irstupid said:
First, we are not a Democracy. We are a Republic. Always have been.
I've gone over this in other threads, but to keep it short and simple, we are both a democracy and a republic. We have free and fair elections (for the most part, anyway), and we have a head of state that is not a monarch or some similar hereditary figure. Except for Thailand and Libya (because of circumstances leading a government that is not constitutionally defined), every nation on Earth can be classified into two broad categories: "Republics and Monarchies," and "Democracies and Not Democracies." The lines can be blurred with the latter, but generally we can make a distinction between a republic like the U.S. that has free and fair elections and a republic like China that makes no pretenses of having its citizens have any input on who represents them in government.
Second, more votes does not equal the will of the people. The U.S. is huge. It is spread out. Yet the majority live in a FEW clustered cities. If we were a pure democracy and went vote majority wins, the presidential canidates woudl spend their entire time sitting in New York, LA, Houston and Chicago. They would "buy" their votes with campaign promises that woudl solely benefit the people who live in those cities.
Even if you include their entire Metropolitan Statistical Areas, those four cities make up only 15.5% of the nation's population. You can't ignore five out of every six voters and expect to win with a popular vote. There are plenty of cases in both America and elsewhere where candidates have visited less populated areas. Hell, Trump himself visited my hometown during the primaries despite it having only 23,000 people in a state with nearly 5 million people. With a national popular vote system, every vote counts equally, and in a close enough election you have to scramble for every vote you can, whether you're a Republican trying to boost turnout in California or a Democrat trying to get more supporters in Nebraska to turn out.
On the other hand, the Electoral College makes it to where candidates can ignore upwards of 70% of the population as it makes only the dozen or so swing states the only places candidates have any incentive to invest time, money, and interest in. In recent elections, just five states—Florida, N. Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania— have gotten a significant majority of the candidate's time and money. Why? Because they're competitive and highly-populated, and thus the candidates have tremendous incentive to try and swing voters to them in those states. Big states like California and Texas or small states like Vermont and Wyoming are completely irrelevant. I can guarantee you that once Arizona and Texas start to become competitive, you'll see candidates start to take a huge interest in them after decades of ignoring them.
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