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[scrdest]

I dunno, racist fantasy Japan and racist fantasy middle-east are quite common too.

It's almost like most fantasy writers write incredibly shallow counterpart-cultures...

[sprinkled chariot]

How does american elections system work?

[Rolan7]

That question is based on a false premise, IE that the elections work

You probably mean the presidential election?  Basically there's a popular vote in each state, which decides which candidate wins the state.  And each state gets a number of votes ("electoral college votes") kinda related to its population. 

It's actually a lot dumber than that, but that's the idea.  For one thing, those "electoral college votes" are actually people whose only job is to get elected, then vote for president.  In the past, they have voted against the people who elected them (though this hasn't happened for a while, and never swung an election).

And low-population states get massively more votes, per population, then big states.  So a Californian has something like 1/100th of the voting power as a South Dakotan.  California gets a few more electors, but South Dakota gets the minimum of I think 3 despite having the total population of a single large city.

Senator and House of Representative elections make a lot more sense, though the terms are a little weird.

[i2amroy]

With dark magic.

Realistically the basic process (as I understand it) goes something like this:
1) Each of the two major parties gets a bunch of candidates together.
2) States often (but not always, it's a state by state kinda thing) hold primary elections of some sort. This basically determines how many people are going to go to the big main party convention to determine which of the many candidates for their main party gets to actually run.
3) Each main party gets its representatives from all the states together and chooses which candidate will actually run in the main election for their party.
4) At this point there are now only two real candidates, one for each main party.
5) Individual Americans vote on each of the candidates.
6) A representative council that actually picks the winner votes. The way they are supposed to vote is slightly different depending on the state, some states do a "winner in the populace vote takes all council votes", while others do a "proportional voting percentage" type of rule. It's also important to note that there is often nothing actually requiring the council members to vote the way their state says they should. It's tantamount to political suicide to not to, but many states don't actually make it illegal to vote differently and it has happened a few times (though it hasn't ever actually made a difference IIRC).
7) Whichever of the two candidates got the most council votes becomes President for 4 years barring death or impeachment.
4 years down the line we do the whole thing over again; people who have already been president are still allowed to run, but people that have been president twice are not.

[sprinkled chariot]

How to stahp procrastinating?

[Comrade P.]

How to stahp procrastinating?

No way to do that whatsoever. Abandon your dreams now and accept your fate, spare yourself the suffering.

[Neonivek]

It's actually a lot dumber than that, but that's the idea.  For one thing, those "electoral college votes" are actually people whose only job is to get elected, then vote for president.  In the past, they have voted against the people who elected them (though this hasn't happened for a while, and never swung an election).

Isn't that exactly what happened with George Bush? or what was that exact thing?

[Rolan7]

Bush Jr's first election?  That was miscounting and arguably misleading ballots in Florida.  Once the Supreme Court decided to let Bush win Florida, he won all their electoral college votes, which was enough.

It hasn't actually swung an election.  Neat list, apparently some elector misspelled the names and that counts too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector#2000_to_present

[Neonivek]

Ok dumb question but I have to ask.

How hard is it to do the "Female seductive Saunter" all the time?

There are an awful lot of media where women seem to do it all the time, but it looks so slow and inconvenient... as if there was a tight rope everywhere.

I HONESTLY would just do it myself to see... but my figure suggests that my difficulties doing it wouldn't match a much thinner and hourglass person doing it.

[Rolan7]

I absolutely wouldn't know!

[Fniff]

Sway your hips, and thrust your pelvis out a little out. Walk like you have longer legs then you actually do. Take breaks to tie your shoes without kneeling with your behind pointed at the nearest member of the opposite sex in order to fluster them with your womanly ways manly manners.

Note, not a lady, but it seems to work for me.

[sprinkled chariot]

And what is the reason behind people in U.S electing special snowflake guys, who then vote for president?

[4maskedwolf]

Tradition, at this point.  It's rooted in old class system nonsense, but nowadays its kept because we can't be arsed to change it.

[Sheb]

Some states benefits from the system and are blocking attempt to change it.

[Rolan7]

It's representative democracy, like our Congress.  People don't vote on bills either, they just vote for representatives and senators.  Just like the presidential election, the least populated states get more representatives per person than others.  And every state gets exactly two senators, from California to Wyoming, which doesn't seem fair either.

I don't really like it, because it disenfranchises me, but it's intentional and serves a purpose.  It was less extreme originally:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_historical_population
Rhode Island had about 1/10 as many people as Virginia.  But they were both practically sovereign nations, with their own governments, entering an alliance.  Virginia got more votes, but Rhode Island (and other small but relatively industrial states) negotiated these rules to ensure a minimum amount of representation for each *state*.  And equal representation in the Senate.

That was despite some states having 10% of the population of the biggest (Virginia).  Now we have 7 states with populations over 100 million, and 7 states with populations less than 1 million (not counting DC).  A citizen in Wyoming has over 500x as much influence over the Senate than a Texan or Californian.

It's part of the ancient issue of states rights.  But it's also grown much more extreme with time, despite state rights steadily decreasing.  Since the Civil War, which was largely fought over the issue of state sovereignty, the federal government has had the power to fix or adjust this.  But like election funding reform, there's not enough political benefit for politicians to take the risk.  It would also need to pass the senate, where every state gets 2 votes, and that's not happening.

The District of Columbia is an interesting, rather unfortunate case.  It holds the capital, Washington (not to be confused with the state on the other side of the continent).  Despite having more residents than Wyoming, it has no representation in the Senate or House (they get one "non-voting delegate", like the non-state territories).  Up until 1961 they couldn't even vote for president.  Now they get the same 3 electors that tiny states get, the residents instantly going from "unrepresented" to "much more represented than NC, but only in the presidential race".

TL;DR It's dumb and sucks but there's sorta a good reason, it's just gotten WAY out of control but the system makes itself impossible to remove.