PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

^ oops. I'm running with bad info again (I blame time taken tallying votes). Thanks.

author=CyberDagger
The solution to this, is to drop the whole electoral college crap and make the elections a democratic process with no intermediaries. Votes are counted country-wide, and whoever gets the most votes wins the election. Of course, I can't see this happening just like that, so a good compromise would be to keep the electoral college working as it is, but have all states give their seats proportionally. Not likely to happen, as heavily red or blue states would not be happy with ending up giving votes to the opposing party, and swing states don't want to lose their importance. But a man can dream...

This will never happen as Republicans and Democrats as well as the Swing States take advantage of that system. (because there is no chance for 3rd parties like in most European democracies that would cause more damage to results, and it makes votes more predictable, just to focus on swing states in the debates and advertisement, etc). Democrats won't give away those extra votes in California and Republicans not in Texas.

On top of that: The US are overall a very conservative country, even voting for Obama. Changes are meh. "We have thiz electoral system for 200 years and we are so proud of it, America iz so uber awesome, we don't want ze things from Europe"

author=Itaju
stuff...

Exactly. That's why I said it's not likely to happen. Everyone benefits from the unfairnaess on way or another.

And conservative indeed. From an European point of view, Obama's center-right.

author=Solitayre
The funny thing is that Texas is becoming increasingly Hispanic and within two to three election cycles it's plausible that Texas could end up going to the Democrat column. I wonder if we'll finally start seeing some electoral reform around that time.

Or in an ideal world, people will stop voting for a party because of which race they are.

But as they say, can't compete with Santa Claus.

In an ideal world there wouldn't be politicians.

harmonic
Or in an ideal world, people will stop voting for a party because of which race they are.

Haha, that's hilarious!

http://media1.policymic.com/site/articles/15150/photo.jpg

Whoa, mind-blowing. Hold on, let me soak that in...

...

Phew. Now I'm better.

Yeah so, unlike you, we don't care. Our guy happened to be white. If he was a she, or was black/brown/green/purple with a magenta trim, we'd have voted for him. Merit>identity in a world run by grown-ups.

author=harmonic
Or in an ideal world, people will stop voting for a party because of which race they are.

Hint: Hispanics don't vote blue because of ethnicity. Mexican immigrants are generally socially conservative, so they are already primed to be won over by the GOP if it didn't take such a hard line on immigration.

His "merit" is his political party. His merit is whatever his party's strategists want him to portray in an attempt to seize the optimal number of demographics. I was laughing when they brought on Republican strategists after Romney lost and they were like "we should have developed a plan that catered more to the Hispanic vote. An epic failure that we number nerds were trying to explain to the other strategists" or some sillyness like that which you probably shouldn't be revealing to a sheepish public. And I'm not being too biased here; I'm sure the democrat strategists would've done the same thing. So many people in the USA vote for the party and not the person :( Like nobody would give, say, Jill Stein a chance.

This country is so divided (the true term for "partisan" which might be my least favorite buzzword of all time) that it makes me sick. I give the tie to the Democrats because we had to endure 8 years of Bush (and only 4 years of Obama so far).