What are the origins of the American voting system?

[Nuvendil]

RolStoppable said:

Nuvendil said:

Are you talking about the Electoral College? Cause your rant is pretty scatterbrained and nonspecific. If so, it is supposed to allow for proportionate representation of the interests of each State based on their population. As it has been referred to, the US was intended as a Sovreign Nation of many Sovreign States. The point, therefore, is for the election to represent the wills and desires and interests of the States. Electoral College representative numbers for each state is the same as the number of Congress members that State holds. Contrary to popular parlance, we are NOT a democracy. We are a Democratic Republic. Direct democracy voting is not part of our system and rarely is ever used and yes, there is a reason for that. But the odds of a President winning the Absolute Majority of Electoral votes and NOT the absolute majority of the populace vote is very low. It has happened only a small number of times. It is more about a constant interplay and ballance between the power of the people, the representatives of the people, and then the federal and state powers. And direct democracy brings with it a host of other problems, fyi, if you take it to its extreme that many want to.

As for the bipartisan nature, that is only really a 20th and 21st century issue. Shoot, four presidents were a Whigs. It's just the way it usually falls due to a large number of variables. A nation of this scale, the costs of campaigning, it naturally lends to a bipartisan status. This could be corrected with much tighter campaign fund regulations. But bipartisanship is not part of the election system, it is just something that happened.

Yes, I am talking about the electoral college. You can deduce that from my mention of Donald Trump and that other person. And yes, the OP isn't good. I wrote it late last night.

But the electoral college does not represent the wills and desires of a given state, that's the problem I see with such a voting system. In the OP I mentioned the example of 60% of votes for one party which lead to 100% of the electoral college representatives for that state to be in favor of that party. A proper representation of the state would not disregard the remaining 40% of the votes altogether. And like I said in the OP, if votes are rendered null and void in such a way, then a third party has no chance. If somebody didn't like the candidates of both of the big two parties, then a protest vote for a third party does not make any sense. It's a wasted vote, so the logical conclusion for the voter is to pick the lesser evil of the big two, if there is supposed to be any hope for the vote to matter in the end.

The other problem of such a system is that the populace vote does not necessarily decide the winner. There is the term of gerrymandering which means to draw the borders of districts in a way that an election can be won without getting the majority of votes. Basically, a voting system that renders votes void is prone to manipulation.

Lastly, yes, I could have read up on history on Wikipedia, but I was interested in what people think about the whole thing. It's the natural evolution of the topic, because I never expected that the discussion would be limited to the origins of the voting system.

Well look at it this way:  the US presidential election is basically 50 mini elections.  Each state elects their president and then that's tallied using the electoral college based on population to elect the president proper.  That's what I meant by the election representing State interests, not full population interests.  The point is that the Electoral votes represent then State's populace's decision, NOT the total populations' votes.  

As for accusations this suppresses votes or makes it easy to rig, two issues.  One, the idea of "why should I vote when my state is mostly x party anyway" is no more legitimate a "problem" than "why should I vote, the majority of the nation is x anyway".  And given the small turnout relative to registered voters, maybe the division wouldn't be the same if peopls would use their right to vote rather than stay home and complain.  Second, especially now rigging an election is hard due to the sheer size of the population and country.  Most shenanigans that could be attwmpted wouldn't be done at the level of the box but in the counting process.  But that's a whole other discussion.

Also, as for my thoughts, I am fine with it.  I think updating the division of Congress and Electoral reps to better reflect current relative populations would bd welcome but I'm fine with the idea of the electoral colege, it makes sence in the context of the US's elaborate division of powers and hierarchy.