Bartholomew Gallacher
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2018
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- SL Rez
- 2002
Well the thing is that in America the vote for presidency are being distorted on purpose by the electoral college. India, the biggest democracy on the planet, has such a college too - but it can have up to 4896 members instead of 538 in America.
Most other democracies either use one of these two approaches to elect the head of the government/state,
a) direct vote by the people, like in France,
b) direct vote by the members of the parliament, like in the United Kingdom.
In 2016 the Washington Post ran an article about "Is the electoral college fair?", and came to the conclusion that it misrepresents, but not as much as some people might think so. But still California, where around 12% of the US population lives, has not so much weight as it otherwhere would have maybe. That's the idea behind it, to give smaller states a fair voice.
Anyway, this article is also enlightening, where they calculated the outcome of all elections since 2000 using different approaches:
a: direct election by popular vote, outcome would be 2000 Al Gore, 2004 George W. Bush, 2008&2012 Barack Obama, 2016 Hillary Clinton
b: share votes in the electoral college, quite interesting, because in 2000 Al Gore would have 262 votes, 13 Nader, 263 Bush, so both of them would need some support of Nader's camp,
2004 clearly George W. Bush, 2008&12 Barack Obama, 2016 268 Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson 2, McMullin 1 and Trump 267. So neither Clinton or Trump would become president wihout some support.
c: using the parliament to vote: 2000&2004 Bush, 2008 Barack Obama, 2012 Mitt Romney.
Most other democracies either use one of these two approaches to elect the head of the government/state,
a) direct vote by the people, like in France,
b) direct vote by the members of the parliament, like in the United Kingdom.
In 2016 the Washington Post ran an article about "Is the electoral college fair?", and came to the conclusion that it misrepresents, but not as much as some people might think so. But still California, where around 12% of the US population lives, has not so much weight as it otherwhere would have maybe. That's the idea behind it, to give smaller states a fair voice.
Anyway, this article is also enlightening, where they calculated the outcome of all elections since 2000 using different approaches:
a: direct election by popular vote, outcome would be 2000 Al Gore, 2004 George W. Bush, 2008&2012 Barack Obama, 2016 Hillary Clinton
b: share votes in the electoral college, quite interesting, because in 2000 Al Gore would have 262 votes, 13 Nader, 263 Bush, so both of them would need some support of Nader's camp,
2004 clearly George W. Bush, 2008&12 Barack Obama, 2016 268 Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson 2, McMullin 1 and Trump 267. So neither Clinton or Trump would become president wihout some support.
c: using the parliament to vote: 2000&2004 Bush, 2008 Barack Obama, 2012 Mitt Romney.