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Re:Live Presidential Forecast by stass on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @10:37PM (#12905884)
And the answer can be easily found in e.g. Federalist papers and even Wikipedia.
Re:Live Presidential Forecast by many_bells_down on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @11:30PM (#12906054)
Yes, we can find the answer as to why they were originally implemented.

However, my interpretation of the original question was that of "why are they still in existence?".

Re:Live Presidential Forecast by stass on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @12:12AM (#12906253)
I feel the original question was more in the line of "Why are US presidential election are not like elections in the many other democratic countries?" and is a huge trivialization of a complicated issue.
Re:Live Presidential Forecast by humanrebar on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @11:36PM (#12906072)
Because you won't convince 3/4 of states to change it. And it's not worth a new constitutional convention over that issue.
Re:Live Presidential Forecast by majewsky on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @01:23AM (#12906687)
We actually only need to convince another 105 electoral votes worth of states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
Re:Live Presidential Forecast by Someone on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @11:08PM (#12905976)
I would also hope (I would write 'expect', but I am a bit cynical about the quality of US education) this was taught in elementary school.
Re:Live Presidential Forecast by tedunangst on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @11:26PM (#12906039)
People are also inclined to forget things they don't like.
Re:Live Presidential Forecast by Someone on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @11:46PM (#12906108)
Forget or deny to know? For people living in the USA, forgetting that must be quite a challenge; every four years, there's half a year of real reality tv, extensively covered all over the news, to remind them of it.
Re:Live Presidential Forecast by symlinkk on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @11:26PM (#12906037)
If the answer is so obvious then just post it
Re:Live Presidential Forecast by stass on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @12:09AM (#12906244)
It's not obvious by any means, that's why I pointed to the reference work on that topic. There are reasons the electoral college was implemented, whether they are still valid of not is a different question entirely.

Furthermore, it's not even clear what the question is. Why it's not elected by the US populous? Because it's the President of the United States being elected, not the President of the people of the United States. Why is it not a direct vote? In part, to make the system resilient to the tyranny of majority which was feared by Founding Fathers.

There is extensive literature on that topic by the designers of the system itself and one cannot summarize it in a HN comment. So if the the Americans the parent was referring to are indeed puzzled by that question there are answers to be found.