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