What's the point of the Electoral College?

[Tojara]

Winner take all systems are awful.

Our Canadian system is BARELY better than the American system but it's still awful. While we don't have an electoral college we do have a system where the only right leaning party ends up with a majority government with less than 40% of the popular vote in Canada. Why? Because votes are being split by ALL of the left leaning parties which typically agree with each other anyways. Canadians natural governing party is one the sits in center and/or slightly left, but we have a majority conservative government because of our fucking retarded system.

In the states it's just as bad. You live in a state like NY or Texas which is always blue or red? Why vote at all if you're part of the other party, other than to say you did.

Both the Canadian and the American voting systems need to be fucking changed because they are fucking AWFUL.

At least ours is slightly divided up within each province by region. It's fucking absurd that a state that ends up being 55/45 ends up being called a 'clear winner' for the one who gets 55% of the vote. Then they get all the electoral college votes for that state. What a fucking joke. Hearing about the same fucking 5 states every 4 fucking years is fucking dumb too. Why the fuck do I need to hear about fucking religious people in Iowa and Ohio EVERY FUCKING ELECTION SEASON.

God. /rant off

[Utinil]

To those saying a popular vote would be the only "fair" way to decide, please examine it from a different angle. A popular vote would be fair if we were a nation that then created smaller entities (States) to facilitate in running smoothly. This however is not the case. The United States of America was formed by a group of smaller governing entities deciding to create one governing body that would handle issues that affected multiple states yet leave the states as much power as possible. In this regard one could easily say that the only "fair" way to decide would be for every state to be given an equal number of votes. This of course would cause many problems and resentments. Our current system is a culmination of those two "fair" methods. My opinion on where the biggest flaw is, is not with the system at the federal level, but with how the states have (mostly) decided that all of a state's votes must be given to a single candidate and not be divided.

For a more detailed explanation please read my full post on the top of page 5.