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What are the benefits to the US Electoral College system? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Boldizzle@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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So I'm a New Zealander and I have a pretty good idea on how the electoral college system works but it honestly sounds like something that can be easily corrupted and it feels like it renders the popular vote absolutely useless unless I'm totally missing something obvious?

So yeah if someone could explain to me what the benefits of such a system are, that would be awesome.

Edit - Thanks for the replies so far, already learning a lot!

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[–] fubo@lemmy.world 76 points 2 years ago (1 children)

At the time the electoral college was devised, the only way to reliably get an important message from a state capital to the federal capital was to send a trusted messenger on a horse. The electors are those trusted messengers.

[–] BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org 35 points 2 years ago

Also, back then there was still a lot of disagreement about how the US would work. Was it going to operate be a single, unified country or would it be more like an EU style organization with a unified defense? IE Federalists vs Anti-Federalists? The electoral college was a compromise to let each state run its own elections and only franchise who they wanted. It’s important to remember that the US was not founded as a universal suffrage nation, and has only slowly and after much painful internal struggle expanded civil rights.