I'm literally kind of lost why we do this. What's the purpose of this, and reason for the delegate system? In your opinion, is it a good system? Why don't we just have the people vote for who they want, and nothing else?
Thanks.
I cannot fathom the mind that is confused by the delegate system. You need some way of finding out who the best representative of your party is to present the goals and principles of the party. A political party cannot afford - either in time or money - a series of runoff elections to determine who that person is by popular/majority. If you want a party that will award the 'winner' in the manner you described as the "why don't we just ----" scenario, then go find people of similar mindset and form one.
And for some of the people who are worshippers of the 'plurality rules' (nobody but Trump supporters actually believe this - and they wouldn't either if he were not ahead) you need to consider why it is a stupid argument and why when you put it forward, you are advertising either complete ignorance or blatant bias. Let me present a mind experiment like I did when I was teaching high school math and needed to demonstrate why some hard-to-grasp probability truism works (case in mind is the "Price is Right" dilemma of whether to change choices when the host eliminates one of the remaining two doors = you
always change)
Consider that there is an election for 'most popular' in some high school with 1000 students. Now consider that half of them are (nominated = decide to run) for the honor. Now suppose that when the vote takes place, everyone votes for themselves, and 499 of them vote for their BFF (all different) - with one person left over who arrived at school the previous day, had no friends, and knew nobody. The status would be that 499 candidates would all have 2 votes each and one candidate would have 1 vote.
Would you be satisfied that the one guy who knew
none of the candidates and had no friends at all would be the one to decide who the 'most popular' in the high school was by giving his tie-breaking vote to one of the 499? All because he had a plurality of 3-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2................2-2-2-1???
This is merely an exaggeration of the situation where Trump won ALL the votes in "winner take all" states where the percentages were something like 25-23-20-15-13-5-2-1-1.....
And it is especially a farce when 80% of the 75% who did not vote for Trump swear that they would vote for anyone BUT Trump. In other words, the MAJORITY of the vote absolutely
did not want Trump - yet he got ALL the delegates. It means he would have
lost to ANY
one of the candidates in a head-to-head election. Yet he goes around screaming that he was "WINNNNIINNNNNNG" and his followers want him to represent a party that overwhelmingly
DO NOT WANT HIM!
Or would you want some other system that avoided such a stupid situation. It can be done by limiting the number of original candidates and having a series of runoffs to determine an eventual majority selection - OR you could elect a slate of "delegates" to go off and decide who gets the honor. In a national election where you cannot have but one election - a series of runoffs is completely impractical, (unlike high school where everyone is in one room and you just keep trimming down the field until you arrive at a majority) - you are almost forced into having a slate of delegates.