Would it be much of an issue if we insisted presidential powers were limited to what they were when the Constitution came into force? Today’s presidents (both parties) greatly exceed the powers of Washington and Jefferson.
The only reason we have it is because Republicans know that if we got rid of it, they’d never win the white house again without overhauling the whole party.
See Also: Why Puerto Rico and Washington DC are not states
“Hey, Puerto Rico is economically moderate and somewhat socially conservative! You should really want them as a state, right GOP?”
GOP: “Uh, it’s just about the shade of… c-cultural differences…”
It’s not a national election, but in Hong Kong, a 1,500-member Beijing-controlled electoral college elects the Chief Executive of Hong Kong and controls nearly half of the legislature.
Republicans are all anti college until you’re talking the electoral one.
The Electoral College is outdated and should be dissolved. Another problem in the USA, the wealthy are admired and considered heroes. In the EU, nobody trusts the bastards and people will strike. I believe the French are the best when they disagree with their leaders and upper class because they would drag out the guillotine.
Do you think if the electoral college was banned that criminals would give up theirs? Wake up, the only thing that stops a bad guy with an electoral college is a good guy with an electoral college!
It is wild to have your state’s vote almost predetermined before you cast it.
It’s not just the electoral college. The US was the first big modern democracy, and all the democracies that have sprung up since took one look at its structure and said “nah”. This includes democracies the US directly helped setup in their current form, such as Germany, Japan, and Iraq. Nobody wants to replicate that structure, including the US.
States as semi-sovereign entities rather than administrative zones? Nope. Every state gets two reps in the upper legislative branch? Nope. Those two reps plus at least one lower legislative rep means that the smallest state gets at least three votes in the Electoral College? What madness is that? Even the executive being separate from the head of the legislative branch is uncommon.
Even the executive being separate from the head of the legislative branch is uncommon everywhere else.
The Presidential System (as distinct from the Prime Ministerial System) is common throughout Latin America and West Africa. Incidentally, it is also a governmental structure more vulnerable to coups and similar violent takeovers, as the President being in conflict with the Legislature often leads to these snap power grabs rather than more well-defined transitions of power after elections.
The US idea that the different branches would have checks and balances against each other was rendered pointless the moment the first political parties were developed.
Well, that’s another big difference between the US system and systems in countries with more settled populations. Regional parties (the Scottish National Party being a large and distinct block of voters in the UK, the uMkhonto weSizwe as a Zulu nationalist group in South Africa, the Taiwan Solidarity Union as a Taiwanese nativist faction, or Otzma Yehudit in Israel which draws its doctrine from a single ultra-nationalist Rabbi Meir Kahane) can all exist in parliamentary systems in a way that a Mormon Party or a Texas Party or an African-American Party has failed to materialize in the United States.
The idea of checks and balances doesn’t work when you’re forced into coalition with one of the two dominant (heavily coastal) parties to have any sway in Congress or within the Presidential administration. And that goes beyond just “Voting for President”. The Democrats don’t nominate bureaucratic leaders (Sec of State, Attorney General, etc), the President does. This gives enormous influence to a singular individual who functions as both Party Leader and National Leader.
Compare this to Brazil or Germany or India or Israel, where power-sharing agreements between caucusing parties encourage the incoming Prime Minister to choose from the leaders of aligned party groups to fill cabinet positions. There’s an immediate payoff to being the head of a small but influential partisan group under the PM system in a way that the American system doesn’t have.
Now, do you want Anthony Blinken or Janet Yellen to have to hold a Congressional seat and act as Secretary of State or Secretary of Treasury? Idk. I’ve seen Brits scoff at this system as being its own kind of mess. But I can imagine a country in which a Yellen-equivalent head of the Liberals for Better Economic Policy Party has half a dozen seats and Blinken’s Americans for NATO Party has half a dozen seats, and this is what Biden needs to be Prime Minister, so he appoints them to his cabinet as a trade-in for their support.
It all goes back to the negotiation at the start of the country: “We want to vote” vs. “We don’t want those people to vote”
Well yea, this country is held hostage by the shitbag wealth class. Get rid of them. Tax them out of the wealth they lied, cheated, and stole via tax schemes, loopholes, and other criminal activity. We still have the power.
