LISTENING FLUENCY LIBRARY

#237

Deep English
LISTENING FLUENCY LIBRARY
What? How Did That Happen?

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 #237 What? How Did That Happen?

elected: chose The United States recently elected a president

someone by against all odds. No one thought a billionaire
voting reality TV star with no political experience could
win, but he did. There is a famous quote that
against all odds: says, "In a democracy people get the leaders
in an unlikely way;
despite a low
they deserve."
chance
But in this presidential election, the person with
reality TV: a TV the most votes didnt win.
program that
shows real people The US chooses its president through an
supposedly doing
antiquated process called the Electoral College.
unplanned
The history of the Electoral College dates back to
antiquated: out the beginning of the United States. The
dated; not Founding Fathers chose the Electoral College
modern system for different reasons. One reason was to
try to balance the power between the states with
Founding
bigger and smaller populations. States with large
Fathers: term
used to describe numbers of non-voting slaves worried they
the men who would be bullied by states with larger
played an populations of white voters.
important role in
the creation of the Nowadays, the Electoral College uses a system of
US government
538 points, called electoral votes, which decides
candidate: a the winner. Each of Americas fifty states is given
person who a certain number of these points based on its
applies for a job size. The bigger the state, the more points its
or a person who is worth. The candidate with the most votes in
trying to win a each state gets all of that states points. So its all
political position
or nothing.

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 #237 What? How Did That Happen?

This Electoral College system creates many

different imbalances in the voting process. For
example, the state of California, with a population
of 37 million, is worth 55 points. Wyoming, on the
mere: used to other hand, with a mere 563,000 people, is only
emphasize how worth 3 points. If you do the math, you find out
small or
that each point in Wyoming represents 187,000
unimportant
something is people, while each point in California represents
677,000 people. That means voters in Wyoming
have 3.6 times the voting power of voters in
California!

This state-by-state Electoral College point system

sometimes creates a situation where a candidate
can get the most votes on a national level, but get
fewer Electoral College points. Hillary Clinton got
2 million more votes than Donald Trump, but she
received fewer Electoral College points. The same
thing happened in the year 2000, when George
Bush beat Al Gore with fewer votes, but more
Electoral College points. In the end, the number
of votes from real people doesnt always decide
an election.

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 #237 What? How Did That Happen?

Many people have complained that the Electoral

stuck around:
stayed in a place
for a long period
of time
changed ones After his win in 2016, he unsurprisingly changed
tune: a complete
change of opinion
College system is undemocratic and needs to
change. So why has this antiquated system
stuck around for all these years?
In 2012, Donald Trump said on Twitter, The
electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
his tune. Trump now says, The Electoral College
is actually genius

Photos / Credits:
Photo #1 (cover) by Fe Ilya:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/renneville/2908748583//

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