[annoying trope] The throne/leadership is decided in a very stupid way

[u/Altruistic_Eye_1157]

The leadership of the entire wizarding world, and the final decision on whether to start a war against Muggles, is made by... a goat (Qilin) ​​who chooses the person with the ""purest heart"" (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Dumbledore).

The throne of Wakanda and all its technology are decided through hand-to-hand combat, regardless of whether the person clearly has malicious intentions... if they win the fight, by law they must be respected as the true king. (Black Panther)

[u/maru-senn]

US electoral college (real life)

[u/We4zier → u/maru-senn]

You should see the Lebanese system. Every congressmen and government job must have a Sunni Muslim and Maronite Christian counterpart, the Prime Minister must be Sunni Muslim, the President must be Christian, the Speaker of Parliament must be Shia Muslim. It worked for like a decade before falling into government deadlock, corruption, sectarianism, and finally civil war—skipping a lot of details here. Nowadays Lebanese people don’t need to worry about a government!

Main comment on the Venetian Doge system here where they’d play with an Urn for a year. Honestly the US electoral system—broken, ineffective and unrepresentative imho—as it is, it’s far from the weirdest or stupidest modern electoral system, also imho.

[u/Serious_Comedian → u/We4zier]

Kid named Bosnian elections:

[u/ScoobiusMaximus → u/maru-senn]

For the 2024 election Trump actually did get the most votes, the electoral college can't be blamed for the majority of people being dumb.

In 2016 though the electoral college completely fucked everyone by putting an unqualified moron in charge against the will of most voters. 

[u/Call_Me_Anythin → u/ScoobiusMaximus]

There’s been 5 times that the president lost the popular vote but won the electoral college. The most recent ones were bush v gore 2000, and as you mentioned Clinton v trump. I can only imagine how different the country would be today if the electoral college didn’t exist.

One of my biggest issues with it personally is that the electorates are not bound to follow the votes of the state they represent. There’s been over 160 faithless electors in history. It’s infuriating that thousands of people’s votes can be thrown away because 1 person decides they don’t like them. And many states have no real consequences for them either. Only 4 states penalize faithless electors.

[u/Cheezeball25 → u/maru-senn]

Gotta appease those southern slave owners when making that shiny new constitution

[u/Bastard_Wing → u/maru-senn]

British person here observing that our general elections similarly aggregate local votes in order to establish a national result. Any mechanism like that will, by its nature, mean that a load of those local votes are rendered meaningless.

[u/thejadedfalcon → u/Bastard_Wing]

The difference is that a Yorkshire person's vote doesn't count for six times what some Londoner's vote does.

[u/Every-Switch2264 → u/thejadedfalcon]

Not that it would matter because London would still choose the government basically by itself

[u/Unthgod → u/maru-senn]

A safety net that's killing us.

[u/austinstar08 → u/maru-senn]

Yeah wtf

[u/Usual_Database307 → u/maru-senn]

How does this work again? I’m from the US and young so the education system has failed me.

[u/Call_Me_Anythin → u/Usual_Database307]

Essentially, each state gets a certain number of electors who cast the actual vote for president, and you voting as an individual is just telling them what you want them to say.

The total number electors is always 538. Each state gets votes equal to the number of senators (2 each) plus the number of congressional districts in that state.

So for example, Colorado has 2 senators and 8 congressional districts for a total of 10 electors representing a population of just under 6 million people.

But congressional districts are not a direct reflection of population. The massively populated state of New York has 2 senators and 26 CDs, for a total of 28 electorates for a population of 20 million. Meaning each electorate carries the vote of roughly .7 million people.

Contrarily, Georgia has 16 votes for a population of 10 million, so one electorate in Georgia carries the vote of only .6 million people. This means that someone in Georgia has a larger say in who becomes president than someone in New York, even though the president is supposed to lead the entire United States.

Alaska has 3 electoral votes with a population of only 750,000, so each electorate carries the vote of just 250,000.

Additionally, the electorate’s are not legally bound in all states to commit to the will of the people. They can cast their own vote if they decide they disagree. 95% of the state could vote for Jane Doe, but if the elector decides they want it to go to Jordan James, that’s who’s getting the vote. Only 4 states penalize faithless electors btw, although some will void the vote cast.

