(Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, running for a new six-year term in an election that his opponents say is a parody of democracy, said on Tuesday that past U.S. elections had been rigged by postal voting.

“In the United States, previous elections were falsified through postal voting … they bought ballots for $10, filled them out, and threw them into mailboxes without any supervision from observers, and that’s it,” Putin said, without providing evidence.

      • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        Okay, but when you factor gerrymandering of districts into the concept of the EC, now you have a rigged election.

      • GaMEChld@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        I will grant that it is different. But is it meaningfully different? Either way, the people are not represented.

        • fidodo@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          11 months ago

          IMO the difference is it happening in the open. Rigged is too conflated with fraud so I don’t like using the same word as it doesn’t clearly capture the difference.

    • wildcardology@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      11 months ago

      I never really understood this. Why do an election when the electoral college decides who the winner is?

      I’m not a US American.

      • AlijahTheMediocre@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        edit-2
        11 months ago

        The electoral college complicates things by having each state be its own separate popular vote.

        Two states, Nebraska and Maine, will split their electoral votes based on their popular vote. But the rest of the states just give all their electoral votes to their popular vote winner.

        The core issue is that a presidential candidate can win 50.1% of the vote in a state and will receive all electoral votes as if 100% of the state voted for him.

        A secondary issue is that electoral votes aren’t equal. Each state has a minimum of three electoral votes. This creates a situation where Wyoming, a state who’s population is smaller than our capital Washington D.C., has more voting power per person per electoral vote than California; the most populous state.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          11 months ago

          Two states, Nebraska and Maine, will split their electoral votes based on their popular vote.

          Only Maine splits their vote. Nebraska awards votes by congressional district, allowing the state to effectively gerrymander the electoral college.

        • i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          11 months ago

          Without proportional electors, in a close election where the swing states–the only states that matter–vote near 50-50, the outcome is essentially random. In the states that vote 50.1% for one candidate, 100% of the votes will go to one candidate, and in the states that vote 50.1% for the other candidate, 100% of the votes will go to that candidate. Random noise in how votes are aggregated, from the district level up, can theoretically lead to wildly unfair results. In the worst case, all voters in 49.9% of states (by elector count) vote for one candidate, and then all voters in 49.9% of the voting districts in the remaining states vote for the same candidate, but 50.1% of voters in the remaining districts vote for the other candidate, that other candidate’s ~25% of the popular vote becomes a majority and they win the election. The required popular vote percentage is even lower if you factor in how California voters are less than three fifths people (closer to one fifth than two fifths, even) compared to Wyoming.

      • limelight79@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        edit-2
        11 months ago

        The original thinking was the electoral college could stop any truly disastrous votes. But we’ve seen how that goes! Now we’re stuck with it because it helps one party and would require a constitutional amendment to abolish, and too few people in power are interested in doing what’s right for the country - they’re interested in doing what’s right for their party.

        (For another example of the “party first” mentality that has taken over: Washington, DC residents have no vote in Congress. This seems like an obvious thing to fix, give them a two members of the House and two Senators…but whoa, we can’t do that, it would change the balance of power in Congress! Seriously. That’s why DC residents have no real voice in Congress. For clarity, their votes do count for the Presidential election.)

        • bob_lemon@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          11 months ago

          Historically, it was implemented because in the 1800’s, a lot could happen between an election in, say, Wisconsin, and the time the electoral college member arrives in Washington DC.

          The US being the oldest democracy might have a nice ring to it, but realistically it’s just means that there’s a lot of outdated baggage attached.

        • i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          11 months ago

          That would make sense, but that’s not the law. In most states, the electors can vote differently and it still counts, and in only some of those states is it even illegal for the elector to do that.

      • crypticthree@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        It all goes back to slavery. The South has lower population and wouldn’t sign the constitution unless they had a handicap to ensure they were able to keep owning people. As more states entered the country the slavers got worried about the likelihood of slavery being made illegal. Look up Bleeding Kansas for more info.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          11 months ago

          Wrong compromise. That was the 3/5ths a person. This is large population states against small population states. States with small populations (including Southern but not exclusively) wanted a guarantee that it wouldn’t just be a parade of presidents from New York.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        Originally the electors were actually meant to deliberate. It was supposed to be a no party system.

        In practice the electors have never demonstrated any independence from the political power that sent them there.

        Then you have states having to figure out how they select those electors, under the eyes of voters. Back then the representative to voter ratio was a lot smaller so losing your seat was a lot easier. So they did the politically reasonable thing and made the electors an elected position.

        It wasn’t long before that transformed into candidates selecting their electors, and people just selecting the candidate on the ballot.

        So electoral college remains now as a compromise between large population states and small population states. And the backup. Which is supposed to be Congress voting by state, is similarly population balanced because they get one vote per state in that instance.

        This all made a lot of sense in a semi-decentralized country that wasn’t supposed to have parties. Unfortunately parties formed literally right away. Also, since the Civil War we’ve been a lot more centralized. But we’re stuck with old voting systems because if we held a Constitutional Convention to update it then the Republicans would do stupid shit.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      11 months ago

      if it was a popular vote, the parties would apply entirely different strategies in elections,

      Sure. Strategies would change to appeal to popular opinion rather than focusing forever on maximizing campaign contributions.

      • Wilzax@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        11 months ago

        And speeches along the campaign trail would focus on broadly important topics instead of being individually tailored to the concerns of a few key districts that can swing entire states