Bloody confusing. Why not just popular vote?

Sorry, but how is that democratic ?
Only the states winner votes are counted....err....that seems somewhat broken.

>> ^charliem:
Sorry, but how is that democratic ?
Only the states winner votes are counted....err....that seems somewhat broken.

It is, and so are all fair voting systems that allow for more than two choices. That is why there tends to be only two big political parties in modern representative democracies (barring other decisive factors of course). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow's_paradox

>> ^charliem:
Sorry, but how is that democratic ?
Only the states winner votes are counted....err....that seems somewhat broken.


We use the term "democratic" too often. The US is a Democratic Republic. In a PURE democracy, the people vote on everything (gun control, abortion, tax on cabbage, etc). In a republic, a group of elites makes all the laws (see ancient Greece and Rome). The group is normally of equal power. The US has a mix of a republic (elected officials make most of the laws) and a democracy (we elect those officials and vote on some of the *most important/controversial* laws.

Never in history has a pure democracy been feasible. The advent of the internet makes that easier, but the majority of people still don't have the time required to research every single issue that elected officials do (note: I don't pretend to suggest elected officials actually do any research beyond hearing out lobbyists).

So, in reality none of us live in a DEMOCRACY. We all live with some democratic flavor of another form of government. We will probably never go to popular vote because it's easier for politicians to campaign by considering a state on a whole instead of individual communities. Let's not forget: those candidates are the ones making the laws and deciding how the elections are performed...

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Friday, August 1st, 2008 9:59pm PDT - promote requested by winkler1.

*dead, here's the replacement :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok_VQ8I7g6I

This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by MarineGunrock.

Dead video replaced.

Long live president triangle!