Rasenganfan2 : There are flaws in your graphic

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Rasenganfan2 :  
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to push support for either party here. But if more than half of the countries population wanted someone to be President, and that person wasn't actually elected, doesn't that defeat the purpose of the word "Democracy" to some extent?

If nothing else I liked Zlinqx's idea of keeping the electoral college's point system, but dividing the points for each state by the percentage of how many votes each candidate got. That way the losing party of each state's votes actually mean something, and would more accurately represent the voice of the people as a whole, instead of swing states like Ohio or Florida all but deciding the election just because one candidate got a majority there.

Though the Electoral College system in itself makes some votes more powerful than others. If a state has a lower population to points ratio, each of those votes has more meaning than in a state with a lower population to points ratio. If in one state every 100k people make up 1 point, but in another 250k make up one point, doesn't that make each vote have more or less influence than others depending where you live?

I'm not saying the system is flawed entirely, but there need to be changes made to it. The only reason to keep things as they are is if you agree with the founding fathers in "the masses aren't smart enough to decide for themselves," though we're all a part of the masses they didn't believe smart enough to handle the decision.

Well, there are some problems with the Electoral Collage but the winner of the popular vote losing isn't really something I consider a problem since we're not a democracy. It's not like this is a new system. You know how the rules work. If you settle down in a high population state then your voting power is weaker in the national election. On the other hand states have a large amount of autonomy to run themselves so it's not like the president is the absolute ruler.

The Electorate College, upon farther research on my end, doesn't seem quite as rigged and unfair as I first thought.

It was established so that states with the majority of the population essentially control the outcome for each election. Because if we were to put them side by side, California and New York are able to produce more votes than, say, South Dakota or Montana. This is naturally pretty unfair to those states with a smaller population. Their opinion ultimately wouldn't matter, and presidential candidates would have no reason to ever visit those places, make speeches, or try to win them over at all. Does that sound fair? Not at all. The Electorate College acts and behaves for the presidency the same way the House of Representatives acts for legislature. It is made so that each state in the Union matters just as much as the others do. And population size doesn't screw anybody over.

About a third or so of Americans are pretty mad at this system right now. But it is important to know and understand why this system is the way it is.

The real problem isn't the electoral college but the fact that federal law has too much reach. Each state is given a specific value because we were never supposed to be a centralized dictatorship like we pretty much are now, and I'll explain why I say it's a borderline dictatorship.

Federal laws and regulations that are being made by government bureaucracies with zero accountability to the American people are dictating to we who are living in what is supposed to be the relatively autonomous region that are our states what we can and can't do and are limiting the rights of the state's legislature to pass and enforce their own laws. This is not democracy or representation.

We have the parties selecting who gets to run for office and allowing us to pretend to have our pick of who gets to rule over us. This is not democracy or representation.

The bottom line here is that the real problem lies not with how whoever gets to hold all the cards is picked, but with the fact that so few get to hold all the cards. I dare say that the majority of bureaucracies need to be shut down, the supreme court be abolished and the federal government stripped down to having the jurisdiction to enforce only basic laws nationwide, such as pursuing felons that are committing interstate flight or otherwise hunting down fugitives and maintaining national security and let the states themselves completely overhaul their own legal systems to reflect what the people want with their only guidelines being those that are very specifically laid out by the constitution.

If this country was operating as it was intended and as it should be, there would be no question as to the legitimacy of the electoral college.

RDay13 :

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Okay, I'll bite.
The electoral college is how the elections have been done in the US for ages. It's only become a problem this year, because of the controversy surrounding this election. The best part? It's unwarranted controversy. 

Also, "She won the popular vote" 3 states weren't actually called in favour of either candidate, because Trump and the republicans had won everything before they could be, so they dropped them. 
2 of the larger states were in favour of Trump.
1 very small state was in favour of Hillary.

If these states HAD been called, Trump would have won the popular vote as well. So, even if the USA did go by popular vote, which it doesn't, because it's way too big to do, they'd be forced to count the three remaining states which would have brought about a Trump win anyway. 

[url]http://www.larimergop.org/files/ElectionResults2016_US_Map.JPG[url]

If those states were counted, the population difference in those three states would easily make up the just under 400,000 votes. 
So, either way, Donald Trump would have come out the victor.

It seems like this year was the year we saw how really the electoral college can screw elections it seems.

Pokemonfan1000 : The electoral college is fantastic. Popular vote is the stupid vote.

Txgangsta : If you're winning the popular vote then you're the most popular presidential candidate among US citizens.

Pokemonfan1000 : Eh, not really. There are many polls asking many questions. The poll that matters is "To whom do you cast your vote?". However, "Which candidates do you approve of?", Gary Johnson had dramatically higher approval ratings.

Elections are not a popularity contests. We don't want "the most popular" to win, we want the candidate that represents us the best to be in charge. That is why we are a Republic and not a Democracy. The constitution is designed such that the representation is not simply based on population, but also states. Consider this: there are two houses in congress: the house and the senate. While the house is based on population, the senate is not. However, both are needed to pass a law. This means congress isn't designed toward population either, but it's designed to make sure that the small states (like Rhode Island) or sparsely populated states (like Wyoming) are fully represented in the federal government.

The electoral college follows the house of representatives. Each state gets so many "electoral" votes, and most work under a winner take all system. In this kind of system, there becomes a magical entity called the "swing state". Hilary did very little campaigning in Michigan because she thought it was going to be hers. However, she didn't have the appeal that she thought she did. In order for Hilary to have won, she would need to make sure she appealed to specific *states* where the vote was close. She did not represent Pennsylvania or Ohio either.

And now we have the real reason for the electoral college: states. Each state needs to be represented. If we simply voted with a popular vote, the vast majority of the country would be dramatically unrepresented.

I also posted two links that might help if you like graphs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filetate_population_per_electoral_vote.png
https://i.sli.mg/u9GIpD.jpg

thing1 : No, Clinton has the popular vote by over 1 million.

http://www.cnn.com/election/results/president