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US presidential elections very unfair: Journalist

Tuesday, 15 November 2016 6:33 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 15 November 2016 6:35 PM ]

Joe Lauria

US presidential elections, an indirect vote where members of the Electoral College choose the president, are a “very unfair” voting system, according to an expert.

“The Electoral College system, which is very difficult to understand for a lot of people, is very unfair,” said Joe Lauria, an independent international affairs journalist in New York.

“As we now see from the fourth time in US history, a candidate will receive more votes but lose the election because that candidate has not won the required number of electoral votes,” Lauria told Press TV on Monday.

The US presidential elections of 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016 produced a winner who did not receive at least a plurality of the nationwide popular vote.

“This system comes from the very beginning of the United States and it was implemented to preserve slavery,” he added. “It’s very difficult to change this system because you need a constitutional amendment.”

Legal scholars have argued that the Electoral College was originally enacted partially because it enabled the southern states, which were against abolishing slavery, to disenfranchise slaves, as well as women, while allowing these states to maintain political clout.

US citizens do not directly elect the president or the vice president; instead they choose "electors", who usually pledge to vote for particular nominees. The Electoral College is the body that elects the American president and vice president every four years.

Opponents of the Electoral College claim such outcomes do not represent how a democratic system should function.

Critics say the Electoral College encourages political campaigners to focus on a few so-called "swing states" while ignoring the rest of the country. They say the system also violates the principle of political equality, since presidential elections are not decided by the one-person one-vote principle.

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