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The electoral college is a flawed system, but not as flawed as direct democracy.
If the electoral college didn't exist, in a functional sense the votes of anyone outside 4 or 5 major metropolitan areas would not matter.
Politicians would pander only to the needs and seek the votes of a certain group of urban dwellers and those whose views align with them, a scant 50% of the population, which would essentially enable a tyranny.
I think they did pretty good for the time they lived in. But people seem to forget that they are human, and we didnt even have airplanes at the time.
Oh sure I mainly am referring to the EC and of course the US republic was an improvement to the monarchies. However that doesn't mean we should stop trying to improve thats my main point in this thread.
The electoral college is a flawed system, but not as flawed as direct democracy.
If the electoral college didn't exist, in a functional sense the votes of anyone outside 4 or 5 major metropolitan areas would not matter.
Politicians would pander only to the needs and seek the votes of a certain group of urban dwellers and those whose views align with them, a scant 50% of the population, which would essentially enable a tyranny.
According to Wikipedia the top 5 MSAs in the US (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston) have around 57 million residents combined, that's not even 20% of the total US population, to win an election any candidate needs to get support way beyond those areas alone. And its not as if all those people in the big metro areas are going to vote the same way in any case, many millions of them will vote for the same candidate that Joe Sixpack in Cheyenne is voting for.
Even the top 30 MSAs have a population less than half of the US total, around 150 million.
According to Wikipedia the top 5 MSAs in the US (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston) have around 57 million residents combined, that's not even 20% of the total US population, to win an election any candidate needs to get support way beyond those areas alone. And its not as if all those people in the big metro areas are going to vote the same way in any case, many millions of them will vote for the same candidate that Joe Sixpack in Cheyenne is voting for.
Here is your typical anti-trump voter.....a very uniformed voter....
The total population of the United States cannot vote...nice try....
Ok, so look at the voting age population of those MSAs, you're not going to get a result where the top 5 make up a majority of the US electorate, if anything the proportion of voters in those areas would be lower as the big metro areas have bigger proportions of non-citizens who can't vote.
The idea that any candidate could win based only on voters in the top 5 metro areas is just plain wrong.
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