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Why don't Americans understand how their own election system for President works?
There has been a flood of questions about the electoral college since AFTER we knew the result of the 2016 presidential election. I don't get it, I really don't. It's not hard to understand. And I'm not American.
If the House of Representatives were elected by the Single Transferable Vote, I could understand questions about that. STV is enough to give anyone a thumping migraine, never mind a headache. But we're not talking about that level of complexity.
Surely the reason for the electoral college must have been covered in history class? If it wasn't, why, or is American education really that bad?
3 Answers
- StephenWeinsteinLv 75 years agoFavourite answer
After the 1880's, until 2000, whomever got the most votes in the election usually also won in the electoral college, so it wasn't very important to understand the difference.
Understanding the system wouldn't allow a person to understand the 2000 election dispute, which mainly involved how to count partially punched ballots in Florida.
After 2000, President George W. Bush made student's scores on reading and math tests so important that schools had to focus on teaching these two subjects -- or how to cheat on tests -- rather than history.
- ?Lv 75 years ago
American history is no longer taught in school the way it used to be. The founding fathers set this system up to protect the people but it's not taught. Now we have only world history because of globalism. We need to go back to learning about where we live.
