Oh, you wouldn't like our first-past-the-post system of voting, anyway. :P
In a two-party system (which, to be honest, is effectively what we have - the other parties get bent over the barrel every time they try to put a candidate into the mix) FPTP might not be so bad, but we'd still get screwed by the liberal sinkholes on both coasts.
No, I don't understand your electoral college, and the idea of someone standing between me and my vote sounds creepy.
To be fair, most Americans don't get it, either. In its purest form it helps prevent some of the tyranny of majority by limiting the amount of votes for a given candidate from each state, as we saw in 2016. The state only gets a number of votes equal to the total number of congress-critters they have in the house & senate (so a minimum of 3 per state), and those votes are cast based on who won the popular vote in the state.
Yeah, it's convoluted as fuck, but in a perfect situation it keeps overpopulated liberal hellholes like California from running rampant over the election. The downside to it is that as goes the state, so go ALL the votes, so it effectively disenfranchises the votes of those people who didn't vote the same as the majority in the state - case in point, Illinois. If you look at a voting map of IL there is a massive blue blotch up around Chicago, a couple more blue blotches where some major cities down-state exist, and the entire rest of the state is red. But because Chicago and the collar counties are such a massive population sink, their vote carries the state's 20 electoral votes into liberal territory every damn time.
Personally, I would prefer that the electoral votes be broken down into a district system. If a district voted majority red, then the vote goes to the red team, and vice versa. That way there would be less of a barrier between the voter and their preferred candidate. It still wouldn't be perfect, but it'd be better than the shit-show we have going on now.
I have always advocated for the idea of states splitting their electoral votes so that the rural people have a fucking voice in our elections. We need to fix the holes in our current system before switching to a completely different system or throwing it out entirely, like the Dems want to do because it benefits their side.
We need to fix the holes in our current system before switching to a completely different system or throwing it out entirely...
Therein lies the rub. So long as either side benefits from the status quo, they won't want it changed. Same thing goes for term limits for congress. I've been in favor of that since I reached voting age - after all, if the president is limited to two-and-out, then why the hell should we get lifetime politicians in the House and Senate? But because they're the ones that can change the rule, they won't ever do it. Our founding fathers never intended for someone to spend 50+ years occupying a seat in government, but here we are today with things the way they are.
In a two-party system (which, to be honest, is effectively what we have - the other parties get bent over the barrel every time they try to put a candidate into the mix) FPTP might not be so bad, but we'd still get screwed by the liberal sinkholes on both coasts.
To be fair, most Americans don't get it, either. In its purest form it helps prevent some of the tyranny of majority by limiting the amount of votes for a given candidate from each state, as we saw in 2016. The state only gets a number of votes equal to the total number of congress-critters they have in the house & senate (so a minimum of 3 per state), and those votes are cast based on who won the popular vote in the state.
Yeah, it's convoluted as fuck, but in a perfect situation it keeps overpopulated liberal hellholes like California from running rampant over the election. The downside to it is that as goes the state, so go ALL the votes, so it effectively disenfranchises the votes of those people who didn't vote the same as the majority in the state - case in point, Illinois. If you look at a voting map of IL there is a massive blue blotch up around Chicago, a couple more blue blotches where some major cities down-state exist, and the entire rest of the state is red. But because Chicago and the collar counties are such a massive population sink, their vote carries the state's 20 electoral votes into liberal territory every damn time.
Personally, I would prefer that the electoral votes be broken down into a district system. If a district voted majority red, then the vote goes to the red team, and vice versa. That way there would be less of a barrier between the voter and their preferred candidate. It still wouldn't be perfect, but it'd be better than the shit-show we have going on now.
I have always advocated for the idea of states splitting their electoral votes so that the rural people have a fucking voice in our elections. We need to fix the holes in our current system before switching to a completely different system or throwing it out entirely, like the Dems want to do because it benefits their side.
Therein lies the rub. So long as either side benefits from the status quo, they won't want it changed. Same thing goes for term limits for congress. I've been in favor of that since I reached voting age - after all, if the president is limited to two-and-out, then why the hell should we get lifetime politicians in the House and Senate? But because they're the ones that can change the rule, they won't ever do it. Our founding fathers never intended for someone to spend 50+ years occupying a seat in government, but here we are today with things the way they are.