One of the major flaws of the American voting system is the electrical college. It effectively means that for a large swath of Americans your vote doesn’t matter unless you are voting for whom the majority of your state also voted for. Especially during tight elections, everything boils down to having the deciding votes, in a handful of states, if not a handful of counties in the entire country.
In a country of 300+ million people, the votes of only a handful of people in a select few locations really matter.
Are you a blue voter in a deep red state? Sorry the electrical college will throw out your vote and go with the majority.
Are you an independent voter in a deep blue state? Sorry you might as well be throwing out your vote.
Thanks to the electoral college a keen candidate can work the system and set it up so they win with the majority of the electrical votes, but not the majority of the overall votes.
TLDR: The reason why a good number of Americans didn’t vote, was by DESIGN. The current system in America de-incentivizes a large portion of the population to vote. This was likely done on purpose. This also leaves the system wide open to manipulation, further de-incentivising, and thus compounding the problem.
One of the major flaws of the American voting system is the electrical college. It effectively means that for a large swath of Americans your vote doesn’t matter unless you are voting for whom the majority of your state also voted for. Especially during tight elections, everything boils down to having the deciding votes, in a handful of states, if not a handful of counties in the entire country.
In a country of 300+ million people, the votes of only a handful of people in a select few locations really matter.
Are you a blue voter in a deep red state? Sorry the electrical college will throw out your vote and go with the majority.
Are you an independent voter in a deep blue state? Sorry you might as well be throwing out your vote.
Thanks to the electoral college a keen candidate can work the system and set it up so they win with the majority of the electrical votes, but not the majority of the overall votes.
TLDR: The reason why a good number of Americans didn’t vote, was by DESIGN. The current system in America de-incentivizes a large portion of the population to vote. This was likely done on purpose. This also leaves the system wide open to manipulation, further de-incentivising, and thus compounding the problem.