He looked disappointed that they didn ' t bring out a whole turkey . He was ready to ninja that thing straight to the locker room for the big boys on both sides of the line . <| sep |> im in that bracket . how do you counter him ? <| sep |> I miss this point in all these discussions and articles so much . Even if the EC would be removed and elections went directly towards the popular vote , the way this works in almost all countries that do this is that one candidate has to prove they can get 50 % of the votes or more before they win an election . Neither candidate has this , so in that case this election would than have to be done again with only these two candidates to determine who people prefer when actually given only two options in the second round of voting . If the system was one of the Single Transferable Vote , we simply don ' t know who the 3 rd party candidates would have voted for . Chances are that a lot of 3 rd party voters would have actually still gone towards Trump and not Hillary , so the race would still have been far from decided . The important thing to take from this election is that neither candidate has 50 % of the voters behind them . And the EC can make these cases become even more extreme when more than a few percent of the voters decide to start voting 3 rd party more regularly . And I feel that is the real problem with the combination of the EC and the winner take all situations . In a lot of democracies with a strong left wing and right wing there is a third , more centrist , party that is often needed to actually get the amount of votes the party needs to get things done . This third party has a lot of power because of this but also works as a balancing factor for the more extreme plans of any party . This is what America misses more than anything .