Sorry to ask, but this has me a bit baffled lol, how exactly do you vote in the USA? Over here we go to a place that has been chosen as a polling station, get given a piece of paper with names on, choose who we want, then put it in a box.
After this, all votes get counted from each area then are put together to decide the winner, are they trying to say that it would take too much work to do in the USA? I understand it is much, much bigger than the UK, but if it was the same and split into smaller areas and each area counts their votes, surely it would be possible to directly vote? It seems a bit strange if they are saying they can't do this.
Outwest already described it pretty well. However what it also means is that many people's vote doesn't count depending where they live. The electoral college is a representative vote, so the people vote for X or Y at the polls. Then the electoral college takes that into consideration and those people that make the electoral college are 'supposed' to vote the way the people did. Further rules and regulations though also play into the mix if the state is a winner takes all.
Take California for example, they have a high number of electoral college votes because being representative of the population, California has a lot of people that need represented when compared to a less populated state like Idaho. California has 55 electoral votes out of 538 total for all 50 states, or basically 10.2% of the nation's total and 20.4% of the 270 electoral votes needed for someone to win the presidency. Idaho on the other hand only has 4 electoral votes.
Being a winner take all it doesn't matter of 99% of the people vote democrat and 1% vote republican or if 51% vote democrat and 49% vote republican. Either way democrats take all the electoral votes. No real point in living in California if you're a republican in other words. Where that matters, just to play with the numbers (and being unrealistic but showing the problem), let's assume 49% voted republican and 51% voted dem in California so dems get 55 electoral votes. Now let's assume that in other states like Arizona, New Mexico and Texas which total 54 electoral votes for all 3 states, that 99% of the people voted republican in all 3 states and only 1% voted democrat in all 3 states. 99% of the population of 3 states + 49% of California's population is the majority of all the citizens from Ca, Az, Nm and Tx but due to the winner takes all the dems would still technically win the election with a vote of 54 to 53 despite a much smaller fraction of the populous voting for the dems.
Yes it's an unrealistic scenario but when you factor in all the other states like New York which also leans democrat with 29 electoral votes and also is winner take all it's not very representative of the people. If it were truly representative of the population the votes wouldn't be winner take all, they would be split 50/50, 60/40 or however the votes averaged out. 55 dems and 0 reps is a much different picture than 35 dems and 20 reps, even if the state general leans left.
It's a very convoluted system when you start digging deep down. Our primaries are even worse with super delegates, coin flips and lord knows what else. Many places were calling winners before all the votes were even counted. The more oddball rules and regulation and bylaws and crap that can muddy the waters vs a clear vote of X or Y and the more room for things to get lost in the shuffle, reshuffled and the outcomes shaped.
Even though 24 states have consequences for 'faithless' electors (who choose someone other than that by popular vote for the state), that means that 26 states do NOT have consequences. A big reason for the electoral college rather than by individual popular vote stems back to the days of slavery and the south wouldn't have been too fond of that. The south was in a bit of a bind, technically they had a lot of people. Great because a larger population means more voting power. Problem, many of those people were slaves and slaves in those days were not deemed 'people'. They were deemed property, hence the 3/5 compromise where they worked to skirt the slavery issue. A person can't own another person but they can own 'property'.
If a slave is 'property' and you allow them voting rights, by law only recognized citizens can vote so allowing them to vote would mean they weren't 'property' and couldn't be owned as such. Insert 3/5 compromise where African American slaves were allowed to be counted as 3/5 of a vote, additional voting power but without giving them the same credit of a single complete vote as if they were a citizen. Taxation also played into it and the higher the 'official population' the higher the taxes. By counting the large number of slaves as only 3/5 of a 'citizen' or 'person' taxes were less than they would have been otherwise.
Long story short, it's a wicked mess and much of it extending back to more archaic days. Had it not been for slavery and people grumbling over taxes and property ownership back in the 1800's a direct vote may have been approved and the electoral college never needed nor implemented. The outcomes of various elections may have been rather different over the years.
