Charity =/= Welfare

well it sure as hell doesn't = warfare.

Who said charity equals war?

We democratically elected our leader for the next four years. Thank you.

We democratically elected our leader for the next four years.

err...no.

the popular vote for Hillary was actually higher, even if it's a small amount.

What actually elected Trump is your dumb "winner takes all" voting system, not the vote of the common people.

Electoral votes are proportionate to the population of a state, the folk voting vote for that state and it's folk. This is still democratic.

Though something better would be for folk to vote no if the candidates are so bad, and for a state's votes not to go anywhere if it does say no. If no candidate wins because of no, election starts over and goes to hopefully new candidates.

Hello I'm Smedley and I'm going to explain the electoral college is democratic by explaining it's not democratic

"Hello I'm a liberal so I think we should control the entire country no matter what because we control the major population centers"

Sorry but in a union of states, this makes much more sense than a straight popular vote. Population is accounted for more in this system than in popular vote, and allows rural states to have somewhat of a voice while keeping it tied to how many folk are in that state.

Besides, neither won the popular vote, 48% of folk who could vote didn't.

Though.. In Belgium we have a similar system where the Brussels and Wallonian vote count significantly more than the Flemish vote. Using approximate numbers Flanders is underrepresented by more than 60% in the chamber of representatives which causes many outrage by Flemish seperatist parties because most Wallonians and Brussels citizens vote overwhelmingly socialist!

Electoral votes are proportionate to the population of a state

true.

the folk voting vote for that state and it's folk

false.

in Florida for example, Hillary had gained 47.8% of the votes which is about ~4.5M in number while Trump only managed to get ahead by a slight 2% difference.

~4.5M votes. Down the drain. Worth nothing.

That's not what I really call "democracy".

if it was actually proportionate to the voting folk then they would simply divide the electoral votes according to the difference gap and give Democrats 14 of the EVs while giving Republicans 15 of the EVs.

this is almost like a cheap version of gerrymandering.

in Turkey we use(at least how it suppose to be on paper) the D'Hondt method which basically allocates seats in parliament according to the popular votes, so even if one party gets the majority of the votes the opposition have a say on bills.

Edited 11/12/2016 16:56:25

Or genocide some ethnic minorities to gain popularity.

false

True

Those voters do vote to win their state over for either side, and no, just because you lost does not mean your vote meant nothing, that mindset is what keeps third parties down and candidates like Clinton up, the idea that if your candidate won't win, you've done nothing.

Actually, let's look at it like this.

Popular vote:

50.5M Trump
50.6M Clinton

Clinton wins, 50.5M votes go down the drain, not what I would call democracy.

This is essentially what you're arguing

on the current US system yes, but on many European nations if two or more parties get very close results as majority(like in Trump&Hillary case) they have to make a "coalition government" or must go re-election, so they don't exactly "go down the drain".

eg. See Turkish elections June 2015: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_general_election,_June_2015 , which forced AK Party to attempt to create a coalition government with other opposition parties and failed.

resulted in re-elections in November afterwards in which AK Party managed to gain the majority this time.

Edited 11/12/2016 19:43:23

If there's nothing else good about the electoral college, at least it produces a clear winner. This year Clinton won the popular vote by something like 0.5%, but lost the electoral college 57% to 43%, which makes Trump the clear winner.

In other countries when you have close elections like the one held this year, there is pretty much chaos. One good example of this is the austrian presidential election that took place earlier this year, in which Alexander Van der Bellen won by 0.7%. That election took place on the 24th of april through the 22 of may, but was fought in court and subsequently annulled. Now, a new third round of the election will take place on the 4th of December, over nine months after the first round of the election.

(That's another thing, they have actually held two elections so far, because without an electoral college, plurality wins such as the ones achieved by bill clinton in 1992 and 1996 are effectively worthless. You have to hold another "run-off" election to find a winner)

Contrast this to when Al Gore won the popular vote by 0.5% and lost the electoral college in 2000. He did indeed dispute the results in court, but the process was really smooth due to it being localized to florida, and the election was over in a little over a month, held on November 7, and resolved on december 12th.

Edited 11/12/2016 19:34:51

^ this I can agree, the system is quite "undemocratic" but makes sure the winner is clear and creates lesser chaos.

If there's nothing else good about the electoral college, at least it produces a clear winner. This year Clinton won the popular vote by something like 0.5%, but lost the electoral college 57% to 43%, which makes Trump the clear winner.

in Russia, sometimes it's so clear who's winner that he has over 100% vote.

the democrats vs republicans system is not realy the best sdemocratic system for the americans. but! i think Trump used it in the right way to win.

@Жұқтыру: come on, the 140% joke is old. i would have used it agains clinton, but not against trump :P

ps: sorry, english is not my first or second language.

actually, going off of the proportion of electoral votes wyoming has to population (smallest state), California should have 488. They have 55. The electoral college vastly undermines the vote of larger states

EDIT: 388, not 488

Edited 11/18/2016 04:04:03

Great video which helps explain not just this election, but so much other shit going on in the world right now: https://youtu.be/-K8bf6dbYt4

actually, going off of the proportion of electoral votes wyoming has to population (smallest state), California should have 488. They have 55. The electoral college vastly undermines the vote of larger states

EDIT: 388, not 488

The number of electoral college votes a state gets is just its total congressional representation, thus the minimum is three with 2 senators and 1 representative. While you may disagree with this particular way of distributing congressional power, it's not really a problem with the electoral college per se.

Edited 11/18/2016 14:04:41