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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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Sous-titres (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
0:25
so whoever gets the most votes wins
0:27
but in america we do it a little
0:29
differently
0:31
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
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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
0:51
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
1:17
representatives based on its population
1:20
and every state also gets two senators
1:23
so for example let's look at texas which
1:25
has a huge population and vermont which
1:28
has a really small one texas has 36
1:31
representatives in congress vermont only
1:33
gets one
1:34
representatives in both states each
1:36
represent roughly the same number of
1:38
people
1:39
in the electoral college a state gets
1:41
the same number of delegates as their
1:42
congressional representatives plus two
1:45
for each senator so texas has 38
1:48
electoral votes vermont has three
1:50
but this combination makes the number of
1:52
people each delegate represents way
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different between states
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in texas one electoral delegate
1:59
represents three times the amount of
2:01
people as one in vermont
2:03
and that makes each individual person's
2:05
vote in vermont a lot more influential
2:09
the electoral college creates
2:10
discrepancies like this all over the
2:12
country
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a voter in wyoming is worth three and a
2:15
half times as much as a voter in
2:17
california
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and the winner of the presidential
2:20
election is the candidate who gets 270
2:23
or more of these electoral college votes
2:25
[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
2:45
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
2:55
electoral votes
2:56
in 2016 more than four million people
2:59
voted for donald trump in california in
3:02
fact more people voted for him there
3:03
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
3:11
its electoral votes
3:13
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
3:20
he'd basically had that state's
3:22
electoral votes locked but they both
3:24
visited florida 35 or more times
3:28
that's because florida is usually a
3:30
swing state polls show that the vote
3:32
there could swing to one party or
3:33
another nearly every election
3:35
trump only won it in 2016 by 100 000
3:39
votes out of more than 9 million
3:42
swing seats have changed over time
3:44
thanks to shifting demographics and
3:46
political views and it's states like
3:48
these where presidential candidates
3:49
spend most of their time campaigning
3:52
it also means these states have way more
3:54
influence over the election than these
3:57
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
4:05
state like utah voters in states like
4:08
california or missouri mattered very
4:10
little
4:12
swing states are where the election
4:13
actually takes place they get the
4:15
attention and the influence and they
4:17
only exist because of the electoral
4:19
college
4:20
it doesn't seem very fair but the
4:22
electoral college has always shifted
4:24
power away from some people and towards
4:27
others it was how it was designed
4:30
back when there were just a few states
4:32
not 50 they had to get all the states to
4:34
agree on the constitution
4:36
one problem the northern states which
4:38
were largely anti-slavery wanted only
4:41
free people to count in the population
4:43
towards electoral votes which they had
4:45
more of
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the pro-slavery southern states were
4:48
worried that they would be constantly
4:50
outvoted and wanted enslaved people to
4:52
count in determining the population
4:55
as a compromise they settled on
4:57
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
5:38
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
5:48
college on behalf of a large population
5:51
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
6:05
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
6:15
southern senators a senator from alabama
6:18
wrote the electoral college is one of
6:20
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
6:30
today the states that the electoral
6:31
college benefits have changed but it's
6:34
still making some voters more powerful
6:36
than others if we look at the states
6:38
with a lot of electoral votes for not a
6:40
lot of people and the states with a
6:42
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
6:55
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
7:35
white man in texas
7:38
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
7:47
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
