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Cerebralbore101 on 21 December 2019
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SpokenTruth said:
padib said:

Then how was he elected, I just don't understand what you're trying to say.

The electoral college and the mixed rules for each state.

Some states evenly split their electoral voters based on votes.  If 50% of the state votes Candidate A and 50% votes Candidate B then 50% of the electoral vote will equally represent both candidates, A and B..

Some states are winner takes all.  If 50.1% of that state votes for Candidate A then ALL of that states electoral votes go to Candidate A. Basically, it means that it completely ignores the votes from 49.9% of voters from that state.  Imagine how that would make you feel.

This is how you can win an election despite losing the popular vote by 3 million people. The problem is that this is never really been an issue until recently.  The popular vote and the electoral vote have almost always agreed 1:1.  But that's changed in the past 20 years.  Bush won the electorate despite losing the popular vote.  Now Trump won the electorate despite losing the popular vote. It is this recent divergence of electorate and popular vote that has driven many to rethink the wisdom of the Electoral College. Especially given that both favored one party and both happened very recently and was the largest margin differential since 1876.

In fact, it's happened only 5 times in US history.  The first was a different party structure but the 4 after have all favored Republicans. I'm sure you can understand how that raises eyebrows.

Yep.

The problem is that Trump was never legitimately elected. Any election where the winner has less votes than the loser is not a legitimate election. The authority to rule a country does not come from God. It is not a piece of property that is passed down through family either. It comes from the consent of the people to be governed. When you do not have a majority of voters consenting to that government, then that government is not legitimate. And when not all adults can vote, then consent was never given either.

Some people may bristle at this idea, and say "Oh, but America is a Republic! The founding father's didn't want a Direct Democracy so they designed the Electoral College to decide elections!" These people have obviously never checked a map. North Korea calls itself a Republic. China calls itself a Republic. Stalin's USSR called itself a Republic! Furthermore, the Founding Fathers kept slaves, and thought only land owning white men should vote. They weren't perfect people. They were products of their time. We've fixed  their mistakes in the past when we abolished slavery, and gave suffrage. It's time to fix their mistake with the Electoral College.