By John Bruder, Florence
Elliott Oppenheim wrote an excellent letter in the June 23 Star summarizing how democracies came to be and how our democracy is set up. I just want to clarify a couple of things about how we elect a president.
Mr. Oppenheim writes “Our population is roughly 325 million and about half of the people could vote.” In the 2020 presidential election about 160 million people voted. Even though that was a record, it was still only two-thirds of Americans who could have voted. Approximately 240 million Americans are eligible to vote. Here’s another way to look at it: in the 2020 presidential election less than one-third of eligible voters voted for Trump, more than one-third voted for Biden, and just about one-third DID NOT VOTE.
The way we choose a president in the U.S. is a bit unusual in that we use the Electoral College to pick the winner. Each state gets a number of Electoral votes based on its population. In most states, a candidate wins all the Electoral votes of that state if that candidate gets the most popular votes in that state. So it’s possible to become president even if you don’t get the most votes nationally. You just need the majority of Electoral votes. In fact, it’s theoretically possible to become president in the U.S. with just 25% of the popular vote!
In 2000, Al Gore got 500,000 more popular votes that George W. Bush, but Bush won the election with 5 more Electoral votes than Gore. In 2016, Hillary Clinton got 3 million more votes that Donald Trump, but Trump won with 77 more Electoral votes than Clinton.
There are lots of voting methods, and each has advantages and disadvantages. There is no such thing as a perfect voting method or a perfect democracy. I think Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest.”
I can’t resist another of my favorite quotes comparing economic systems: “In capitalist countries, man exploits man. In communist countries, it’s the other way around.” There’s no perfect economic system either.