 members of Parliament so 500 areas in which voters would have chosen one party or another to make up the majority party, which when compared to America would equal 500 states! Maybe to change American way you would want to have the people of one state vote for one electoral college (eg. Californians would be divided into 55 constituencies and only vote for one college not 55) Interestingly enough there are 538 electoral colleges.... |
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