It's not a conspiracy, Brandon.
It's the Electoral College.
Let's go back to the beginning.
The Founders of the United States had some
serious shell shock after getting bullied
by King George and his taxes.
They believed in democracy, but not necessarily
allowing the people to directly vote for President.
When you say people, you of course mean, land
owning white-men.
The founders, like Alexander Hamilton were
afraid voters could get swept up by a bunch
of lies, false promises and a big personality
and accidentally elect a tyrant.
So The Founders wanted a safe guard.
In the constitutional convention of 1787,
a bunch of ideas were floated, including letting
congress elect the president.
The Southern states specifically wanted credit
for having a larger population, even if those
were mostly non-voters…
aka, slaves.
And because those spoiled white slave owners
got whatever they wanted, the Convention settled
on a system they made up.
So here's literally how it works.
On Election Day, November 5th, you get a ballot.
Although that ballot may show the list of
names you fought on facebook about all year,
what you are really voting for in the fine
print is an Elector.
The number of Electors a state gets is equal
to the amount of Congressmen they have.
A total of 538 distributed roughly based on
population (thanks slave owners), but weighted
in favor of the smaller states.
As a result, the smaller state you live in,
the more your vote matters.
So congratulations, if you live in Wyoming,
your vote matters substantially more than
in California.
In each state, Whichever candidate gets a
majority of the vote, gets ALL the electoral
votes.
So, there is literally no difference between
a win of 99% or 51%.
That person still wins the whole state
aside from Maine and Nebraska.
Obviously.
This creates the situation called Swing States,
where only a handful of states actually move
the needle left or right - the vast majority
of candidates' attention and resources go
towards moving the large minority of people
who haven’t made up their mind by November.
From a state which has opinions like New
York or Alabama?
Too bad.
Also, some bad news.
It may be 2016, but not all American citizens
can vote.
If you live in the Territories, even though
all 4.4 million of you outnumber Wyoming,
Alaska, Vermont, The Dakotas, and Delaware
COMBINED, you can’t vote.
But some good news if you moved abroad to
anywhere else in the world, you 6.3 million
people can vote by mail - Or if you live in
Space, you also can vote, just make sure you
don’t accidentally land your ship in poor
poor Puerto Rico.
After election day, the winning electors,
usually retired politicians and “friends
of the party” hop on their horses and have
until the Monday after the second Wednesday
in December to get to their state capitols.
There, they are asked to cast ballots for
the candidate they were sent there for - but!
As a buffer from the real people, electors
can vote for whomever they want.
Although this has never swayed an election,
87 times in American history one of these
“friends” of the parties has gone rogue.
Then, after celebrating the winter solstice,
each state sends a messenger on horseback
to Washington DC, where on January 6th at
1pm, a joint-session of Congress reads the
elector’s ballots out loud.
The Vice-President then formally announces
the winner.
In fact, three times in history, because the
sitting-Vice-President was running for President,
they had to announce their f loss, and then
were bullied mercilessly.
But thanks to America choosing a round number,
In the very rare case of an Electoral college
tie, the house of representative’s gets
to vote on the president, and for the VP,
they can pick whomever they.
want.
Each state gets one vote.
So California and Delaware are equals.
Basically in voting, it sucks to be California.
Once all votes have been counted, the Electoral
College disappears on the wind to join its
family, Electoral Colleges of Novembers past.
A new Electoral College will be reborn in
4 more years.
With a few modifications, and much fewer horses,
this system has remained unchanged since The
Founders came up with it.
Even though it was developed for 13 states,
with only 6% of the population actually being
eligible TO vote in the first place.
Want to change it, well you would need 3/4
of congress to agree on it, and basically,
the small states would never, ever go along.
But Vote?
No, yeah, definitely vote.
