I don't get it.

I thought if the electoral college tied then the popular vote would decide if, but I learned that is not the case at all.


So what's the point? It doesn't decide the president. It doesn't break a tie. So why is it my duty to vote if it doesn't matter at all?

I don't want to sound condescending either. I legit don't know. Enlighten me

we are asking the same question every 4 years sis

Your votes counts towards who your states' votes go to.

I find American voting system so ****ing weird

Ohhhh...

It counts in the Western countries that isn't named the US.

In the US it is about winning over the individual states, each state you won, provides an amount of electors based on their population. The first one to get 270 electors wins.

Dutch translation of the "elector" is literally "voting man". Sounds like the system assumes that the plebs isn't smart enough to vote directly for the president and have to push forward "voting man" to cast that ballot for them. It's this kind of laughing stock.

That's the theory, because in reality 80+% of the states have a pre-determined, fixed preference for a party. It's about winning over the swing states that can jump ship with every election and it's only a few thousand votes difference that can make a state swing.

The margin is so small for a winner takes all system.

European countries have between 3 and 6 mainstream parties. To form a majority, 2 or 3 parties have to work together by compromising to each other. In countries with 5 or 6 parties the biggest party rarely exceed 25% of the votes.

This limits extreme ideas, because the other parties can boycott the party and sidelines 25% of the votes. If the party compromise to join in, the voters will soon find out that a lot of the extreme stuff is cancelled.

If you knew the answer then why did you ask?

electoral votes go to the candidate with most popular votes per state, usually.

Wrong for UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

It doesn't make any sense like most things in America.

plain and simple answer is that the popular vote does not matter at all
it is just something media uses which has no actual bearing on the election results

America.

It doesn't really matter. The electoral college is the only vote that actually matters, and they can go against the popular vote if they feel like it. That's one of our core problems.