low-key-lyesmith:

boganprincess:

low-key-lyesmith: People seem to whine a lot about the electoral college mostly because their candidate didn’t win and you know when someone loses you need to blame someone or something else not the fact that they are morons. As European I didn’t understand what electoral college is (even if the EU parliament works on sort of similar principle). Took me few days and acual elections to understand but here is the thing: The US is made of bunch of states many of them with different culture, not dramatically different, but there IS difference. Cali and Texas for example are massive states. IF the US president was elected by popular vote, you don’t need much of the other states to have a winner. You just make sure you appeal to the people of California and Texas, maybe bunch of smaller states to make the numbers and you can ignore the other 40 for example. You can hate Trump all you want. You can say he is racist or whatever, I am not arguing over that. But the only reason Hillary won the popular vote is because she won in few big states who have population larger than others. If you are all about fairness and right, tell me is it fair for 3 or 4 states to decide to governance of the other 47? Look at the map. You have about 20 states that voted Clinton, one of them (MN) pretty close to a Trump win. 20 states are NOT half of the US, they are less than a half. She has more votes because she won big population hubs like CA, MA, IL and whatever else I’m missing. You can hate the electoral college all you want because your candidate lost but try to be honest for 1 second and admit it: IF Clinton had won, but Trump would have won the popular vote, none of you would have cared and you would say: Yes it’s good we have the electoral college. but.. why does it matter where the voters live? why would it matter if a few states determined it if those were the states with the most people? a few states determine it as if tbfh. I don’t see why it matters that 20 states isn’t a majority if they still have more people than the other 30. To me, people should matter, not states. sorry, I guess it’s just hard for me to understand why people shouldn’t be equal. 1 person = 1 vote just makes the most sense to me, I don’t understand why you’d think it’s a good thing for someone’s individual vote to carry more or less weight based on where they live.

Okay Imagine you live in Village A with population 100 people. Your village is small, you live out of farmland. Your problems are mostly related to your crop and your cattle. Your income depends hugely on farming. This year you are hoping that the government will increase the subsidiary they give to you so you can buy more cattle or maybe plant an extra field which will increase your income. The country you live in (it;s imaginary country we are not talking about the US yet) has few other villages like yours. Each one of them with about 100 people, each one of them has similar issues, not the same but similar. In that country there is one big city. City B. That city has a population of 1000 people, which is twice as big as the population of all the villages combined. The city has city problems. High crime, traffic not enough housing. None of them related to your cow or crop problems BUT the city does consume your cow and crop. However, the city does not realize you have an issue because theyhave more important issues at hand. Like who broke into their home. You don’t have the issue of crime, but you worry that next year you won’t make enough money to feed your family.

Presidential elections comes. Candidate A runs a campaign that tries to make everyone as happy as possible. It;s not possible to please everybody, but in their campaign they have a bit for the Village, a bit for the City. Candidate B focuses their campaign ONLY on the city and say how they will fight crime rate, and build more housing etc. Candidate B doesn’t give a shit about the villages, because there is not enough votes in them. All the villages vote for A bcause even if A will do 50% of what they want 50% is better than 0%. All the cities vote for B because their problems are more important for them than some village’s problems. B wins because the city has larger population. What the electoral college does is forcing a candidate to create a platform that appears to the village AND the city. By doing so it ensures (not always successfully) that a candidate will have in mind that people from different regions have their different needs met.

You still with me? Okay let’s go to the US.

That is map (not divided by states) where Hilary and Trump won. If you split it by state you will see that she didn’t win the WHOLE of California or Washington. She won because she won the big cities. Her platform was created to attract the big population hubs. EXACTLY the reason why the electoral collage was created. The US is a massive country and you might not realize it but there is a big difference between East, West, North, South and the Middle. And by difference I don’t mean some are hillbillies the others are hipsters or whatever. These places have different problems. Some of them don’t have jobs, some of them don’t have schools. If a candidate wins the elections by popular vite it means only these blue areas want them to be their president. The USA is not a democracy. That’s what people mistake. A country as big CANNOT be a democracy simply because it won’t function for so long. A democracy will allow handful of big states to rule over majority of smaller states. Take for example the EU. That is what the EU is. One big state (Germany) telling everybody else what to do. The Euro is falling, the economy of many country is on edge, there is demographic crisis in smaller countries. Because Germany (Merkel) governs the WHOLE EU as if they are all Germany. And they are not. They have different culture, they have different economies and even different values. That’s why the EU is crashing. Because the EU reached a point where one State tells everyone else what to do regardless of how they feel.