You Can Win the Presidency With 22% of the Vote

What people said

nanny · 2020-11 · Recommendation

>The electoral college is a form of protection for the naturally less densely populated agrarian states against the densely populated urban ones. This is commonly repeated, but it's BS. What "protection" does the electoral college give to Kansas, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Idaho, or Montana? Presidential candidates don't pay any attention to any of those "less densely populated agrarian states". In addition, dense states like NJ, NY, CT, and Mass don't get attention from candidates. California doesn't get any attention either, so what gives? The states that get the attention are the swing states with the highest number of electoral votes, simply because the electoral college incentivizes trying to swing a small number of voters in such states. Watch some of these videos from CGP Grey for more info: [VIDEO]

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cyphar · 2016-10 · Recommendation

> It's been around for a couple of hundred years so it can't be that terrible. Heh. If only everything that is old was good. The all-or-nothing electoral college system: 1. Removes power from all people, because they vote for electors not for the actual candidates. 2. Removes representation of people in both swing and predetermined states, because they don't get represented by their elector (all electors have to vote for the same party, not according to the fraction of their state that voted for party X). However, in a weird twist, not all states require that electors vote for the candidate the state told them to vote for -- meaning that they have insane amounts of power. 3. The way electors are assigned actually means that small states have more voting power than large states -- meaning that you can effectively become president if you can get the right 22% of the USA to vote for you. Oh, and please note that the electoral college system came about because the founding fathers thought you (the commonman) was too dumb to understand how voting should work. So they gave the power of voting to electors. Here's some videos on the topic: * [LINK] * [LINK] * [VIDEO]

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Someone1234 · 2015-09 · Recommendation

Some reasons why you shouldn't anymore (CGP Grey): [LINK] [VIDEO] Even in the UK, where the concept originates, a lot of people view it as a bad idea. The issue right now is that nobody can agree what to change it to, since people gravitate towards the voting system that helps them in the next election cycle (and the big two want it to remain a two-party system).

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