arisboch said: Getting the majority of the votes but not getting the office. The US election system is a pile of shit.
The actual difference in tallies wasn't even 1% of the total number of tallies. To be specific, Clinton won the popular vote, the percentage of voter turnout, but Trump won the electoral vote, which can be simplified as the percentage of voter turnout per acreage. Each state votes based on their own population and, with the exception of two iirc, the victor is to whom all the electoral votes are awarded. That's the difference between a democracy and a republic.
(That's not a perfectly accurate explanation but it underlines the concept of trying to balance state size and state population when it comes to federal voting power.)
I'm not talking about the outcome, I'm talking about the fact, that the candidate with the majority of votes has lost.
I just posted a response to a similar comment in another comment thread, so I'll just copy-paste it here:
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The reason for the electoral college is that the founding fathers didn't envision the emergence of something like enduring political parties. (Which is odd, because they existed in England before the United States existed...) George Washington's farewell address (from his presidency) was actually warning against the dangers of political parties.
The general idea was that you would vote for people who represented your interests, rather than having a national consensus upon one person or party, and they all got into a closed room and voted until they could find a compromise candidate. (Not unlike Papal elections by the College of Cardinals.) That said, no small part of the reasoning behind this setup was fear of a demagogue misleading large swaths of the populace, and the belief that the elites needed to have some way of subverting democracy to stop a populist uprising... of course, in the current system, the electoral college is directly determined by the parties, themselves, on the express basis of party loyalty and they will essentially never vote against their own candidate. The system as it stands actually gives highly motivated outsiders outsized power to overturn the elites and the establishment, not the other way around.
Another thing worth noting is that there had to be a constitutional amendment to even allow people to vote for their own senators. Before that, they were voted by state legislatures. This was partly an insulation from direct democracy like the electoral college, presuming that people would have better judgement voting for more local officials, who then voted for statewide representatives to the national stage. This led to widespread corruption, however, with senatorial seats being given out on the basis of whoever donated the most to the governor's campaign, and the Senate was famously a "millionaire's club."
Another reason for how the electoral college vote is split up is a compromise that was made with the founding of the country out of fear from smaller states being overwhelmed by larger states. (At the time, Virginia was the most populous state, and dwarfed states like Rhode Island.) Each state has electoral votes based upon population, plus two. This plus two is rather important, because it means a state like North Dakota has nearly no residents, but is worth 3 electoral votes, while doubling the population would only get it a 33% increase in electoral votes. The fact that Republicans can reliably win the vast stretches of the rural low-population areas filling the middle of the country is why the Democratic Party can consistently win the popular vote in the heavily populated coasts, but still lose the presidency.
Also, the winner-take-all nature of the electoral college is not actually part of the constitution. Some states apportion delegates to the electoral college by house district. (In practice, this means a state can go for the Republicans, but a district representing a city will send one or more delegates for the Democrats, or else a rural area will go for the Republicans in a Democratic state.) This only happens in a couple states, however, as it weakens the overall value of the state on the campaign trail (which means less promises of pork barrel offerings to that state's particular needs) if it is a swing state, while a solidly red or blue state, with a Republican or Democratic state legislature wouldn't want to give away any electors to the other party when they could ensure all the electors for their party. This split apportionment is generally only seen in a state where the state legislature is of a different party than the way a state tends to vote nationally, which means Nebraska and Maine.
Just wanted to add onto what NWSiaCB said (although nice job on that, couldn't have said it better myself).
The fact is, it is impossible to know who would have won the election if it was popular-based as opposed to electoral-based. People voted the way they did because it was an electoral-based system.
Both myself and others I've spoken to in "safe" states voted for neither candidate as a form of protest. Additionally, there are those on both sides that may not have even voted because they were in a "safe" state. How these groups of people would have changed their vote if it was popular-based instead is impossible to determine.
Also, there are some pretty big cons to having a popular-based system.
1. Nation-wide recounts in the case of a close election would be a nightmare to coordinate, moreso because every state has their own election laws and systems for collecting the vote. Additionally, this could lengthen the time before a candidate gets truly decided. Coordinating the transition of presidential staff is already lengthy as is with 2 months being barely enough time, and by law the transfer of power must occur in early January.
2. National campaigns are expensive as is, and that's when candidates can focus on just the subset of states that are close. Having a true nationwide campaign would drive up this costs by several factors. It's one of the same reasons why they don't hold all of the primaries on the same day.
Clinton won the popular vote, but Trump won the electoral college.
When the election was called after Trump passed 270 electoral votes, he was ahead in the popular vote by about a million votes. Since then they have counted more of the votes from the Pacific Coast states (that voted for Clinton, especially California where she won by two to one) and she's gained a roughly 200,000 popular vote lead on Trump. 200,000 is equal to the entire voting population of Wyoming (which voted Trump) which is the smallest state in terms of population in the country.
I am not sure if the military and overseas votes have bee added to the total yet as of the Thursday after the election, and they are still counting in a few states it seems.
When the election was called after Trump passed 270 electoral votes, he was ahead in the popular vote by about a million votes. Since then they have counted more of the votes from the Pacific Coast states (that voted for Clinton, especially California where she won by two to one) and she's gained a roughly 200,000 popular vote lead on Trump. 200,000 is equal to the entire voting population of Wyoming (which voted Trump) which is the smallest state in terms of population in the country.
I am not sure if the military and overseas votes have bee added to the total yet as of the Thursday after the election, and they are still counting in a few states it seems.
Absentee ballots have historically taken over a week to be counted past election day, although it's probably faster in many states, now, due to the rise in reliance upon early voting, and how absentee ballots and early votes are usually handled in the same way.
In some cases, absentee ballots aren't even counted at all unless the election is close enough to swing based upon their numbers.
