
President Barack Obama asserted Friday that a September confrontation with his Russian counterpart prompted Moscow to cease its cyber breach of the US election.
During a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in China, Obama said he insisted President Vladimir Putin "Cut it out" and told him "There were going to be serious consequences if he didn't."
"In fact we did not see further tampering of the election process," Obama said at a year-end news conference. "But the leaks through Wikileaks had already occurred." Ref. CNN.
More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than any other losing presidential candidate in US history.
The Democrat outpaced President-elect Donald Trump by almost 2.9 million votes, with 65,844,954 (48.2%) to his 62,979,879 (46.1%), according to revised and certified final election results.
Clinton's 2.1% margin ranks third among defeated candidates, according to the US Elections Atlas. Andrew Jackson won by more than 10% in 1824 but was denied the presidency, which went to John Quincy Adams. In 1876, Samuel Tilden received 3% more votes Rutherford B. Hayes, who eventually triumphed by one electoral vote.
Though the legitimacy of his victory has never come into serious doubt, Trump has repeatedly argued that he would have won the popular vote if that had been his focus.
Clinton supporters have held up the results as an argument for fundamentally changing the system. Ref. CNN.
The only people that want the system changed are the people that lost the vote. If there truly is going to be a change then it the voting process will have to be done before the next election but I do not see that coming anytime soon.
International Level: Specialist / Political Participation: 40 4%
This is exactly why there is an electoral college. If not, then the interest of smaller states would be totally ignored. Would any politician care about what happens in Alaska, Delaware or Vermont if they didn't get 3 votes (.6% of the electoral college per state)? With the electoral college, those concerns at least get some notice. Otherwise, those states are worth only about .1 to .2% of the popular vote. There is no way in which all will be happy, since the question will always come down to population density versus square miles. The bottom line is, if the candidate is good there will be no issue. They will win hands down. If the candidates are lacking, as we had in this case, it will likely be close and the electoral college is a wind that might just be enough to tip the scales.
After every election in current times, there will be at minimum 40% of the "Voting" population that isn't happy. What should really have the politicians working is that this will be the 11th worst voter turn out in presidential voting history. You can call it voter apathy or a rigged system, but the average American voter really doesn't believe much in the system any longer. They don't see it working for them particularly more so than they see it enriching those in it.
International Level: International Guru / Political Participation: 863 86.3%
In case there were any doubts of the legitimacy of the last election despite the talk of Russian involvement:
International Level: International Guru / Political Participation: 3247 100%
A few facts and considerations that can made, of which I can provide references for:
* A voter in Wyoming has over three times as much power in the Electoral College as a voter in California.
* Swing states have so much power, in recent elections up to 80% of the votes cast in America had no impact on the outcome. That includes your vote here in California.
* When the Founding Fathers created our democracy, they gave the vote to just 6% of the population at the time. And it took a long time to change that.
* It took almost 70 years before the right to vote was even extended to all white men.
Also for all those who would be interested in learning the problems of our voting system as well the. Electorial college… Well, check out the TV series Adam Ruins Everything. Particularly, the episode Adam Ruins Voting.
The votes of the majority of US citizens honestly don't matter in the slightest, and in large part it is because of the electorial college. It's actually kind of frustrating even if, as a few above seem to believe, it offers balance and fairness for those states with smaller populations.
International Level: New Activist / Political Participation: 25 2.5%
Few issues there. A individual voter doesn't have power in the electoral college. He has equal the power of any other voter of another state. The state of California has nearly 20 times the power of Wyoming. Should the vote in any winner takes all state win by 1 vote or 2 million votes, the end result is the same in the electoral college.
I believe your issue is that the amount of electoral college votes allotted to California is not equally proportional to the population. Basically, each electoral vote represents approximately 600,000 people. While in Wyoming, it is likely about 150,000 people per electoral vote.
However, a voter in Wyoming may not vote for the candidate that actually wins. In that case, with your logic, their power was stripped from them.
The votes of the majority do matter and they matter very much. However, it is the majority within the individual state. We are the United States of America and not the States Spawned by the US Federal Government. This was eminently important to the founding fathers.
Having said that, I don't think the founding fathers would have envisioned a country with this many people to govern nor that the representatives could even remotely represent the needs of that high a density of population adequately.
Even within California, the same issue that is seen with the "Fly over" country exists. Nearly all of the counties off the coast in California are conservative leaning. However, their votes don't matter in the presidential election because of L.A, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, etc… If you really look at it, the plurality (Doesn't take more than 50% to get all the electoral votes of a state) of a given state have more power as most states are winner take all for the electoral college.
Honestly, the majority of Democrat votes for president come from the large urban cities of the US. The path to victory for Trump was very narrow as he in all likelihood was going to lose the popular vote. He had to win the electoral college. That is a difficult strategy to pull off. This is, I believe, the 4th time in US history it has occurred (Again, showing it is difficult to pull off). Also, if you cannot win your home state, then that might be a good sign you shouldn't be president anyway - Gore in 2000 failed to win his home state of Tennessee.
What concerns me is if two of the mega states end up going the same way. If California and say Texas continue to grow their number of electoral votes AND vote the same way, then that would be nearly statistically impossible to win against. We in a sense then become a one party country. If that happens, or if say California goes bankrupt and a conservative Texas has to tax in order to help bail them out, I can see the union breaking up into 2 to 4 more manageable countries with similar ideas.
Personally, I like the tendency for the US to change parties every 8 years. Lastly, Trump isn't really a true conservative and he is likely to be a lot more like Bill Clinton than Ronald Reagan (But with majorly rough edges) and Bill was more of a left-center president. Edited: Vincenzo on 6th Jan, 2017 - 9:07pm
International Level: International Guru / Political Participation: 863 86.3%