Timemaster
As biting as the political statements made on here are, I feel like just occasionally posting videos, because I feel like actual discussion is moot. But on the electoral college, and saying letting the minority have a say can lead to problems while in the very same ideal, take the minority of people and make it their biggest causes and pretend it's what they stand for as a whole is a touch ironic. And I mean that statement as people who do it as a whole...
There's many things I've wanted to comment on, but all of them have similar "that's kind of ironic" statements all tied together. This election in general has just shown just how hypocritical both sides have been and its been really embarrassing how immature and absolutely full of s***, so many people actually are. There is no moral principals anymore. At this point both sides seem to behave like petty children. Websites have sunk to an all time low, I respect fewer and fewer people online. I may be genuinely sick of politics, I just wish I'd reach a point of apathy, so people saying stupid and toxic things wouldn't annoy me. <.<
I'm not going to watch the video because it combines two of the worse things in the world - vlogging and pundits. With that said...
The minority does have a say. Imma assume what you mean by minority is an individual piece of a political party, like gun people or economic libertarians or gay rights people or whatever. The way the American system works is that any individual group votes for the party most representative of their interests. In this situation it becomes the purpose of the party to attempt to pick up as many of those groups as possible. The party who represents the majority of American interests wins.
We aren't supposed to be voting for parties for the sake of parties, so Republican vs Democrat aren't black and white issues and both parties can change to make majorities. If we had democratic elections, the Republicans would just have to restrategize by moving to cover another group. Trump showed they can do that when he got a majority of working class whites in the rust belt. The "They would just compete for the cities" thing is a fallacy because somebody would ultimately do better in the cities and the other party would need to swoop for the rural vote to make up the difference. As of now, parties focus on swing states and we accept this under a weak assumption that swing states are the best representatives of the country, and that we are all in spirit Floridians.
The electoral system was primarily adopted because this country was originally imagined as a federation and it was necessary to placate small states in order to bring them in. It is a technically outdated system that is currently used to game elections. A good example of how outdated the electoral system is comes from imagining what would happen if the other part of the system, the ability of the electoral college to ignore the democratic vote all together, was actually enacted. That's an ugly and disheartening image.
Going forward right now, I think the electoral system is playing a part in the collapse of civil engagement. Americans are getting divorced from their government, and though there are a lot of causes to this problem, one of them is the whole "My vote doesn't matter because I'm a Democrat in Mississipi/I'm a Republican in California/They'll pick the loser anyway" thing.
Mind you, this could end up biting the Republicans in the ass. Defending it now just because the party your are dedicated to took advantage of it a couple of times recently doesn't mean the system won't hiccup later and kick a Republican out of a popular victory.
