It was something to do with the way the government was set up at that time, and with the fact that a lot of people were uneducated farmers. However, things changed, and the EC is no longer effective.

The founded the EC for the same reason we vote at the beginning of November but the elected officials don't take office until the end of January: travel was horrible then. The EC was originally created to collect the votes from the people who couldn't travel to vote. It's outmoded now and should be abolished.

It should have been abolished long ago.

literally no other country thinks that it is a good idea

What's the EC?

Electoral College. It was created at a time when only slave owners could vote.

No. Only men with property could vote. Women and people like servants, or the poor, couldn't. But if you owned a farm in the backwoods, you could. That's what the EC was set up to count votes for. We now have instantaneous communication. The EC should be abolished.

Only male land owners could vote, but it wasn't limited to slave owners. Were that the case, no one in the Northern states would have been eligible to vote.

The Electoral College.

I'm referring to two former presidents of the USA. Who else should I say voted them in? I was only speaking about the character of these two individuals and was in no way commenting on the system or how many people voted. Our voter turn out in Canada is usually depressingly low as well but it doesn't change the fact that the prime minister was voted in by Canadians.

I was responding to you're disbelief on how "Americans" could swing so fast from such a reasonable person to such an unreasonable person.

"Most candidates win by just over 50% of the vote. And then many of them, make the same mistake you just did They then have the audacity to say things like "the American people have spoken...."". You inferred, based on what I said, that I was making implications about the election results being the will of the people. I wasn't implying anything of the sort. I used the term "American" because I was speaking about the USA. Even if we were talking about the influence of the Electoral College as another commenter mentioned, elected officials are put in place by Americans. That's all I was saying. No hidden meaning. Is your system fair or just? That's a whole other conversation that I wouldn't be very qualified to weigh in on.