- Joined
- Dec 13, 2015
- Messages
- 9,594
- Reaction score
- 2,072
- Location
- France
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Centrist
From the Economist: America’s electoral system gives the Republicans advantages over Democrats - excerpt:
The Electoral College falsifies any pretense of the US being a "Free Democracy". A democracy it is (perhaps), but deeply manipulated since 12th Amendment instituted the Electoral College (EC) with its imbalance of the presidential vote. Yes, the vote particularly for the presidency (one of three in the US triumvirate of "central powers") is distorted by the EC.
In all other evolved democracies on earth, the popular-vote is the singular arbiter of the winner. In the US, five times since the Constitution was promulgated, the loser of the popular-vote has "won" the presidency. This last time was highly significant. Hillary won the popular-vote by a margin of 2%, that is, she won the popular vote by a margin of 2.6 million votes - the highest historically. For perspective - that 2% margin is the combined population of Alaska, District of Columbia, Vermont and Wyoming.
Something has gone very wrong, and since a long, long time. It's time to end this unfair and thus undemocratic manner in which the presidential vote is decided. And this is apart from other voting inconsistencies, like gerrymandering and the aberrant employ of unlimited funding by a set of individuals (who exact a price for their money) that also must change.
Call it what you may, but what it is not is a fair and decent democracy ...
PS:
*And please spare me the nonsense about the US not being a democracy because it is a republic. They are intrinsically one in the same:
*It's the system that was wrong from the very beginning! First with an unfair Electoral College and then gerrymandering. And it's time to get it right, as suggested in the titled report from the Economist, or we remain the third-world democracy that we've become.
In all the world’s other 58 fully presidential democracies—those in which the president is both head of state and head of government—the winning candidate gets the most votes in the final, or only, round of voting. But due to the “electoral college” system that America’s founders jury-rigged in part to square the needs of democracy with the demography of slavery, this does not hold true for America. States vote in the college in proportion to their combined representation in both houses of Congress. This set-up means that a candidate who wins narrowly in many small and smallish states can beat one who gets more votes overall, but racks most of them up in big majorities in a few big states.
The Electoral College falsifies any pretense of the US being a "Free Democracy". A democracy it is (perhaps), but deeply manipulated since 12th Amendment instituted the Electoral College (EC) with its imbalance of the presidential vote. Yes, the vote particularly for the presidency (one of three in the US triumvirate of "central powers") is distorted by the EC.
In all other evolved democracies on earth, the popular-vote is the singular arbiter of the winner. In the US, five times since the Constitution was promulgated, the loser of the popular-vote has "won" the presidency. This last time was highly significant. Hillary won the popular-vote by a margin of 2%, that is, she won the popular vote by a margin of 2.6 million votes - the highest historically. For perspective - that 2% margin is the combined population of Alaska, District of Columbia, Vermont and Wyoming.
Something has gone very wrong, and since a long, long time. It's time to end this unfair and thus undemocratic manner in which the presidential vote is decided. And this is apart from other voting inconsistencies, like gerrymandering and the aberrant employ of unlimited funding by a set of individuals (who exact a price for their money) that also must change.
Call it what you may, but what it is not is a fair and decent democracy ...
PS:
*And please spare me the nonsense about the US not being a democracy because it is a republic. They are intrinsically one in the same:
The key difference between a democracy and a republic lies in the limits placed on government by the law, which has implications for minority rights. Both forms of government tend to use a representational system — i.e., citizens vote to elect politicians to represent their interests and form the government.
*It's the system that was wrong from the very beginning! First with an unfair Electoral College and then gerrymandering. And it's time to get it right, as suggested in the titled report from the Economist, or we remain the third-world democracy that we've become.
Last edited: