has to wait to find out if osiris rakes picked up enough rubble to bring back to earth or it'll have another shot at a landing seems like things are pretty well today so we try to get whatever fingers crossed that it works and if they determine that they've got enough just stuff will be coming back down to earth hopefully in september 2023 and scientists will be able to get their hands on the right. these scientists clearly happy with progress and get to come back down to earth themselves and. it's good to have you with us hello adrian fenty can here in doha the headlines on al-jazeera at least 12 people have been killed in a stampede in the afghan city of jalalabad another 12 were injured thousands of gathered at the pakistani consulate there to secure visas for the stampede happened physio contrary reports from kabul now local tells us that yesterday there were

some rumors spreading on social media that the pakistani consulate today would hand out more visas than usual and that caused a lot more people that would normally gather outside that stadium to go and try to go and get inside so as a result when the gates opened to from what locals tell us there were thousands of people will try to rush in as fast as they can as they could and that's what caused the deadly sub stampede in northern afghanistan 17 security force men disciplined killed and another 5 injured in a taliban attack it happened in the province which borders to chicas top nigerian security forces are denying any involvement in the shooting of protesters in lagos a number of people ever been killed that happened on the 12th day of demonstrations against police brutality lagos is under lockdown millions of the country in the country rather under curfew. the usa nearly $300000.00 more people die this year

than it usually would the centers for disease control and prevention says that at least 2 thirds would use the current virus cafe pacific is causing nearly a quarter of its workforce nearly 6000 employees will lose their jobs mostly in hong kong where the airline is based. the u.s. justice department is taking legal action against google the tech giant is accused of using its market dominance to maintain a monopoly of a smaller rivals the complaint says that google pays billions of dollars to phone manufacturers to keep it as the keep them as the default search engine the company says the suit is deeply flawed a nasa scientists of handle a landed a space probe on a moving asteroid 320000000 kilometers away from earth that aim to scoop up a few handfuls of dust pebbles from the surface what is fear of 0 of the inside story next. i'm steve clements i think what it is with these days it's hard to filter out the newly seen keep track of what's really important the bottom line

tackles the big issues this is shaping the united states its people its economy and the way it deals with the rest of the well the bottom line. in the us a candidate can lose the election but still win the presidency president trump did it in 2016 so did george w. bush in 2000 it's a unique and controversial system known as the electoral college how does it work and is this 18th century institution a good fit for 21st century america this is inside story. hello and welcome to the program. as many as 150000000 votes will be cast in this year's u.s. presidential election but the votes that really count belong to just 538 people the

presidential electors that's who people are really choosing when they take a box for donald trump or joe biden it's a new system that's unique and often confusing for outsiders in 5 elections. it's puts the met it's put the man who lost the popular vote into the white house 3 times in the 18 hundreds and twice in the last 20 years even among americans the electors are often a mysterious group but we have 2 of them with us here today to help explain the system and ask why america still uses it will bring in our guests in a moment but 1st here's our white house correspondent kimberly how get with more on the electoral college. when americans vote on november 3rd they're not technically picking a president they're choosing delegates known as electors now the electors vote on behalf of their state and it's those votes not the people's votes that pick the president it's called the electoral college and the electoral college does not

grant degrees nothing is debated it doesn't even meet in a single place but it is the votes of those $538.00 people in mid december not the 10s of millions of americans who will vote in november that will actually choose the president of the united states so how does it work each state has the same number of electors as its total members of congress its house members plus 2 senators so small states like vermont wyoming have 3 well california has $55.00 texas has $38.00 new york and florida $29.00 each now there's nothing of the constitution saying that each state's electoral votes have to be winner take all but since the early 1900 that's the way the system has developed and that is why hillary clinton could win the 2016 u.s. election by 3000000 votes and donald trump became president it's also why in the

year 2000 that the entire presidency came down to just a few 100 votes in florida. all right let's bring in our guests who were all in the united states in burlington vermont is a democratic electorate candidate there and she's also running for the state senate in fairfax virginia jennifer victor a professor of political science at george mason university and in riverdale maryland jim watt is a republican electorate candidate in the state he's also chairman of the republican central committee in prince george's county which is in the suburbs of washington d.c. welcome all to the program. let me start with you you're an elector how exactly did you get this job so thank you for asking and as a candidate who's likely to win a state senate seat i will become the 1st woman of color in the vermont state senate and also the 1st woman of color to be chosen as an elector in the state of her mind it was a decision that mostly made by democrats here and her mom because we're pretty blue

state and we are chosen by the executive committee of the democratic party and i would have never thought to apply for something like this even if someone involved in politics because you usually think of you are statewide and federal delegation for this kind of honor but someone on that committee said it's been never in history have we had a woman of color who's represented as an elector and with kamel and harris on the ballot it would make a lot of sense and so i'm honored to have that role even though we'll get into the challenges with the electoral college and jim let me ask you the same question as an elector how exactly did that happen for you. this time again it was selected by the executive committee of the state party i did ask to be considered previously but i'm an alternate delegate to our nominating convention and i've been active in the party for a time and this is often an honorific prevaricates reasons like she said sometimes

the elected officials sound sometimes people who are older than the party have been around a while jennifer is is this how all this was intended to work and why exactly does the u.s. have this system i'm not sure it was intended to exactly turn out the way that it has that essentially during the time of the drafting of the constitution back in the 780 s. there was a lot of disagreement over a number of topics and one of the topics over which they had a hard time coming to an agreement was how centralized to make the power structures in the federal government and there was some debate about how to create a democracy that wouldn't be subject to sort of the whims of the people who may not be as educated or you know sort of to protect the the robust structures of government from what is essentially populism and there's

a lot of controversy about how to do that how to both have democracy and stability in the same system and one of the odd compromises that they came up with was the electoral college which was a system of actually using this set of political elites they were intended to be elites at the time to do the actual those things were president but still providing a mechanism where everybody at least all those who were granted the right to vote which at the time wasn't very many to select those those electors so it was seen as a way to protect the stability of the federal government structures over time as suffrage rights expanded and and you know more and more people who dissipates. and the electoral college is no longer about selecting a leads or using elites just elect the president it's now as the guests your other guests have said a sort of an honorific position and those who want to be honored by their local political parties or those who sort of have it have

a stake in or in the major players in party politics ok sure from your vantage point is the electoral college make the us less democratic so you heard a little bit earlier that her mind only has 3 delegates to the electoral college while california has 55 and that sounds like a dramatic difference in california's favor but it's actually dramatic disproportionate favor ability for vermont as an elector and one of 3 people in from behind i represent about 200000 voters when i cast my vote whereas a california delegate represents closer 270-0000 voters when they cast their electoral ballot so really there is a deeper ability as we've seen in some of these presidential elections torn smaller rural states rather than our urban centers with high populations now you would think i'd be happy for that in for mine but most for monsters agree we've debated this in our legislature and come out the other side that we would rather be part of

a national national popular vote system and we joined a number of states making up 200 delegates overall that would like to move to a national popular vote system when we reach 270 delegates that a group of states will have the power to help us transition to a national popular vote system and elect the president based on the overall population of the country and the principle of one person one vote jim are electors compelled to vote for the candidate who wins the most votes in their state there was a recent supreme court case involving i believe the state of washington. correct me professor jennifer but the. electors chose to vote for a different person colin powell or some or the alternate candidate somebody who either wasn't in the race are somebody who was not the candidate that they were

pledged to and that state sanctions on the individuals and they were that went through to the supreme court who said yes and it's based on article 2 of the constitution that says each state shall appoint in such manner as the legislature there of may direct a member of electors equal to that cetera et cetera but each state shall appoint and so that pledge the state can enforce according to the supreme court jennifer this statewide winner takes all method for choosing presidential electors this was not mandated in the constitution but it developed pretty quickly right yeah it did if you came to the convention more or less right away so while some aspects of the electoral college system are outlined in the constitution and that makes them frankly very difficult to change because the barriers to changing the constitution are quite high have to get

a 2 thirds vote for each chamber of congress and 3 quarters of state legislatures to increase so we only amended the constitution $27.00 times in this country but. you know but because we have this winner take all system that a lot of people think is perhaps not ideal it would be difficult to change which is why as a sketch it was mentioning there is this national compact that has been signed onto by a number of states that frankly relatively controversial it's not at all clear that it would pass constitutional muster or that if the state was put into a position where they had signed onto this compact in which they agreed to give their electoral college votes to the national popular. the winner regardless of which way the state went if a state was put into a position where they were by the contract required to give their votes to a candidate that the state did not in fact the poor if you can see how that would produce a sort of dissatisfying and perhaps the stabilizing type of political situation. so

well i'm very sympathetic with the idea that the electoral college is very much engaged it's not particularly democratic it doesn't fit very well with modern institutions in the way modern politics works it is too hard to change and i'm not convinced that the national popular vote contact is necessarily the best solution for going about fixing it but at least it's at least it's not happened kasia as an elector is there any conceivable set of circumstances that exist by which you would not vote for joe biden and connell harris there is no circumstance under which i can see myself changing my vote and at the same time the the pledge that electors take is in no way that visionary or lofty or really aligned with the u.s. constitution you're essentially saying i will face penalties unless i vote for the candidate chosen by the state and in my case that if as a democratic delegate i would only be activated if we support joe biden ecomil

harris but you're not saying that you'll do what's in the best interest of the country or anything that's open to interpretation and you are strictly a democratic or republican delegate casting your vote depending on your state's popular vote jim i saw you nodding to some of what keisha was saying did you want to add anything to the point she was making. busy. remember we are by party so with the one candidate of our party wins we are we cast that vote if the candidate of the other party wins somebody else another candidate for elector will cast that vote if i may i'd like to challenge one of the initial characterizations there hillary. what had a larger number by a count but there is in our country no certifiable popular vote that is to say because the states beyond a few limited better roll criteria create their own rules for

elections how far people can vote in advance how late people can register how mail to votes absentee or other was are postmarked how the signatures are verified or not verified so that is to say that when california which has significantly different rules cast its vote and counts its tele that is not a mail of us to have the the florida for instance vote is counted and how that is certified so those certifications are within the state to decide that state's result but they are not equivalent in to create a sort of fireball national result jennifer if joe biden wins the presidency if the democrats retake control of the senate do you think we will see a push

a new to try to abolish or reform the electoral college it's an interesting question you know i think that if democrats prevail in this election and wind up with control essentially the executive and legislative branches i think they're going to have a pretty long laundry list of things that they want to get done and how they sort out that priority list it is going to be a matter of internal party politics and while i think any move that the united states can make that is towards more democracy ins and my mind should be our highest priority since we've been through we are now going through a period of some democratic decline it's not clear to me that the party would nest . they're really prioritize something like an electoral college reform right out of the gate. i actually think they would they would you quite well to do other things to expand voting rights and so forth and just to agree with michael the analyst here is as jim was just saying we don't have

a national election of any kind in the united states we don't hold national elections we don't use national referendum we don't elect the president on a national popular vote we have a series of state local elections that happen to be held simultaneously that we use to aggregate to select a national office like the president and there's goods and bads about that particular system and some of the negative aspects have been pointed out here today i would just add that. the fact that the system is so decentralized in a way provides an element of robustness and resilience to the system so in some ways it makes the system more resilient to extra threats now there are other reasons to think that we should have a more centralized or controlled system especially when it comes to voting rights which is perhaps the most important right that a democracy cannot protect for its citizens but to be more direct your question you know democrats are interested in reforms to health care and immigration and voting

rights and environmental protections and that sort of there's this laundry list of policy things that they want to get done and then there's other discussion about more institutional reforms perhaps the electoral college there's talk about reforms with respect to the courts and other things and it'll be interesting to see exactly how they sort those out i would expect them to at the outset prioritize one or 2 things that they think could they could really get done so they can point to some accomplishments and over which there might be some widespread agreement and i'm not positive the electoral college will wind up at the top of that list ok so let me ask you the same question of joe biden wins the presidency if the democrats retake control of the senate are we going to see the democrats push for a. the electoral college well i certainly can't speak for national democrats but i can tell you at the state and local level this is something that republicans should really be applauded for focusing on that democrats should be focusing on a lot more there never going to be dispassionate issues for folks to care about

