Macron turns on Trump after he attacks EU and Canada: "Maybe the American president doesn’t care about being isolated today, but we don’t mind being six, if needs be. Because these six represent values, an economic market, and more than anything, a real force at the international level today."

People within their states vote for president. Based upon those votes the electoral college casts votes for their states as to which candidate receives their "points". The EC was created in our constitution as a middle ground between Congress electing a president and citizens voting for president. From archives.gov:

The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President. Your state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for your Senators.

A natural issue to our system is the general distrust of government most Americans have (this is nothing new) and the amount of population / land mass. Some people tend to agree a winner take all system by popular vote is best. There are rebuttals to this, but the last time it was really hashed out imo was with the Founding Fathers. Deleting the electoral college would appear to consolidate power to the citizens, but there are issues which could arise from it.

George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison helped cement a real government & the articles of confederation were scrapped. An interesting reason being 9/13 colonies had navies & all of them armies. There needed to be a strong central force... else who knows what may have become. Point being, stripping down political infrastructure takes magnitudes of force.

/r/worldnews Thread Parent Link - independent.co.uk