A remarkable fact about the American electoral system

Food for thought, Americans?

Sure. That is how the Electoral College system actually works.But there is a caveat.There is no Federal Law that determines how the Electors are chosen or that binds how the Electors vote, those questions are decided on a state by state basis.Electors are "Pledged" to vote as instructed, but there is nothing in the Constitution that would prevent them from voting in any way. Some States have passed laws requiring the Elector to honor the pledge, but many have not.

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It's no more ridiculous than any other system of plurality voting.

Yeah, I had thought that after the election fiasco of 2000 that at least there would be a robust debate on the electoral college. I guess I was naive, eh?Basically Americans live under two myths:(1) The electoral college gives more power to small states (when it actually, under the present winner-takes-all system, it strengthens the relative power of the large states), and(2) putting a minority in power is a democratic way to prevent the tyranny of the majority.

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We didn't even have a robust debate on the state of Florida illegally preventing 20,000 black Democrats from voting. I guess they did in other countries, but our media was too busy printing off their "Sore/Loserman" bumper stickers.Your liberal media, folks! Anything to put and keep Bush in office.

When I first read this, I thought to myself, "that's not so remarkable..." But then I remembered that I've been trying to tell people about this very fatal flaw of the electoral system for years and have reached very few people. My own brother in law, which is a PhD engineer (creationist no less), just won't understand the concept of a minority president or how the system is taking away millions of Americans' right to vote.So, I guess this fact is remarkable for people who don't really keep track of the system. It doesn't seem very remarkable to someone like me who have been opposed to the electoral system for years.

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Disclaimer:

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Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

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He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

Let's start with our party primary system that guarantees that a mediocre candidate will be "chosen" to represent each party.Let's further note that the single vote method forces a third party into obscurity.This is such a small issue compared to the general problems with the election process that I can't lose sleep over it.In fact I can see ways to use the electoral college system to revise and modernize elections in the US without needing to re-write or ammend the constitution.That makes it potentially a very good thing.

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On top of what Razd mentioned there's also the 35% matching rule which basically grants any party which carries 35% of the vote with matching funds.How many 35%'s in 100%? 2.Any idea why we can't get a viable 3rd party off the ground?