For those who aren't American, the electoral system in the United States is determined on a state-by-state basis, and sometimes even on a local basis. Standards for, methods of, and even how you vote are drastically different from location to location. Colorado has even gone to an all-mail-in ballot system where nobody really votes the day of the election.
Horseshit. Universal healthcare is a staple of first-world society. It's completely ludicrous that the USA doesn't have it.
It was certainly not affordable as advertised, nor did companies give it out as they made sure to keep employees under the minimum requirement to earn benefits, driving people to take two jobs to get enough hours to survive and pay for health care as required by law. They made too much to get it free, but not enough to pay for it comfortably due to their employers not footing the bill as suggested by the law.
Prior to the law, companies would give out healthcare packages to full time employees as a benefit and more would be full time. After it was universal and there was a limit to the requirements for benefits, more people were hired part time only to avoid having to pay medical. There were no benefits outside of management for several companies, or grandfather clauses for older employees.
It was certainly not affordable as advertised, nor did companies give it out as they made sure to keep employees under the minimum requirement to earn benefits, driving people to take two jobs to get enough hours to survive and pay for health care as required by law. They made too much to get it free, but not enough to pay for it comfortably due to their employers not footing the bill as suggested by the law.
Companies don't want the responsibility; they don't want to pay. They would rather not hire full time and give up dedicated workers than pay. Can you blame them? At the retail store I worked at, this resulted with hour cuts on everyone, especially after full time was lowered from 40hr weeks to 30hr weeks. The store instead chose to hire a bunch of young workers who only wanted a few days work, and people who wanted to make more of a living were scrutinized; taken only if they were absolutely necessary. It inconvenienced a lot of the people I worked with, and everyone started to hate the company.
I just wonder how do you fix that? Force them? Should the government be allowed to take money out of a business if it's for a perceived greater good?
I just wonder how do you fix that? Force them? Should the government be allowed to take money out of a business if it's for a perceived greater good?
How about requiring all employees to be covered, not just ones working 30+ hours per week? It's cheaper to cover one full-timer than two part-timers.
Of course, many liberals wanted a single-payer option instead of extending "Romneycare" to the whole country. The only positive that came out of this is that conservatives don't talk about what they would replace the ACA with, because this was originally their plan. The free market fails at providing full coverage.
Companies don't want the responsibility; they don't want to pay. They would rather not hire full time and give up dedicated workers than pay. Can you blame them? At the retail store I worked at, this resulted with hour cuts on everyone, especially after full time was lowered from 40hr weeks to 30hr weeks. The store instead chose to hire a bunch of young workers who only wanted a few days work, and people who wanted to make more of a living were scrutinized; taken only if they were absolutely necessary. It inconvenienced a lot of the people I worked with, and everyone started to hate the company.
I just wonder how do you fix that? Force them? Should the government be allowed to take money out of a business if it's for a perceived greater good?
"The government be[ing] allowed to take money out of a business if it's for a perceived greater good," is the definition of "corporate taxes", and yes, that's a firmly established constitutional right of Congress, along with the broad legislative authority to pass laws and set budgets for whatever they see as the greater good of the nation. This essentially defines how the federal government has always acted, and frankly, must act in any organized nation.
The simplest solution to the problems that companies face is, of course, what the rest of the world has already figured out, simply making healthcare a universal right rather than a for-profit service industry. Then, companies don't have to worry about being between citizens and their healthcare at all.
I should also point out that the idea of companies reducing workers to part time to skip out of paying for healthcare was largely overhyped. While some companies did so very publicly out of spite, such as Papa John's, they then found that their employee quality plummeted as those workers who were competent enough to do so would abandon a company treating them as interchangeable cogs in a wheel for companies that would give them actual respect as human beings, and the drop in employee quality hurt their bottom line as people stopped wanting pizzas made by the refuse of the service industry Papa Johns had become. Funny how the Free Market is a two-way street, hunh?
Am I the only one who thinks that basing it purely off the popular would fuck over every area that has low population?
It would mean the cities and coasts dictate everything and the rest of the nation would become entirely irrelevant.
That seems like a bad idea for a nation as large as the united states, geographically.
The electoral vote is there to ensure that the rural areas don't become marginalized (along with industrial areas without the population of other urban areas) and become neglected.
Its already bad in California with minority groups (I don't just mean ethnic, I'm talking things like mitigation companies and conservation) having little to no presence, I don't want to imagine a system that makes votes irrelevent
Well, that was one of my concerns over utilizing the popular vote. Although I do feel balance is required so that whatever system is being used isn't also giving rural areas too much of an edge either over urban voters as well. From my perspective it seems at a lot of levels the rural voter has actually more say in the legislature than the urban voter. For example the House of Delegates in Virginia has 66 Republican members and 34 Democratic members, yet at full state votes the popular vote would indicate more Democratic leaning voters than Republican leaning voters. Given how many more Republican delegates there are though, it would at least suggest to me that the Democratic voters are being heavily underrepresented.
Well, that was one of my concerns over utilizing the popular vote. Although I do feel balance is required so that whatever system is being used isn't also giving rural areas too much of an edge either over urban voters as well. From my perspective it seems at a lot of levels the rural voter has actually more say in the legislature than the urban voter. For example the House of Delegates in Virginia has 66 Republican members and 34 Democratic members, yet at full state votes the popular vote would indicate more Democratic leaning voters than Republican leaning voters. Given how many more Republican delegates there are though, it would at least suggest to me that the Democratic voters are being heavily underrepresented.
Gerrymandering is a really unfortunate thing since it allows parties to set it up so that the brackets really skew the results in their favor.
At least we aren't in the era of the old political machines, as bad as things are now, they aren't the corrupt clusterfuck of back then.