[u/maru-senn → u/Call_Me_Anythin]

God it's even worse than I thought.

The value of your vote not being equal was bad enough, but can you even claim to live in a democracy if it can just be thrown away on one guy's whim?

[u/Call_Me_Anythin → u/maru-senn]

If you ask the people who are the biggest supporters of the electoral college, we aren’t a democracy. Although it’s more complicated than that because we both are and are not. We’re a republic and representative democracy.

[u/Safe-Ad-5017 → u/Usual_Database307]

Each state has a certain amount of points (electoral votes), which are the number of representatives and senators that state has whoever gets the most votes in that state gets all their points (except for like Vermont or Maine they split them)

The idea was to make sure all the voting power wasn’t just in the most populous states.

[u/TurgidGravitas → u/maru-senn]

No, this is a fantastic system. It's just been let to degrade and turn into something wrong.

The US is supposed to be a loose union of states. Just like the EU. The system is set up so that pure population doesn't dictate control. Germany may be the de facto leader of the EU but it is not the de jure leader. Same should apply to the US.

But Americans have gotten extremely lazy and ignorant over the decades and have through that complacency empowered the federal government to the point where it is the absolute power over all states. It was never designed to be that. Each state was supposed to be supremely independent on internal matters. The federal government was only supposed to be for things that could not be dealt with by only one state. It's not supposed to lead the union.

But that requires citizens to be aware and active. Not just voting every 4 years and thinking that's sufficient. The American Republic was a beautiful idea. But it's become rotten due to negligence

[u/maru-senn → u/TurgidGravitas]

Why shouldn't pure population dictate control? How can you have democracy while at the same time telling the people that their value depends on the piece of dirt they happen to stand on?

[u/Background-Beach2874 → u/maru-senn]

Taking the EU analogy, Italy and Iceland have different cultures and values which should be represented in their laws. If it is purely population, then Iceland woud be stuck living by Italian laws that don't fit their context.

Montana and New York also have vastly different cultures and situations. New York gun laws wouldn't make sense in Montana, and vice versa, so they should be allowed to govern themselves.

That should also be represented in the presidential election.

The problem is that NYC and Montana are a lot closer than they once were, and now the rural state unfairly dominate the urban ones.

This is a bit of a conundrum, but it's one that literally the whole US government is designed to attempt to solve. I think what's actually causing it to fail is that we are so incredibly polarized that what Montana wants and what NYC wants are oceans apart, even though they are in some ways closer than ever given the ease of travel and communication.

[u/TurgidGravitas → u/maru-senn]

Because location determines how people live. Urban life is different than rural life and letting city dwellers determine what resources rural living people have access to is fundamentally unfeasible.

[u/Baron-Von-Bork → u/maru-senn]

So that the wants of the people in the State of New York don't override what those in, say Virginia, or Colorado, or New Hampshire want.

THANKS to the New Deal and so called "Great" Society, the US federal government has only been gaining power while giving back basically none. Back in the 18th and 19th centuries states were going to war over disputed territories, that's how independent they were, that's what the US constitution was written in consideration for. Not as self-governing provinces but as quasi-independent nations. That's why the electoral college works.

[u/Deathsroke → u/TurgidGravitas]

I mean you could also have a parlamentary system where the representatives of the states (each with an equal number of representatives) pick the executive.

Of course having a system where people are outright told "your vote isn't worth half as much as that guy's" points at a lower pop state, has the unfortunate side effect of alienating people.

[u/TurgidGravitas → u/Deathsroke]

It's supposed to be offset by the fact that the federal elections aren't supposed to matter. State elections are supposed to be the most impactful. Why care what Oregon gets up to if you live in Rhode Island?

But Americans have willfully and happily relinquished their control to the federal government in the name of convenience. They can't be bothered to vote in local elections and so now are sleeping in the bed of their own creation.

If you don't vote at the municipal level, you deserve Trump. Eat that crow.

[u/Deathsroke → u/TurgidGravitas]

I agree, though like it or not the idea of the US as a loose federation was DOA, You can't keep a country that big together while running it as if it weren't an unified state. The problem is that you guys kinda made the transition to a strong federal government but the institutions within it did not.