Reference News Network reported on November 7 The Spanish “Nation” website published an article on November 5 that it was neither Trump nor Biden. The loser in the US election was the US electoral system.
The article stated that although the final result of the US election has not yet been released, a veritable loser has emerged, and that is the US electoral system.
The article believes that two characteristics of the American electoral system contributed to the current situation. The first is the electoral college system.
The president is not directly elected by popular votes, but after a state’s vote is won, he will win all the “electoral votes” of that state. The purpose of this is to ensure that the president has relatively broad support across the country, but there may be cases where the popular vote and the electoral vote are inconsistent.
In addition, the U.S. Constitution delegates election management to the states, which explains why people already know the final results in some states, but have to wait a few days to learn about the situation in other states. In some states, ballots sent by mail may be counted when they reach the statistical point; in other states, ballot counting can only start on the day of the general election. Some states provide a lot of convenience for voting, while others have cumbersome procedures. Local officials can also control the voting time.
According to the article, the combination of the two systems of state-based vote counting and local election control may lead to the result of presidential elections that may depend on thousands of votes in some states, and the mailing and counting of these votes may be subject to errors and human manipulation. Therefore, no matter who wins, voters will doubt the legitimacy of the election results.
“The U.S. system is a mixture of states and local authorities,” said American political scholar Larry Diamond. “State assemblies and party leaders may have a tendency to defend party interests. Any other advanced democracy manages elections in its country. There is no such deviation from contemporary democratic rules of justice, neutrality and reason in the system.”
The article pointed out that local elections have left an opportunity for the parties in power to use methods. The United States revises the election map every 10 years.
After winning the 2010 midterm elections, the Republican Party used means to redraw the electoral map of a large number of key states in order to concentrate the opposition in specific areas and disperse its supporters. In other words, they can divide a state into multiple regions.
In several regions, voters who support the Democratic Party account for 70% of the total voters, while in the remaining regions, voters who support the Republican Party account for 55% of the total voters. .
