|
both the electoral college and the delegate system for Democratic primaries were created by the government because they did not trust the American people to democratically elect their leaders with a straight popular vote.
they had to assign "electoral votes" to the states to give the government more power over the election. suppose some hot shot new radical takes the whole Midwest by storm, and 60,000,000 people in 9 states voted for him. the government doesn't want someone coming in and shaking up their system. theoretically, he could win the popular vote and only have like 90 electoral votes, and some other candidate who only got 55,000,000 votes in 30 states would win because he had more electoral votes.
we've had 2 or 3 elections where the winner of the popular vote lost the election. most recently in 2000.
and there's the matter of "weighted votes". states are assigned electoral votes based on population, but there's still a huge difference in the value of each vote. voters in a state with a tiny population, like Wisconsin, are worth like 4 times as much as votes from California.
if you live in a heavily Democratic or Republican state and you do not belong to the majority party in that state, your vote in a presidential election is worthless. my parents are Republicans and living in CA, and they still go out and vote for their Republican every election even though CA's electoral votes will go to the Democratic nominee because of CA's slight Democratic majority. it's a lot worse in many states. move to Texas and vote for a Democrat every 4 years for the rest of your life, your votes will never count for a thing.
|