Why is the electoral college called a winner take it all systerm?

Answer 1

The winner-take-all system is undemocratic because all the votes for the "losing" candidate at the state level are lost in the final, national count. I don't understand why we have this system or why we fight to keep it. It means that our U.S. President is sometimes not truly elected by a majority of voting Americans, and this is preposterous.

Answer 2

I think it is because electors were at first appointed by the state legislature. When it was decided to let popular vote elect them, the obvious thing to do was to have a state-wide election for each elector. After political parties were formed, the electors announced their party affiliations and people voted for the candidate they wanted by choosing the appropriate electors. Therefore all the electors for the same party got the same number of votes and they all won or they all lost.

Answer 3

In 48 of the 50 states and in D.C., whichever ticket, or whichever pair of presidential and vice presidential candidates, gets a simple majority of the state's popular votes cast in their favor receives 100% of the state's electoral votes. All those excess votes are what makes it possible for a candidate who ranks second among voters nationwide to win an election. In the other two states, Maine and Nebraska, only two of each state's electoral votes are based on the statewide popular vote. Each of the other votes is determined by the popular vote in each congressional district.

Each state's legislature is free to decide how their electors are appointed. They are not even required to have a popular vote if they don't want to. However, with the exception of states that were admitted to the union too close to a presidential election to hold public elections in time, every state has chosen to base all their electoral appointments on popular votes for the past 150 years.