US Electoral college system needs an urgent update- that's the point.

Asphodeli wrote:

Re thread: USA Presidential Elections 2012 Live updates
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(Or are they implying that the local version of EC (GRC) is also a flawed system, in the way that it is similar to the EC (i.e. voting for someone to represent your state)? Tsk tsk. Naughty, naughty.)

Prof. Utonium wrote:

cherry6 wrote:

The Straits Times, Published on Nov 06, 2012
No true democracy with US Electoral College system
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Cho Yan Fatt
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He has the cheek to mention this when GRC system is no better.
At very least, EC number of votes are based on the population and only changed when the number in the state changes. But here, it changes only to dilute you know what.
Shameless papers.

No lah, good idea to criticise the USA because until the USA change, the PAP could very well use US elections as excuse and tell us that see, the president of the world's largest democracy also doesn't have the popular vote of the people- i.e. the USA could be the source of this evil in this case- perhaps LKY invented the GRC system of elections mirrored after the US electoral college system where by each state can only favour one party and that the popular vote is discounted.

Thin Asphodeli said it right that ST is correct to print this forum letter even though it reveals similar flaws of our GRC system of election whose flaw inspiration might in fact be found in the antiquated USA election system.

In anycase, I guess we are all world citizens and it won't hurt if we pointed out to Americans the deficiencies of their electoral college system ASAP since by default, the PAP almost always considers the state of the US govt for inspiration in its own policies which obviously would affect us all.

My short take is that the USA electoral college system might have been appropriate during the 1800s (American civil war began in 1861) when proper elections (like we have today) were inconvenient if not impossible and where a trustworthy census of a popular vote would be administratively impossible/ almost insurmountable- such that it was agreed that a simple totalling up of the electoral college votes, as a suitable approximate to the popular (sensible) vote would suffice given the difficult economic conditions endured and the non-availability of modern technology at that point of time (commercial light bulb sold only fr 1880 onwards).

So in sense, Mr Cho's writing of his letter 'No true democracy with US Electoral College system' makes a necessary point that deserves necessary consideration and action by one and all.

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08Nov2012: USA Presidential Elections 2012 Live updates