US Politics |OT|

[Cyran]

SvennoJ said:

More people voting shows at least an interest in politics. There are many more ways to manipulate the outcome of votes, by suppressing votes from certain populations and gerrymandering. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/gerrymandering-explained
One of the extreme examples of voter district manipulation:

With the rise of AI you can use software to group people together that vote one way, to get them out of the way in other 'districts'. It's how many districts you win, not how many votes you get.

All because of the "winner takes all" system. That's how Bush (2000) and Trump (2016) won the election despite losing the popular vote.
https://www.history.com/news/presidents-electoral-college-popular-vote
(Not that Hillary Clinton would have been any better, what a snake she turned out to be)

Voter fraud wouldn't surprise me either, the whole system is corrupt. Yet a 66.2% turnout is nothing special and still puts the US behind most European countries
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/11/01/turnout-in-u-s-has-soared-in-recent-elections-but-by-some-measures-still-trails-that-of-many-other-countries/
Problem is, thanks to "winner takes all" and manipulation of voter district boundary lines you don't need to mess with many votes to turn an election.

I don't disagree big picture but I add some clarification since it not clear from what you wrote

District Manipulation affects the House of Representatives but not the Senate or Presidency.  It still a big problem and have a horrible affect on the make up the house and who serves in the house.  You get extremes on both sides because they are in districts that they cant loose so there no reason to appeal to anyone but there base.  Who ever get the most votes do always win but who allowed to vote in each house election is greatly effective.

Senate is always state wide elections so in this case who ever get the most votes do win.  Districts don't matter through for senate elections.

Finally the presidency uses the electoral college.  Most states winner take all electoral vote for the state.  every 10 year the census determine how many electoral votes each states get.  This is where you can win the popular vote but not the electoral college because whether you get 51% or 99% of the state votes you get the same number of electoral college votes.  There a few states that not exactly winner take all but most states are.  District manipulations through have 0 effect on this because the electoral college votes for the state is base on the entire state popular vote and it don't matter what district the vote come from.

Last edited by Cyran - on 06 December 2023