• bi_tux@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I’m not from the US and don’t know much about your politics, please explain to me how the party with less votes can win.

    • lath@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I’m not from the US either, but I’ve seen enough to attempt answering this.

      They have two voting systems

      • popular vote
      • electoral college vote

      Popular vote is the easily corruptible people going out and voting after a long period of politicians lying their teeth off face to face.

      Electoral college vote is a bunch of easily corruptible fuckwits who vote with whoever pays best, regardless of popular voting.

      Electoral college vote seems to matter more than popular vote. Not sure how or why. So less popular candidates can win because fuck the people, I guess.

    • Five@slrpnk.netOP
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      1 month ago

      The U.S. was founded by slavers, and in order to preserve the rights of white men to own slaves, they built several anti-democratic institutions into the constitution of the new country. Northern states had fewer slaves and more voters, while southern states has more people but most of them weren’t allowed to vote. A one-person one-vote system that included slaves would result in the end of slavery. A one-person one-vote system that excluded slaves would give most of the political power to the north, and would probably end slavery. So to make sure people could continue to be deprived of their humanity, the electoral college was invented.

      All states were given votes in the college proportional to their population, with slaves counting as 3/5 of a person. This gave greater power to the plantation owning whites who were responsible for ratifying the constitution, and insured nothing short of a civil war could end their reign of terror.

      After the civil war the electoral college remained, and continues to distort the popular vote.