• Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        The American political system is literally incomprehensible.

        Everyone votes and then you find out who the winner is. And then, at some later point you find out who the president will be, and it’s not necessarily the same person for some reason.

        And yet apparently democracy has happened so that’s all.

        • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          the american federal government is easy to understand: everything is weighed in favor of rural conservative racists because when we were first designing the thing they realized that they were in the minority but that we’d lose the revolution without them. President? Racists get more of a say due to the electoral college. Senate? Half a million conservatives in Wyoming get just as many votes as 40 million liberals in California. House? House reps are capped at 435 permanently so as areas become more populous they end up with less representation per person. SCotUS? Even when it’s running normally it’s biased because the biased president and biased Senate pick them, but since Obama now Democrats need the presidency and a majority coalition in the Senate in order to pick justices. That’s every branch of federal government, and recently they tried to make it even worse by making state legislatures (which always lean conservative because they gerrymander to hell and back) the sole authority on what constitutes a “fair” election. Given all the out and out treason that came from state legislatures after Trump got wrecked by Biden, I think we know what conservative state legislatures will do if they get to decide what constitutes “fair”.

          • Cabrio@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Throw in a dash of first past the post, a pinch of gerrymandering, and baby we’ve got a minority government.

      • eldavi@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        republicans haven’t wont the popular vote in several decades and if you’re only now noticing; you need to (re-)evaluate your political leanings and learnings.

        • new_guy@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I mean… It’s not like I’m American or vote in America or live in America so I guess it’s not a priority to me to evaluate how these factor in my life.

          I guess it’s America’s job to do it.

      • samus12345@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yes, but by the same token, you can’t honestly say that America chose him to be president. We did not. Our broken electoral system did.

        • SneedsFeednSeed@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It’s not broken if it’s working as intended. The US is a constitutional Republic not a pure democracy. Pure democracy is two wolves and one sheep voting on what’s for dinner. You won’t always be the wolf, best keep that in mind.

          • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Right except that the electoral system was not designed with that in mind. We have the transcripts of the discussion. It was to keep slavery legal. The method the POTUS was picked originally was to prevent the common person from deciding and instead award the most powerful job to whom the most powerful elites thought best could do it. Which wow even being nice to the argument is pretty bad.

          • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            the thing about tyranny of the majority is that it can’t be replaced by tyranny of the minority. it’s absolutely working as our founders intended though: racist, conservative, and biased in favor of the wealthy.

          • samus12345@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            The intent was to keep a populist tyrant like Trump out of office, so it most certainly is not working as intended.