this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
513 points (97.4% liked)

World News

38617 readers
2206 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

You are wrong, sadly. While the ballot does have candidates for president, technically what you’re doing is a district election for your presidential delegate, who then casts a vote for the president however they want. Usually this means they vote whatever way the popular vote goes in their district, but sometimes you get a “faithless elector” who legally overrides democracy and votes for a different candidate.

It’s supremely fucked up.

Edit: not false elector, it’s faithless elector

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Ah right the electoral college and that sort of thing. Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

but sometimes you get a “false elector” who legally overrides democracy and votes for a different candidate.

Genuine questions - how often does that happen? It can't be a lot, and it can't make the deciding vote, right, otherwise the whole system would have been ripped apart by the media long ago...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector

As of the 2020 election, there have been a total of 165 instances of faithlessness, 90 of which were for president, while 75 were for vice president. They have never swung an election, and nearly all have voted for third party candidates or non-candidates, as opposed to switching their support to a major opposing candidate.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

It happens frequently enough there’s a Wikipedia page:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector

Looks like it happened in 2000, 2004, and 2016.