> Our system worked as designed: The candidate that won the electoral college won the presidency. Well, yes, the system worked as designed. But that's not the

> Our system worked as designed: The candidate that won the electoral college won the presidency. Well, yes, the system worked as designed. But that's not the question that's being studied. The study evaluates if people feel that 'our system' is a good one. And the not just whether the electoral college to select a president is a good example of a representative democracy, but whether a representative democracy, where we hold elections for the people in the society to select representatives to govern us, is a good way to organize humans. On the one hand, no, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were clearly not the smartest, wisest, most knowledgeable humans the United States could offer, who would be the most successful in communications with other countries, who would offer public policies that maximize the desired benefits and minimize negative consequences in the ideal ratio, who would handle the issues that they are presented with throughout the presidency with the greatest understanding of the issues, and who would select advisors and delegate responsibilities as required. Someone with these characteristics would not likely be selected by the people, who would lack the information to determine which person they were. Even with a knowledgeable population, people would disagree on the policies they would implement. Also, someone with the best characteristics would be continuously improving their abilities, rather than campaigning. On the other hand, the electoral college and presidency, flawed as they are, are better than a military coup, anarchy, or a dictatorship (assuming the dictator isn't this ideal leader, or wouldn't select an ideal successor). There's no question that democracy as a system has some inherent problems. But I doubt that we can come up with a better alternative than a representative democracy, which is I think the main drawback of this survey. There's also no question that the form of representative democracy we currently have is corrupted and inefficient, and that we could make one more fair and accurate than it is. But I doubt it would stay that way.