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As a non-American, my personal concern for Democracy in regards to the USA is the questionable system of the electoral college which, in my opinion, is one of t

As a non-American, my personal concern for Democracy in regards to the USA is the questionable system of the electoral college which, in my opinion, is one of the worst forms of representative democracy on the planet and certainly not apt for a country so proud of its democratic values. This also goes hand-in-hand with the black-white thinking of a two-party-system.

briandear 2y ago
Is the EU president elected by popular vote?
- simonask 2y ago
  There is no president of the EU. There is a President of the European Council (Charles Michel, elected by member countries' heads of state), there is a President of the European Commission (Ursula von der Leyen, elected by the European Parliament), and there is a President of the European Parliament (Roberta Metsola, elected by the members of the parliament). Seats in the European Parliament are not proportionally allocated (small countries have more seats per capita), and member countries have different systems for allocating their seats among representatives, but nobody uses first-past-the-post, maybe except Hungary (debatably - their system is weird). So, no, none of the "EU presidents" are elected by popular vote strictly speaking, and none of them have a role that is even remotely similar to the US presidency.
seanp2k2 2y ago
A good dive into the history of the electoral college can be found at https://www.hks.harvard.edu/more/policycast/if-electoral-college-relic https://www.hks.harvard.edu/more/policycast/if-electoral-col...
arp242 2y ago
I don't disagree, but Trump won the popular vote by a decent margin.
- grahamj 2y ago
  As incredibly disappointing as that is to me, the fact is this is only the 2nd time the Reps have won the popular vote. In other words the US leans left and Reps only win because of the electoral system.
  - arp242 2y ago
    I would argue the Democratic Party is hardly "left-wing". The old joke is that the US has two parties: the right wing party and the very right wing party. They have moved a bit to the left though, but many "left wing" policies they support have broad universal support among the left and right in Europe. Today it's more the centre/centre-right party and the monster raving looney party. But yes, the system is not great. This matters even more in the senate elections by the way, where every state gets two senators regardless of population size. I get the argument that you don't want densely populated cities dominating large swaths of rural areas, but 1) elections are about people and not trees, and 2) now it's the reverse where sparsely populated rural areas dominate. So...
    - 015a 2y ago
      All true, and I feel there's hope that this is the wake-up call the American left needs; that if they keep playing the role of the centrist establishment what they end up crafting is a super boring campaign that no one feels the passion to get out and vote for. Total voter turnout this election is shaping up to be significantly lower on the left (-15M currently) versus the right (-3M) as compared to 2020. I think the takes that this is the right taking over America etc are super doomerist. The more accurate story is: The left put up a really boring, bad candidate. The only campaign the left has figured out how to run for literally the past three elections is "stop Trump", and its not even resonating with their own voters anymore. What are they going to run on in 2028 when there isn't a Trump to stop anymore? The left needs to wake up and have a Trump moment of their own.
      - drawkward 2y ago
        Progressive policies are broadly popular; inevitably, some totalitarian and intolerant wokeists always end up hijacking the progressive wing, driving the center rightward.
nathanaldensr 2y ago
States elect Presidents, not the People. If you knew anything about why states exist at all, and their history in Constitutional law, and that they have far greater sovereignty than any other country's sub-national political division, you'd understand why the electoral college system exists.
bluecalm 2y ago
If my village forms a union with your village and both our villages have 1000 inhabitants at the time I don't want your village to be able to dictate our common policy just because you have more children or more people died in my village 20 years from now. Thus when we are forming a union we stipulate that we have equal voting rights. It's going to happen in EU in some form as well (assuming EU goes into closer integration direction) because there is no way small countries accept closer union without a mechanism similar to electoral college.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  I'm sorry but... WTF? The US voting system doesn't even solve that one "problem" you are presenting. The number of districts and votes are constantly adjusted to population.
- saghm 2y ago
  > If my village forms a union with your village and both our villages have 1000 inhabitants at the time I don't want your village to be able to dictate our common policy just because you have more children or more people died in my village 20 years from now. Thus when we are forming a union we stipulate that we have equal voting rights. That's not how the electoral college works. The electoral college equivalent would be one village with 1000 people, the second with 2000, and the third with 4000, and each village getting "electoral votes" proportional to their population that gets awarded entirely to the candidate with the majority vote in that village. The entirety of the first two villages vote for candidate A, which awards 1 electoral vote for the first village and 2 electoral votes for the second. In the third village, which has 4 electoral votes, candidate A only gets 1999 votes, whereas candidate B gets 2001 votes, so they win the electoral vote 4-3 and become the leader despite only winning 2001 votes overall out of 7000. The reason that the analogy needs to be this complicated is because the electoral college isn't some sort of common-sense system that happens to occasionally produce quirky results; it's an extremely contrived system that produces equally contrived results, which shouldn't be remotely surprising.
  - bluecalm 2y ago
    I simplified it a bit however this: >>that gets awarded entirely to the candidate with the majority vote in that village is not correct. It's up to the states to decide how they split their electoral votes. It seems natural to me. States gets electoral votes based on census and then they decide how to split them.

