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Tis true.

Further, when the Electoral Integrity Project, an organization that monitors the state of democracy worldwide, focused on American states, it found that overall our electoral integrity was at best middle of the road and at worst barely functional, although some states like Vermont, Washington, and Idaho scored relatively well.

But perhaps what Laurentus is really referring to is that the person with the most votes didn't win because of an outdated bureaucratic system, which makes the second time in two decades that has happened.

To be fair though, if I recall watching the results correctly, Trump had already "won" the necessary amount of electoral votes before the results from the last states had come in.

In essence it's a silly and outdated system no matter what, but when it's the system being used currently...it's hard to say she won with the popular vote if he had already hit the electoral goal before the votes had even finished.

Changing a political system, especially an electoral one, is possibly one of the most difficult forms of socio-political change to implement purely because there's always someone benefiting from the status quo and as soon as another group win on the basis of changing it they suddenly realise the value of keeping it the way it is.

Happened in the UK with the AV referendum, something most people don't even remember happening - Blair's government came in with promises of electoral reform to a proportional vote system, ended up with Alternate Vote+ AKA fuck all.

If it weren't for the Electoral College, it's entirely possible that there would not have been a Republican president in over 30 years, so there's little motivation for Republican states to want to change the system. Even the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact that taulover brought up sometime earlier is entirely composed of states Democrats almost always win.

But the interesting thing is that the Constitution leaves it to each state to select their electors to the College, so it would be easier to modify the system piecemeal, state by state than if a Constitutional Amendment were required.

If you people are into podcasts, (and I assume you're into politics since you're reading a politics thread) I would highly recommend Intercepted with Jeremy Scahill.  It's run by the Intercept, "fearless, adversarial journalism" with a focus on government accountability and generally calling people with power out on dumb shit they do.  I know many people here lean the same direction I do politically so I also encourage you all to read through some of their recent articles.  Link is https://theintercept.com/podcasts/.  Based in the US but plenty of coverage of UK politics and they just opened a Brazilian bureau to cover all the drama there recently. 

The faces of the press Corp while listening to Sean Spicer talk are priceless

Holy shit, Comey' statement reads like a political thriller novel

Found the top-secret official Mike Pence as 46th President website for when Trump resigns. Worth a look.
http://www.officialmikepence.com/

I didn't believe it was real until I saw
"Corn is our country.
And our country is corn."
-President Mike Pence

That confirms it as real.

The Alabama Senate race results are in, and Democratic candidate Doug Jones beat the expected winner, Republican Roy Moore. Moore, who has several reported allegations of sexual assault on minors, was backed by President Trump but still narrowly lost. This election was over the seat vacated by now Attorney General Jeff Sessions, which was expected to be safely Republican as Alabama previously hadn't elected a Democratic senator since 1992.

It'll be interesting to see how this affects midterm elections in 2018. Some Democrats say this is evidence of the Democratic landslide that will happen since they won in a safe Trump state. Others, though, say it was more about the candidates than the parties -- after all, in the exit poll linked above, 60% said Moore's sexual misconduct allegations were a factor in their vote, and 42% said it was an important factor.

With Jones' election, the Republican party will only have 51 senators against the 49 Democrats and the Independents who caucus with them, which will likely have an impact on the Republican agenda. They may try even harder to jam a tax bill through before they might lose their majority in 2018. It will also prevent the ruckus that would've happened had Moore won where Trump likely would have fought with Republican leadership who would have tried to push for an ethics investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations.

Also, I wanted to link this ridiculous interview with Moore's campaign spokesman on the day of the election. Just goes to show how out of touch Moore and many Republicans like him are.

Spoiler

Not going to claim this source is totally unbiased, but I thought it was interesting anyway: "Senate Republicans bravely denounce Roy Moore the day after he loses" - Think Progress

Not going to claim this source is even real, but The Onion had a good time with this: "Baffled DNC Plant Roy Moore Not Sure What Else He Could Have Done To Defame Republican Party" - The Onion

The demographics of the exit polls weren't surprising... you can look at age, college education, party affiliation, gender, etc. and see about what you expect. A lot of people I'm following elsewhere though note that race ended up being a big part. Disappointingly in my opinion, 63% of white women voted for the pedophile guy, but black people, especially black women at 98%, voted for Jones. The reason that should be important is that most of the media is just covering who won, but not the massive voter suppression that happened before we all found out who won. Alabama already had strict voter ID laws to punish poor black voters, but this time they tried a new trick. Look into the "Inactive" status in Alabama. Targeted primarily at black neighborhoods, many who voted as recently as the 2016 election were marked as Inactive and would need to bring additional identification and fill out more forms, when they aren't incorrectly told they can't vote at all. And that's not even getting into how there are reports that cops showed up in primarily black voting places, checking for people with outstanding warrants to dissuade them from voting.
It won't stop if we don't even call it out when it happens. I guess it's nice to thank black people for making the right choice, but maybe it would important to bring some attention to how they were almost stopped from doing do, as far as I know only the NAACP is doing anything about it, and a few minor news sources have mentioned it.

Also, I wanted to link this ridiculous interview with Moore's campaign spokesman on the day of the election. Just goes to show how out of touch Moore and many Republicans like him are.

Spoiler

Hey guys, remember this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran_oath_controversy_of_the_110th_United_States_Congress

Couldn't not share this.