USA holds elections, but the system has been gamed enough to convince most people that their votes don't matter.
That's dangerous over the long term. Democracy is more about the will of the population than highly technical rules.
That's dangerous over the long term. Democracy is more about the will of the population than highly technical rules.
This has been a concern for Americans since the dawn of the country. Things in the early 20th century were worse than they are now.
The issue is large numbers of both Republicans and Democrats feel their votes don't matter. Further, the last civil war is outside of living memory.
It's a black swan event which can easily catch people off guard. Rules put in place by people in power have ~zero impact on how much people trust the system.
If you live in California or Texas then you pretty much can't vote for President. Your vote doesn't matter.
Like the number of voters?
I can't help feeling these complaints wouldn't have been made if the result was different.
I don't like Trump but it seems he did win.
3 million more voters voted for Clinton but Trump won because of the Electoral College.
Gerrymandering is perhaps the most blatant example, but it's mostly a question of feeling the next election will be fair. If things are down to a coin toss of votes then you can feel it might flip next election. But many US elections don't even have someone running for the opposite party.
This sour grapes whining by Clinton supporters is like a baseball team complaining that they lost a baseball game because while they scored fewer runs they had more hits and fewer errors. Except that's not how baseball games are scored, and that's known from the beginning of the game.
(Just to get it out of my way: I did not vote for Trump, and I've never supported the man. I'm just sick of people complaining about losing by the rules of the system they knew was in place when they started.)
But it's the far from the only issue. Gerrymandering, hanging chad, electronic voting machines / hacking, voter rolls, death of the filibuster, etc are all on various groups minds. Individually they don't mean much but the narrative is just as important as the reality.