Ngoja ni ufufue uzi huu.
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Kuna habari ya kimaoni nimeipata sputniknews.com imeandikwa na Chriss Summers juu ya mfumo wa uchaguzi wa US hasa chimbuko la " colleague votes". Uasisi wa vyama vikubwa vya siasa za Marekani vya Democrat na Republican. Habari hii imenifikirisha sana na imezidi kunifumbua macho.
Nitachota baadhi ya vipande vya habari hiyo vilivyonishitua na mwishoni nitaweka link ya chanzo cha habari hiyo.
Hapo kabla sikujua kama mfumo wa uchaguzi wa Marekani umejengeka katika imani ni mfumo wa kusherehesha ubaguzi na utumwa. Pia sikujua kuwa hapo kabla kuwa Republican na Democrat kilikuwa chama kimoja.
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The United States will hold a presidential election on 3 November, with incumbent Republican Donald Trump up against Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger and possibly Kanye West, standing as an independent. The actual election system is unchanged since 1803.
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The electoral college system - which has long been abandoned by the rest of the world - is as old as the US itself, having been established by Article II of Section 1 of the US constitution, which was approved by the Founding Fathers in 1787
In 1803 the 12th Amendment to the US constitution amended the system slightly, to allow for separate votes for President and Vice President.
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But why did the Founding Fathers opt for this system, rather than a simple direct vote, when they drew up the constitution in Philadelphia, the US’s first capital?
In 2016 Akhil Reed Amar, a professor of constitutional law at Yale, wrote an essay in Time magazine in which he said that “the real demon” which influenced the choice of the electoral college was slavery.
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He pointed out the southern states - Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia - feared being outvoted by the northern states.
One of the founding fathers, James Madison from Virginia, proposed that the southern states should be able to count its slaves - who obviously could not vote - in their population so they would get more electoral college votes.
The compromise was that black slaves would count as three-fifths of a white person.
As Professor Reed Amar wrote, in the New York Times in 2019: "It is true, as some have noted, that some Northerners manipulated the vote in that election to their advantage, but that does not erase the ugly fact that the South had extra seats in the electoral college because of its slaves."
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But in 1800 two parties - the Democratic-Republicans (better known as Republicans), led by Thomas Jefferson, and the Federalists, led by the incumbent President John Adams - faced off for the first time.
The Federalists would later wither away and in 1828 the Democratic-Republican party itself broke apart, with the Republicans choosing John Quincy Adams, from Massachusetts as their presidential candidate, and the new Democrat Party picking Andrew Jackson, from Tennessee.
Over the next 30 years the divisions between Republicans and Democrats became more and more geographical - the former drawing support from the North and the latter from the South - and linked to different visions of the US.
The Democrats wanted an agrarian society - which would maintain slavery - while the Republicans aspired to a more industrial society.
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Ironically today most African-Americans tend to vote for the Democrats and few vote for the Republicans, the party of Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves.
In two of the past five US presidential elections the winning candidate has lost the popular vote - in 2000 and 2016 - something which had not previously happened since 1888.
Earlier this month The Economist said there was an 11 percent chance of Trump being re-elected this year while again losing the popular vote.
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https://sputniknews.com/us/20200711...lectoral-college-system-which-few-understand/
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Nitarudi siku nyingine kutoa tafakari yangu juu ukweli huu nilioujua leo.
