Like I said, I don't know how much Californians know to decide for the rest of the country. It's its own little world.

The Electoral College is Garbage.

"He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!"

"The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one!"

People would give zero fucks if Clinton won the electoral and lost the popular. I still think it's wrong, but I'm just laughing at some serious hypocrisy in this thread.

That's why I personally am not making a big deal about the popular vote.

Nah, it'd be pretty messed up in either case. And the fact is that the electoral college systemically favors the Republican party as it exists currently, so it going the other way was never a serious possibility.

Someone in Wyoming gets three times the vote I do. If I lived in California or New York or Florida or Texas or many other states, that number would be even worse. I understand the point of the electoral college, but that's not a fair system.

@JamesYanik

There is no hypocrisy. I think the electoral college is a piece of garbage and should be thrown in the trash. Whether Clinton got the popular vote and/or the electoral vote wouldn't change my opinion on that.

The Democrat has now won the popular vote in 6 of the last 7 presidential elections. Two of those times, the Republican ended up elected. Pretty messed up, no matter who you support.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k

This has been posted before but this video is an extremely well made explanation of the flaws with the electoral college. It addresses Chaqa's argument regarding large cities.

@Meriosvo

not you

The original reason for the electoral college was to prevent a charismatic leader from stealing public opinion.

what a 180

This chart is somewhat interesting re: Electoral votes per capita. I think the data is accurate as of 2008.

http://i.imgur.com/bVB1f3q.png

@agbe

yeah, the small states have more power per person. it's because politicians don't know how math works

Well, originally, it's because small states didn't want to get fucked by the larger states. Remember, we used to be a union of largely independent states.

...well, that's not what we are.

@bo

ugh. i feel genuinely sick. it's awful because i'm pissed at so many of my friends

It's still unclear as to who actually won the popular vote, it's only a day after the election. But, the electoral college is doing exactly what its supposed to do. Chaqa mentions this in the thread. But reading de Tocqueville on the tyranny of majority kind of explains the ideas behind it in a way that I think most don't understand.

" Remember, we used to be a union of largely independent states. " And if you went back to that... it would be reasonable, the president wouldn't be consider the most powerful person on earth, and nobody would mind how the electoral college system worked.

Maybe we will. We're seeing states start to directly oppose the federal government when it comes to marijuana. With the dysfunction in congress the last 6 years, we're seeing states try to rely less on federal legislation, too. If Obamacare is repealed, many states will likely incorporate their own systems at the demand of their citizens.

@abge - heres hoping!

for those who want to throw out the electoral college, why don't we just toss out the whole constitution and change into a despotic socialist state like north korea?

For those skilled at analogies, it's just like Bugs Bunny.