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Is America Really That Bad?
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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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No Stupid Questions
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Yes and no. More than half the country is wanting to move in the direction of other modern nations. The trouble is we have the electoral college which was instituted as a compromise for slave holding states at the foundation of our country and which gives conservatives outsized power which has resulted in a long-term deadlock.
It's likely that as demographics shift over the next decade, this deadlock will be broken and we'll probably enter a period of rapid progress, but that's only if we make it that long. With the degree to which Republicans are either brainwashed or willfully ignoring reality for the sake of trying to gain power, it remains to be seen whether we can.
Good insight. Washington was correct it seems.
The problem is plurality voting.
Plurality elections only really work well with two candidates.
That doesn't always equate to two parties on a national scale. Regional third parties can do well, like the Scottish National Party or the Partie Quebecois. But national third parties generally underperform in plurality.
The US has had several successive major parties. If one dies, another quickly forms to take its place.
I disagree that it was just "slave holding states". This is obvious to us, maybe, but when presenting the issue to non Americans I think it's important to be accurate on this. It was meant to give states (slave holding or not) with lower populations a larger voice. It still does that. Our system of government was never meant to be a pure democracy. The president wouldn't have to care about the priorities of smaller population states at all without the electoral college. They would just have to trust that he'll keep them in mind.
With all that said though, with how homogenous the county is culturally and with communication and travel barriers between states and between the state and federal governments pretty much non existent, at this point I think it has outlived its usefulness and should be abolished. Also the difference between the most and least populated states are, percentage wise way bigger than they were when the county was founded. Also, if my voice as a populated state dweller is smaller because of this system, it feels less like the president is "my" president because I had less of a say in picking him. At the end of the day the president is everyone's president equally so the election of the president should be a purely democratic process.
You're missing another important piece. The "winner-take-all" system per state wasn't intended that way. It was supposed to be proportionate to the votes cast, e.g., you take 50% of Ohio, you get 50% of Ohio's EC. Unfortunately, states realized "winner-take-all" gets them more attention, and of course once one state does it, you pretty much have to go for it as well.
One of the founders wanted to fix that but died before they could see it through (I think Madison).