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The Electoral College, explained - Video học tiếng Anh
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The Electoral College, explained
The Electoral College, explained
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Subtitles (225)
0:00
if you watch the news during a
0:01
presidential election you'll hear a lot
0:03
of this what do the national polls look
0:05
like hillary clinton's national league
0:07
nationally joe biden is currently ahead
0:08
but these national polls don't actually
0:11
tell you who's going to win throw the
0:13
national polls out the window they don't
0:16
matter at all what matters are those
0:17
swing states ah yes the swing states
0:21
most democracies around the world elect
0:23
their head of state with a popular vote
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so whoever gets the most votes wins
0:27
but in america we do it a little
0:29
differently
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the u.s is the only country that picks
0:33
its president using something called the
0:34
electoral college it's made up of
0:37
delegates from each u.s state when
0:39
americans vote for president what
0:41
they're actually voting for is who their
0:43
state will vote for
0:44
this is why every so often someone wins
0:47
the presidency without winning the
0:49
popular vote that's happened twice in
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just the past 20 years
0:54
the majority of americans do not like
0:56
the system and haven't for a long time
0:59
both political parties have made
1:00
attempts to get rid of it so why does
1:03
the u.s still use the electoral college
1:06
and who actually benefits from it
1:12
the electoral college is based on how
1:14
people are represented in congress where
1:16
each state has a number of
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representatives based on its population
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and every state also gets two senators
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so for example let's look at texas which
1:25
has a huge population and vermont which
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has a really small one texas has 36
1:31
representatives in congress vermont only
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gets one
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representatives in both states each
1:36
represent roughly the same number of
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people
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in the electoral college a state gets
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the same number of delegates as their
1:42
congressional representatives plus two
1:45
for each senator so texas has 38
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electoral votes vermont has three
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but this combination makes the number of
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people each delegate represents way
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different between states
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in texas one electoral delegate
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represents three times the amount of
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people as one in vermont
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and that makes each individual person's
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vote in vermont a lot more influential
2:09
the electoral college creates
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discrepancies like this all over the
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country
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a voter in wyoming is worth three and a
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half times as much as a voter in
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california
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and the winner of the presidential
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election is the candidate who gets 270
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or more of these electoral college votes
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[Music]
2:27
these are the results of the 2016
2:29
election by state
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you're probably more familiar with this
2:33
version of it a map of red states and
2:35
blue states
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but this chart tells a different story
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you can see that no state is actually
2:40
all red or all blue
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but almost every state awards its
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electoral votes the same way the
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candidate who gets the most votes in a
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state gets all its electoral votes
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if they win the state by one percent
2:53
they win a hundred percent of the
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electoral votes
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in 2016 more than four million people
2:59
voted for donald trump in california in
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fact more people voted for him there
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than in any other state except for two
3:06
but it didn't matter hillary clinton got
3:09
more votes there so she got all 55 of
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its electoral votes
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clinton never even campaigned in
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california polling showed she'd easily
3:17
win the state
3:18
trump only visited texas once he knew
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he'd basically had that state's
3:22
electoral votes locked but they both
3:24
visited florida 35 or more times
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that's because florida is usually a
3:30
swing state polls show that the vote
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there could swing to one party or
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another nearly every election
3:35
trump only won it in 2016 by 100 000
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votes out of more than 9 million
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swing seats have changed over time
3:44
thanks to shifting demographics and
3:46
political views and it's states like
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these where presidential candidates
3:49
spend most of their time campaigning
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it also means these states have way more
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influence over the election than these
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ones
3:58
a study found that voters in michigan
4:00
had 51 times the amount of influence on
4:03
the 2016 election as someone from a
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state like utah voters in states like
4:08
california or missouri mattered very
4:10
little
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swing states are where the election
4:13
actually takes place they get the
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attention and the influence and they
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only exist because of the electoral
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college
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it doesn't seem very fair but the
4:22
electoral college has always shifted
4:24
power away from some people and towards
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others it was how it was designed
4:30
back when there were just a few states
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not 50 they had to get all the states to
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agree on the constitution
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one problem the northern states which
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were largely anti-slavery wanted only
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free people to count in the population
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towards electoral votes which they had
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more of
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the pro-slavery southern states were
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worried that they would be constantly
4:50
outvoted and wanted enslaved people to
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count in determining the population
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as a compromise they settled on
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something called the three-fist clause
4:59
it established that an enslaved person
5:02
would only count as three-fifths of a
5:04
person
5:05
in 1800 pennsylvania northern state and
5:08
virginia a southern one had about the
5:10
same number of free people living there
5:12
but virginia was also home to hundreds
5:15
of thousands of enslaved people who had
5:17
no freedom let alone a vote and ended up
5:20
with more votes in the electoral college
5:22
than pennsylvania that year those extra
5:25
electoral votes gave the candidate from
5:27
virginia just enough to win
5:31
even after the u.s finally abolished
5:33
slavery and eventually gave black
5:34
americans the right to vote white
5:36
southern leaders found ways to keep them
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from voting like with discriminating
5:41
laws like poll taxes and acts of
5:43
violence
5:45
this meant they continued to have
5:46
over-representation in the electoral
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college on behalf of a large population
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that couldn't vote
5:53
the first time congress attempted to
5:54
replace the electoral college with a
5:56
simple popular vote was back in 1816 but
6:00
senators from southern states blocked it
6:02
saying it would be deeply injurious to
6:04
them
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in 1969 congress came even closer
6:08
replacing the electoral college had
6:10
support in both parties and even passed
6:13
the house but it was blocked again by
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southern senators a senator from alabama
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wrote the electoral college is one of
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the south's few remaining political
6:22
safeguards let's keep it
6:24
why change a system that historically
6:26
had and still was benefiting white
6:28
southerners
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today the states that the electoral
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college benefits have changed but it's
6:34
still making some voters more powerful
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than others if we look at the states
6:38
with a lot of electoral votes for not a
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lot of people and the states with a
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little electoral votes for a lot of
6:44
people these states are a lot wider and
6:46
less diverse than the rest of america
6:49
and many of these states are republican
6:51
strongholds
6:52
these tend to vote democratic
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that's one reason the two most recent
6:57
republican presidents have won the
6:59
electoral college without winning the
7:01
popular vote
7:02
and since it's currently democrats that
7:04
are primarily disadvantaged by the
7:06
electoral college they're the ones
7:08
leading the charge to replace it with a
7:10
popular vote get rid of the electoral
7:12
college
7:16
but as politics have changed the people
7:18
most critical of the electoral college
7:20
have two in the 1948 presidential
7:22
election new york ended up being the
7:24
major swing state a congressman from
7:27
texas said i have no objection to the
7:29
negro and harlem voting but i do resent
7:31
the fact that his vote is worth a
7:33
hundred times as much as the vote of a
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white man in texas
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swing states change what doesn't is that
7:40
the electoral college gives certain
7:42
people more power to pick the president
7:45
and its biggest defenders have always
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been those who benefit the most from it
7:52
[Music]
7:55
thanks to absolute who sponsored this
7:57
video to remind all americans to make
7:59
the time to vote absolute doesn't
8:01
influence our editorial but they do make
8:03
videos like this possible so drink
8:05
responsibly and vote responsibly
