US history courses hype up the 1860 election as Lincoln versus Douglas

>US history courses hype up the 1860 election as Lincoln versus Douglas
>Douglas gets FOURTH in the Electoral College
JUST

Damn...when was the last time we didn't live in a 2 party system and everyone actually participated in politics meaningfully?

Y'all need preferential voting so you're able to vote 3rd party without wasting your vote.

Electoral college is retarded desu


Also it was more about how the debates forced Lincoln into taking a harder stance against slavery than he normally would've and becoming more known for that position than any other position he had.

The 1860 election is the most interesting in American history IMO. Also the one with the highest turnout.

Isn't this basically the ranked system?

Not the highest turnout.

I was thinking the comfiest system would be approval voting and indistinguishable parties.

>Electoral college is retarded desu

Ive been thinking about this a lot and I actually understand why it is the system we have. Big liberal metropolises like NYC and San Fransisco have huge populations which out number the smaller towns. And those small towns deserve a fair say in the election.

As a concept for solving the systemic problem of "All the attention would go to the dense populations" it's fine, but it ends up fucking more people than it helps. States are not homogeneous, 49% of a state voting one way still lose all of that states votes to the other party. Meanwhile, we've skewed the numbers disproportionately, a voter in California has I think a seventh of the voting power of other states, because while Cali has a lot of electoral votes on the surface, they have less proportionate to their population than other states.

kek never, every one in that race except Lincoln was a Democrat who held their own convention

That isn't the reason the electoral college exists at all

It was originally to hold onto slavery, but that's one of the better reasons I can think of for keeping it.

It would be a lot better if states divided electoral votes based on state population instead.

Republican voters would feel like they matter in blue states. Democrat voters would feel like they matter in red states.

Being able to call whether or not a candidate is going to win a state 100% before polling is even 5% in is retarded.

It still won't fix everything, though. The two party system is broken. The electoral college works when there's only two parties. But if third parties begin to rise, as they actually should (don't fucking give me the choice between Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, you cunts), then there's a problem.

Preferential voting seems like a good idea.

>It would be a lot better if states divided electoral votes based on state population instead.

Fuck I'm retarded. It should divide electoral votes based on percentage won.

What's wrong with 15 million voters having the voting power of 15 million voters?

It was designed to have a body of elites that would decide on the President rather than the masses. Electors originally weren't even selected statewide, states were divided into districts electing one elector each like in the House of Representatives. When states starting doing it like now, giving all the states electors to who ever got the most votes in the whole state, Hamilton and Madison were actually pissed and the former wanted a constitutional amendment to make clear this was the wrong way to do it.

It was until 2008 I think.

>divide electoral votes based on percentage won

But then the electoral college does nothing and is just a bizarre extra step:
>candidate got 58% of the popular vote
>so we give him 58% of the electoral votes
>so he is president

Completely superfluous unless your goal is specifically to keep the electoral college around

>mfw thinking of this map every time southern Republicans say they're "Lincoln's Party"

>if you live in a prosperous engine that drives your country and culture forward, you are worth less votes than a bunch of hicks thumping the KJV.

>mfw no one in 2016 could possibly conceive of having more than two viable candidates in an election unless you actually showed them this image, and even if you did they probably still wouldn't believe you

The "Dems are the KKK and the Republicans were the party of lincoln" meme got really bad this cycle. So fed up of hearing it.

If we keep the electoral college, you'd have to reach a certain number of votes. Currently, you need 270. Obviously, you're splitting up how many electoral votes they get, so the total would be lower.

Look at how the popular vote came down. Yes, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but she won 48%. I'm not really super thrilled with having a president than doesn't get at LEAST half the voters to go "Yeah, they're pretty decent." That's the reason she lost; she was such a shit candidate that a lot of her party decided not to vote, or voted for Trump.

The electoral college is a fucking weird system. But we live in a country that only has two parties, which are generally Bad and Worse (depends on the day). Third parties are looked down upon, and people are mocked for even voting for them, getting told that they threw their vote away. It's ridiculous. The entire system is broken and it's not going to be an easy fix.

>third parties
If enough people voted for a third party, it would simply displace one of the main two, absorb almost all of its voters and policy, and we would be back to square one. The American system is quite simply not designed to sustain 3+ major parties for any meaningful length of time. Anyone who votes third party is doing nothing but trying to change the name of either the liberal or conservative party. Actually it probably won't reach that state since any powerful third party would merely have its main issues stolen by a main party, denying it a reason to exist.

America is the only nation to use this fucktarded package and last. Every other case found that norm degradation killed any attempt to pass laws, and party polarization made the system decay as voters no longer cared about issues so much as tribal identity. The system only functions with strong unwritten rules about governing behavior and limp or preferably nonexistent parties.

1876 has the highest turnout

Its really the whole electoral system and not just the electoral college.

First past the post system leads to two dominant parties simply changing places every so often.

At the least... We need open primaries in all states and all primaries happen on the same day.

Best case... We start using preferential voting or STV, hell maybe even proportional.