As long as they’re able to mislead a bunch of stupid idiots to think that things that don’t affect them, such as trans rights, they’ll keep winning. Class solidarity is impossible when your fellow-poor believe that immigrants are the reason they’re poor. Unfortunately, they’ve succeeded in keeping people stupid and uneducated.
What are you talking about, Bozos and Muskrat absolutely earned the 100 billion increase in their wealth over the last 10 years! They just Work Harder™ and are More Valuable™ than us!
/Wrist
Problem is that half the population is willing to keep the wealth class in power. And, ironically, many in that half of the population are among the poorest in the nation who believe the wealth will eventually trickle down to them.
This isn’t news. I mean, even if it is just now true, the United States being a “Democratic Republic” that promised citizens the vote and then kept a body who basically sat around to subvert the popular vote when things got close was largely considered to be another aspect of the USA’s rather f****d up interpretation of “freedom”.
Goddamnedfascists
Are there many other countries locked in a two party system?
It’s a product of our fptp voting system, so any country that has this is going to trend towards two parties.
It’s not just the electoral college that causes that issue though, first past the post is the culprit in Canada and our lack of precedent for minority alliances doesn’t help.
US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and some other smaller countries.
Canada
Not Canada. The NDP is more than just a spoiler. They hold the balance of power right now!
How many NDP ministers have we had at the federal level in Canada’s history?
What parties have had their leader be the prime minister?
The NDP kept what party in power longer than any other minority government in Canada’s history?
What part would have taken power had the NDP not postponed the elections?
What party will take power to replace the one in place come next election?
That’s not what determines whether a country is a 2 party system or a multi party system. There are plenty of countries that have small parties which have never formed government themselves but nevertheless have held real power in coalitions or minority parliaments.
Canada’s public health care system was created by Tommy Douglas, an NDP MP and party leader. If Canada were strictly a two party system like the US then that would never have happened.
Douglas implemented it in… Saskatchewan. At the federal level it was implemented by a Liberal majority government.
At the federal level the NDP and Bloc only have power insofar as the Liberals and Conservatives choose to entertain them, the Liberals could have decided not to implement any of the NDP demands and then the Conservatives would have taken their place and then all of the NDP objectives would have been buried and forgotten.
Australia’s isn’t based on FPTP or anything explicitly, nefariously, anti-democratic — except the part where media ownership is one of the most monopolised of all western “democracies”, or the part where most state and federal politicians are financed by the wealthiest individuals and corporations (not in the American direct payment, openly corrupt, kind of way. More in the golden parachute, regulatory capture, quid pro quo kind of way).
Interesting how 5 eyes are all stuck in a plutocratic two-party system, huh? Almost like the MIC and most advanced mass surveillance apparatus in history has a lot more influence over our politics than any of us realise…
Doesn’t matter to me. I’m not voting in this election anyway.
To be fair, no other democracy is even close to the size of the US. Most countries aren’t spread out enough for an electoral college to make a grain of sense.
Canada right next for is larger than US lol
Geography has nothing to do with it. If your state has more electoral votes per capita than mine, then my vote doesn’t count as much as yours.
And a coastal state with a huge population and no understanding of things people in a landlocked state 700 miles away shouldn’t get to have more of a say in who controls the country. Without the electoral college, pretty much every president would come from one of the same 5 states every time, and the rest of the country would always get placed on the back burner, because “they never win elections”.
Each state should have more of an equal say in who the president is.
Putting aside the absurdity of the idea that people’s voices should be worth less if they live closer together… One of the most significant features of the electoral college is the existence of a handful of swing states. You don’t want a situation where the most populous 5 states decide every election, so your solution is to take like 5 less populous states and have them decide every election. Genius.
There’s currently about 5 to 7 swing states because that’s currently how all the other areas vote, and those change a lot more often than population by state. By your argument of doing away with the electoral college, California, new York, Texas, and Florida would decide the elections and no one running for office would care about doing anything in about 40 states.
Areas with larger populations would have more influence, because there are more people there to represent. That’s how democracy works. It’s not, I don’t know, landocracy.
But every vote would be equal, so there would be more incentive than there is now to campaign across a wider cross section of people, including in less populated areas, because as it is now, the majority of those areas are in safe states where there is zero advantage whatsoever to a politician trying to win their votes.
B-But… BIG country! BIG people. BIGLY BIG. It just won’t work. /s
Well, the UK. Although the UK is a constitutional Monarchy and the prime minister isn’t elected by popular vote, but by MPs