briandear 2y ago

Is the EU president elected by popular vote?

simonask 2y ago
There is no president of the EU. There is a President of the European Council (Charles Michel, elected by member countries' heads of state), there is a President of the European Commission (Ursula von der Leyen, elected by the European Parliament), and there is a President of the European Parliament (Roberta Metsola, elected by the members of the parliament). Seats in the European Parliament are not proportionally allocated (small countries have more seats per capita), and member countries have different systems for allocating their seats among representatives, but nobody uses first-past-the-post, maybe except Hungary (debatably - their system is weird). So, no, none of the "EU presidents" are elected by popular vote strictly speaking, and none of them have a role that is even remotely similar to the US presidency.

seanp2k2 2y ago

A good dive into the history of the electoral college can be found at https://www.hks.harvard.edu/more/policycast/if-electoral-college-relic https://www.hks.harvard.edu/more/policycast/if-electoral-col...

arp242 2y ago

I don't disagree, but Trump won the popular vote by a decent margin.

grahamj 2y ago
As incredibly disappointing as that is to me, the fact is this is only the 2nd time the Reps have won the popular vote. In other words the US leans left and Reps only win because of the electoral system.
- arp242 2y ago
  I would argue the Democratic Party is hardly "left-wing". The old joke is that the US has two parties: the right wing party and the very right wing party. They have moved a bit to the left though, but many "left wing" policies they support have broad universal support among the left and right in Europe. Today it's more the centre/centre-right party and the monster raving looney party. But yes, the system is not great. This matters even more in the senate elections by the way, where every state gets two senators regardless of population size. I get the argument that you don't want densely populated cities dominating large swaths of rural areas, but 1) elections are about people and not trees, and 2) now it's the reverse where sparsely populated rural areas dominate. So...
  - 015a 2y ago
    All true, and I feel there's hope that this is the wake-up call the American left needs; that if they keep playing the role of the centrist establishment what they end up crafting is a super boring campaign that no one feels the passion to get out and vote for. Total voter turnout this election is shaping up to be significantly lower on the left (-15M currently) versus the right (-3M) as compared to 2020. I think the takes that this is the right taking over America etc are super doomerist. The more accurate story is: The left put up a really boring, bad candidate. The only campaign the left has figured out how to run for literally the past three elections is "stop Trump", and its not even resonating with their own voters anymore. What are they going to run on in 2028 when there isn't a Trump to stop anymore? The left needs to wake up and have a Trump moment of their own.
    - drawkward 2y ago
      Progressive policies are broadly popular; inevitably, some totalitarian and intolerant wokeists always end up hijacking the progressive wing, driving the center rightward.

nathanaldensr 2y ago

States elect Presidents, not the People. If you knew anything about why states exist at all, and their history in Constitutional law, and that they have far greater sovereignty than any other country's sub-national political division, you'd understand why the electoral college system exists.

bluecalm 2y ago

If my village forms a union with your village and both our villages have 1000 inhabitants at the time I don't want your village to be able to dictate our common policy just because you have more children or more people died in my village 20 years from now. Thus when we are forming a union we stipulate that we have equal voting rights. It's going to happen in EU in some form as well (assuming EU goes into closer integration direction) because there is no way small countries accept closer union without a mechanism similar to electoral college.

marcosdumay 2y ago
I'm sorry but... WTF? The US voting system doesn't even solve that one "problem" you are presenting. The number of districts and votes are constantly adjusted to population.
saghm 2y ago
> If my village forms a union with your village and both our villages have 1000 inhabitants at the time I don't want your village to be able to dictate our common policy just because you have more children or more people died in my village 20 years from now. Thus when we are forming a union we stipulate that we have equal voting rights. That's not how the electoral college works. The electoral college equivalent would be one village with 1000 people, the second with 2000, and the third with 4000, and each village getting "electoral votes" proportional to their population that gets awarded entirely to the candidate with the majority vote in that village. The entirety of the first two villages vote for candidate A, which awards 1 electoral vote for the first village and 2 electoral votes for the second. In the third village, which has 4 electoral votes, candidate A only gets 1999 votes, whereas candidate B gets 2001 votes, so they win the electoral vote 4-3 and become the leader despite only winning 2001 votes overall out of 7000. The reason that the analogy needs to be this complicated is because the electoral college isn't some sort of common-sense system that happens to occasionally produce quirky results; it's an extremely contrived system that produces equally contrived results, which shouldn't be remotely surprising.
- bluecalm 2y ago
  I simplified it a bit however this: >>that gets awarded entirely to the candidate with the majority vote in that village is not correct. It's up to the states to decide how they split their electoral votes. It seems natural to me. States gets electoral votes based on census and then they decide how to split them.