is the Unites States a democracy?
if so, how can you justify the fact that even if the majority of citizens vote for one candidate (e.g. populist support for trump), the opposing candidate can still win (e.g. hillary's bribed electoral college)
Is the Unites States a democracy?
Austin Diaz
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Jason Parker
It's a Republic with some democratic processes.
>f the majority of citizens vote for one candidate (e.g. populist support for trump)
>Trump
>Populist support
>Implying
>the opposing candidate can still win (e.g. hillary's bribed electoral college)
The electoral college has only gone against the will of the popular vote 3 times in US history.
Christian Reyes
The USA practically has a two-party system. Both are shit. 99% of people vote for one candidate cause they dislike the other more.
Christian Cruz
>The electoral college has only gone against the will of the popular vote 3 times in US history.
True, but there is nothing stopping it from happening
Cooper Gomez
>is the Unites States a democracy?
It's a confederation/union of smaller states. When the United States was founded, the intention was that these were actual states, not just administrative provinces.
>if so, how can you justify the fact that even if the majority of citizens vote for one candidate (e.g. populist support for trump)
You're delusional, and no, the polls are not rigged.
>the opposing candidate can still win (e.g. hillary's bribed electoral college)
The quirks of electoral college have little to do with bribing. Electoral college is literally a state's right issue. A state that can pool all of it's electoral college votes to swing one way or another has a bigger say in federal politics than a state split up into smaller districts and is going to end up with a 55%/45% split every election instead of 100%/0%.
It's closer to half. And unrigged polling indicates that while Trump rallies might be big, because Trump panders to his die hard supporters, around 60% of Trump voters aren't voting for him, but against the opposition, compared to around 45% for Hillary Clinton.
If you live in a 99% blue/red state, many people don't feel the need to vote, thanks to electoral college. Swing states tend to have higher voter turn out.
If people get fed up with it enough, they can change the constitution. But this represents a weakening of state's rights.
Charles Scott
>The electoral college has only gone against the will of the popular vote 3 times in US history.
Why is it even a thing?
Anthony Hill
There is no need to drink from a poisoned well
Zachary Edwards
Congress actually tried to replace the electoral college back in 1970, but the smaller states got pissed.
Simple plurality would be better.
Nathan Torres
What we need is a compromise similar to when me made both the house and Senate.
Winning a state's popular vote should give you two votes, representing the importance and equality of each state of the union.
Individual voting districts count as 1 vote and are cast toward the candidate no matter how the rest of the state votes.
This gives each state the same number of electoral votes as they have combined house and Senate votes while also giving people with minority viewpoints some potential representation like Republicans in New York or Democrats in Texas.
Noah Russell
>Simple plurality would be better.
Probably, but that is basically an admission that the United States is one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, rather than a union of smaller somewhat autonomous states rather than practical administrative regions. It's a fair argument that no one has believed that the USA has been anything but since the Civil War. States rights are a big issue for low population flyover states, and red states, and they don't want to cede states rights.
I also wanted to point out that historical pluralities may not have been representative of what an election based on plurality would have looked like because of voter turn out rates due to people feeling like whether or not their vote makes a difference.
Brayden Walker
Voting districts are prone to gerrymandering. States have arbitrary borders, but are fairly permanent and harder to artificially manipulate.
Jace Russell
>literal proof that DNC was rigged
>no one does anything about it
so that's how it works?
"oh Hillary cheated her way into winning. well let's just let her become president anyway"
no repeat election? no reprecussions at all?
europoor here and I'm genuinely confused. if someone wins the Jeopardy game by cheating, you get sued and take all the money back. But rig an election and everybody just looks the other way? maybe the media is projecting the situation the wrong way, I don't know.
William Martinez
>You're delusional
not a trump supporter, just being theoretical. it happened with Bush.
>the polls are not rigged
hilarious
Austin Foster
Democrat primaries are the elective process of a private party, and don't necessarily even need to be fair. Similar to how some Republicans spoke about taking the nomination away from Trump. The only election that is supposed to be "fair" is the general election.
Or something like that.
Gabriel Cooper
>and don't necessarily even need to be fair
this is theoretically true, but in the real world the US is a two-party system and by losing the party nomination you're basically dropped out of the election.
Cooper Jones
There was nothing rigged with the votes themselves. What was rigged was that they tried to get people to vote a certain way when they were supposed to be impartial. Also it's somewhat questionable if the Hillary campaign actively was engaging in this. She was a party insider, so people in the party wanted her to win, where as Sanders had few friends in the party, because he wasn't a party member before then, and he represented to existential threat to business as usual.
Dylan Foster
Justin Foster
>not a trump supporter
>hilarious
No, the polls are not rigged, and no Trump isn't going to win the popular vote, and when he loses the popular vote, it won't be because the polls were rigged.
Jose Clark
Right, it isn't "technically" "legally" rigged, but the outcome is basically decided by a group of powerful and influential individuals. what really is the difference?
Henry White
see
Gabriel Hernandez
The difference is the rules for the general election are dictated by the Constitution of the us, while the rules for the Democrat primaries are dictated by whatever the party insiders want them to be.
Adam Martin
Parker Jones
Right, so in 5% of elections this has happened.
John Baker
So it's better to to have 51% of a state vote one way and have the other 49% ignored? Sure there is gerrymandering but we trust that system enough to use it for representatives.
Josiah Wright
Because it's ultimately still decided by the voters. The influence of powerful and influential individuals is only proportional to the amount they can influence voters. Lets take Republicans, many were often openly hostile to Trump during the primaries, but that was the limit of their influence and power to decide. The decision was ultimately with the voters.
This is like saying things are rigged against your neighbor from becoming president because he isn't rich and powerful himself and doesn't have rich and powerful people to fund his campaign. Like it or not, the rich and powerful are always going to have a somewhat bigger say in things, especially after Citizen's united.
Joseph Baker
Yes the united states is a democracy
Lincoln Thompson
To average out votes so that election fraud is more difficult
Ian Gutierrez
>So it's better to to have 51% of a state vote one way and have the other 49% ignored?
Compared to gerrymandering? Yes. If you want a fairer vote system, just go straight to popular vote and be done with it. Electoral college is better than gerrymandering. If you really want some sort of hybrid system, so it so state gives bonus votes proportional to their population or statehood or whatever to whoever won the state. Don't introduce artificial voting districts.
>Sure there is gerrymandering but we trust that system enough to use it for representatives.
You might. Gerrymandering is a clearer cut case of rigging elections, because it's attempting to change results without changing the votes, just the way the votes are counted. And this is decided by people who aren't the voters.
Caleb Gomez
So basically to ensure that the correct candidate wins?
Justin Edwards
Not at all what he said
Christian Peterson
They didn't literally rig the election. It just sways public opinion when so much of the higher ups of a party align with one candidate. No doubt all those Super delegates endorsing Clinton before the primaries swayed votes. They did it because they thought Clinton would have the best chance of winning. Ironically, Sanders would be in a much better position now.
Easton Taylor
it's a civil oligarchy
Mason Torres
Because the founders did not trust the common people to make decisions like this and they wanted to balance the power between the states (each states number of electoral votes being determined by number of of their elected officials in congress (so the number of their representatives + 2 senators))
This makes the vote of less populated states more valuable. Because Jefferson and yeoman farmers.
It's stupid but because it's so deeply enshrined in the constitution and it benefits the major parties of the United States no one has managed to change it.
Dominic Ramirez
It was founded as a New-Platonist Republic, now its a reality show.
Jack Lewis
it wasn't "rigged", the primary was just a sham election that was decided before the hmm sounds rigged to me actually