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For those of us who don't live in the US version of a democracy, can someone explain to me why a given candidate winning only a few particular states will guarantee them the presidency? It seems like they're saying "Oh I know that these 20 states will vote for me, and those 20 states will vote for him, so the race is only for the remaining few undecided states." which from a foreign perspective seems an odd way of doing things.





The answer is simple. It's right there in our name- The United States of America. The states that make up the country, not the people, actually elect the President. The people of each state vote for who they would like to be elected. After the election the memebers of the electoral college meet in there perspective state, and the their votes are submitted to Washington. It is important to note, that the memebers of the electoral are not required to vote the way their state did. They always do of course, but they do not have to. The reason for all of this was that the founders had the repressive British government fresh on their minds (sorry guys!), and they wanted the states to retain control of the election process rather than have the elections controlled by the federal government. There are other reasons for it as well, but that's a historically significant one.

Learning from my mistakes... again and again.