The Rigged System

The system is NOT rigged, but it does have some bias. And that bias, points in the favor of the Republicans, for the most part. Take the top job for instance. In 2000, it was handed to the candidate with a half million fewer votes, thanks to Florida, a state governed by the candidate's brother whose tally was certified by Katherine Harris.

Bias also extends to Congress, where districts are gerrymandered by state legislatures every 10 years. It is useful to look at the total number of votes received by each party across all House races in a given election year. The table below lists the number of seats and percentage of votes received by each party (source: Wikipedia). The Delta column lists the difference as a percentage of either seats or votes. The last column calculates a measure of bias towards the Republican Party. This number is positive if they received a larger percentage of seats than their percentage of the vote.

Year	D	R	Delta (D-R)	Bias to R
2004	202	232	-7%
	46.8%	49.4%	-2.6%	4.3%
2006	233	202	7%
	52.3%	44.3%	8.0%	0.9%
2008	257	178	18%
	53.2%	42.6%	10.6%	-7.6%
2010	193	242	-11%
	44.9%	51.7%	-6.8%	4.5%
2012	201	234	-8%
	48.8%	47.6%	1.2%	8.8%
2014	188	247	-14%
	45.5%	51.2%	-5.7%	7.9%

In the last six elections, a significant bias for the Republican Party has occurred four times. In one instance there was a significant bias for the Democratic Party and in one instance there was little or no bias.

More analysis is warranted, after all this sample size includes just one presidential and six House elections. But no single election should have such problems anyways. Both of these issues are structural artifacts that are in theory solvable. It is indeed possible to devise a more democratic system, but inertial forces prevent change in a structure that been in place for 240 years.