America, land of the brave, home of the free; how did it come to this? The 2016 presidential elections have the public facing the unenviable choice between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton for president, arguably the two most divisive choices in the history of government.
Neither candidate has the wholesale backing of their own party and both candidates are despised outside of their own circles. The electoral system is supposed to deliver the best options, not the worst options, for the American people.
The electoral system is broken and yet it seems that it would be easy to fix. But is it rigged? It’s hard to say. We can definitely say it’s not working. If we learned from countries that do a better job of things, that could help. Can you guess which countries those are?
Swing State Outcomes Are Predetermined
The electoral college is a scam. This system’s reliance on electoral votes rather than seeking the votes of all voters means that elections are always decided by “swing states” such as Ohio and Florida. That means politicians focus all their efforts on appealing to voters in these states – safe in the knowledge that in the rest of the country, the outcomes are pretty much pre-determined.