Most people seem to have slept through their civics classes where the mechanism of how this works was detailed. A startling number of people are under the mistaken assumption that it is or was intended to be, a direct democracy.
I think at this point, with two recent disparities between the popular vote and electoral points, most people realize there's an abstraction layer in between their vote for president. My point stands though: In the US, you vote for the specific individual you want to be president. In the UK, you do not vote for the specific person you want to be PM.
That is only partially true. In the US, we are able to vote for the specific person we support, a huge difference over UK's system for PM, and never has the electoral college gone against the outcome of that vote.
> never has the electoral college gone against the outcome of that vote
That's factually incorrect. The electoral college precluded the winner of the popular vote from becoming president in the last elections, so no. You can vote for the specific person you support but that does not guarantee the outcome.
The parent is making the correct claim that the voting outcome by state (or CD, in the states that split their vote) fully determines the winner, and the electoral college is a procedural formality. The way the votes are weighted is different from "count the popular vote nationwide", but that doesn't mean we don't directly elect the President.
Electors are independent agents and in theory could cast votes differently than one would expect, 'procedural formalities' could be abolished but this actually has a real effect.
No not incorrect, you misunderstood what I said, which was my fault because I was imprecise. I didn't say the popular vote was reflected by the electoral college vote. I said the electoral college has always themselves voted along with the result of the votes, i.e., voting in accordance with what each state voted.
In fact they have not. Yes, the end result was the same in all but one case. But some electors chose to do whatever they thought was right instead of what they were supposed to do on multiple occasions. See other comment in this thread.
You clearly know a bit about this side of history, so at this point I'm not sure if you are purposely misinterpreting what I say. Adams one by 3 electoral votes, and there was only one single "faithless elector" in that election. The other electors that voted Adams against their state's popular vote still did so in accordance with the rules for apportioning electoral votes
