Been seeing a lot about how the government passes shitty laws, lot of mass shootings and expensive asf health care. I come from a developing nation and we were always told how America is great and whatnot. Are all states is America bad ?

          • Pipoca@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 year ago

            The problem is plurality voting.

            Plurality elections only really work well with two candidates.

            That doesn’t always equate to two parties on a national scale. Regional third parties can do well, like the Scottish National Party or the Partie Quebecois. But national third parties generally underperform in plurality.

            The US has had several successive major parties. If one dies, another quickly forms to take its place.

    • lazyslacker@sh.itjust.works
      7·
      1 year ago

      I disagree that it was just “slave holding states”. This is obvious to us, maybe, but when presenting the issue to non Americans I think it’s important to be accurate on this. It was meant to give states (slave holding or not) with lower populations a larger voice. It still does that. Our system of government was never meant to be a pure democracy. The president wouldn’t have to care about the priorities of smaller population states at all without the electoral college. They would just have to trust that he’ll keep them in mind.

      With all that said though, with how homogenous the county is culturally and with communication and travel barriers between states and between the state and federal governments pretty much non existent, at this point I think it has outlived its usefulness and should be abolished. Also the difference between the most and least populated states are, percentage wise way bigger than they were when the county was founded. Also, if my voice as a populated state dweller is smaller because of this system, it feels less like the president is “my” president because I had less of a say in picking him. At the end of the day the president is everyone’s president equally so the election of the president should be a purely democratic process.

      • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.ggEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        You’re missing another important piece. The “winner-take-all” system per state wasn’t intended that way. It was supposed to be proportionate to the votes cast, e.g., you take 50% of Ohio, you get 50% of Ohio’s EC. Unfortunately, states realized “winner-take-all” gets them more attention, and of course once one state does it, you pretty much have to go for it as well.

        One of the founders wanted to fix that but died before they could see it through (I think Madison).