John Oliver broke down the very confusing — nee frustrating — Presidential primary and caucus process during Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight.”
Many people, both Democrat and Republican, have complained that the current system set up by the two major parties is rigged. Oliver even found himself in the strange position of agreeing with Donald Trump, who beat Ted Cruz in terms of votes in Louisiana, but still received fewer delegates.
“I get why he’s annoyed. And there is no clearer piece of evidence that our system is broken, no more thoroughly dead canary in the coal mine, than when Donald Trump is actually making sense,” Oliver said. “When you see results like that, the process does feel counterintuitive.”
Oliver then went into which states hold primaries versus caucuses, with caucuses being party meetings held at a specific time and date. Turnout for caucuses is notoriously low, as many have trouble fitting the often hours-long meetings into their schedules.
In addition, both parties are able to tip the scales in favor of a particular candidate. Democrats use superdelegates, who are free to support any candidate at the national convention. Republicans use unbound delegates, who can vote for whomever they want after the first round of balloting, or in some cases whenever they choose.
“This is a system that clearly needs wholesale reform,” Oliver said. “There’s no guarantee that the candidate with the most votes will win next time. And if they don’t, all the flaws we just documented will be exposed yet again.”
Oliver closed by saying that despite the outcry, you can’t change the rules midgame.
“You don’t get to the end of a football game and say, ‘OK, who found the most eggs?'” he joked.
So instead, Oliver argues, we should pick a date early next year to email the heads of the parties to remind them that we want this system changed. Appropriately, he suggests Groundhog Day.
9 More Donald Trump Fudges and Lies From Primary Season (Videos)
Donald Trump seems to be on an unstoppable charge to the Republican presidential nomination, even though there's been a plethora of news reports challenging various claims he has made in the past two months alone. Here are some of his greatest hits.
During the CNN South Carolina town hall debate, Anderson Cooper asked Trump about a interview posted on Buzzfeed in which Trump voiced support of the Iraq invasion. Trump responded by saying that he opposed the Iraq invasion by the time it started, but Buzzfeed countered with a clip from another taken the weekend after the invasion started, in which he said the invasion looked like "a tremendous success."
On Jan. 29, Trump said that he "never once asked" for Fox News' Megyn Kelly to be removed as a moderator for a debate that he boycotted. While Trump didn't directly request the removal, he did question Kelly's qualifications. On Jan. 23, he tweeted: "Based on @MegynKelly's conflict of interest and bias she should not be allowed to be a moderator of the next debate."
During his New Hampshire victory speech, Trump claimed the unemployment rate of 5 percent was false, and was actually somewhere between 28-42 percent (fast forward to 12:00). While the unemployment rate most commonly reported does not count people who are not actively seeking jobs, there is another which includes more people attached to the labor force. Under this, the unemployment rate only rises to 10 percent.
Another claim from the N.H. victory speech is that Trump is the only candidate who self-funds his campaign. A check of documents from the Federal Election Commission shows that as of the end of 2015, Trump had put in nearly $2 million to his campaign, but he had received just over $6.5 million from donors.
During a Jan. 20 town hall in Iowa, Trump said that he could make Mexico pay for a border-spanning wall by using the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico to cover the cost. Politifact debunked it, citing several economic experts who noted that the trade deficit is based largely on private trading, and that Mexico's trade surplus does not mean that they have the resources to fund such a wall.
This attack ad against Ted Cruz that aired in South Carolina this past month is one of many examples of Trump claiming that illegal immigrants are "pouring in." The hyperbole ignores a 2015 Pew Research study that shows that the illegal immigrant population in America has actually declined by about 1 million since the start of the recession.
At a rally on Feb. 19, Trump claimed that General John Pershing captured 50 Muslim terrorists in the 1920s and executed them via firing squad with bullets dipped in pigs' blood. The truth is that while Pershing fought against Muslim swordsmen in the Philippines to stop the massacre of Christians, he only sprinkled them with pigs' blood -- which they considered to be unholy -- to strike fear. He never ordered such an execution.
Trump continues to insist that torture techniques like waterboarding work. He does this despite the fact that just two years ago, a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques made headlines when it called them "not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees."
In a Jan. 14 debate, Trump claimed that there were very few women and children among the Syrian refugees. Two surveys by the U.N. count the number of Syrian refugees in the Middle East and North Africa as well as the number of refugees that have crossed the Mediterranean Sea into Europe. In both surveys, women and children make up approximately 50 percent of the total refugee count.
1 of 10
In just the past two months, the GOP frontrunner has raised many red flags with fact checkers
Donald Trump seems to be on an unstoppable charge to the Republican presidential nomination, even though there's been a plethora of news reports challenging various claims he has made in the past two months alone. Here are some of his greatest hits.
