Tell me an interesting fact about Americans and/or America?

Answer 1

America is an interesting country. The one thing many people do not realize about us is that we do NOT vote for our president! Fact! We technically vote for electors to the "electoral college," who do the actual selection of the president. There's one elector for each member of the house and the senate from each state.

The main reason they do it this way is that some of the electors are permitted to change their vote if there is no majority on the first round of voting. So it does not become necessary to hold the election all over again.

Also, every state has two senators, regardless of population. But we have representatives in proportion to our population, by state. The idea here is to keep the balance between urban and rural populations. Low population states have every bit as much power in the senate as high population states, but in the house, the high population means a lot more representatives.

It may sound screwy, but it works fairly well. Of course, what happens after the president is sworn in is another matter.