redistricting which is going to take place right after we do the new 2020 census and figuring out what our congressional districts will look like how we enfranchise more voters and how we could have the power of the vote back in the hands of more people because in fact as we've heard this decision may be made by 500 some odd votes but it could also be made by 9 unelected people on the supreme court and republicans have really had their eyes on that prize. pretty considerably and have you know sort of been to a convention and a bent graces to get those seats on the supreme court so democrats need to play hardball and think about how we win elections just as much as how we govern and what policies. jim if you're talking about attempting to abolish the electoral college you're talking about having to amend the constitution that's something

that's pretty much impossible right now correct not impossible but the ratification level is very very high of with a large number of the states not a simple majority and each of the legislatures would have to hold a read of the cation vote right now i would imagine they would fall several states shy of that but also if we're going to have a national popular vote we need national standards for voter registration. the dates of the nature of that we would need national standards for such things as mailed in votes the vote harvesting in california would that be part of it or would that be eliminated we would have to have the exact same election period for everybody i've often recommended a 24 hour period so everybody could have any time of

a day that they wanted to. we wouldn't have been able to have some states starting their early vote in september our guest and other states starting of the week before the election so we would need national standards for a very large number of items and that would take some time to come to and that would be a predicate to ratification for many of the more skeptical states jennifer i just want to step back for a moment to look at another facet of the formation of the electoral college originally i want to ask you what role did slavery play in the creation of the electoral college and how was the formation of the electoral college a concession to slave states yeah so as i mentioned earlier when the drafting of the constitution was going on it's important to remember that they came together not to draft a constitution that rather to amend the articles of confederation the constitution

that we live under today is really constitution $2.00 is the united states constitution $1.00 with the articles of confederation and it was an attempt at creating a country that essentially failed it was a massive failure because of the lack of centralized power and when they came together to try to result that and wound up drafting a constitution as i said earlier they disagreed over a number of things and one of the crime here the disagreements that they had was over slavery this is the state in the southern states that were primarily involved with a system of human slap chattel slavery. we're very protective of that system and very reluctant to give it up and northern states that saw it as an important and immoral practice and who had other disagreements with it really wanted to get rid of it and essentially there was no way to resolve that the speech and it became pretty clear among these drafters and founders that the only way that they were going to be able to form a country was essentially to not address the issue of slavery which in

a way you could you could say that they punted it but it's also a way that sort of the anti-slavery folks wound up giving in they agreed that it was more important to form a country than it was to get rid of the system of slavery so they wound up prioritizing forming a nation over the idea of eliminating slavery and that willingness to prioritize forming a country we can see and the various compromises and systems built into the constitution from the electoral college to buy cameras and to having a senate that has equal number of representatives from each state to the system of federalism itself and the system of checks and balances all of these were compromises made at the time as a way to get these competing factions to agree to form a country and share power jemma look like you want to jump and go ahead. am i that obvious now i was just noting that virginia which gender is a slave state had nearly 700000 people at the 790 census and rhode island had

68000 roughly a free state connecticut next door had 3 and a half times that around 240000 so rhode island was thus given proportionally more power education noted then virginia. slave holding. a. slave holding state and connecticut its next door neighbor was also not able to overpower it as much with 3 and a half times the population so the rural city every cultural industrial mountains plains all of those divisions all of those divisions bring in different interests and the electoral college softens that softens those edges just a little bit keisha if there's a time in the electoral college the house of representatives then decides the

presidency but it's not the representatives of the states that are voting correct and how much does that further complicate matters well that might be a better question for jennifer because you know i've been trying to figure out exactly what happened and that's something that you know entirely possible are you did i ask you this are you concerned that we could see a tie because we're in a situation where even though joe biden leads the polling nationally by quite a margin it's much tighter in those key swing states are you concerned about that i am concerned i mean i think this is you know in vermont where the home of howard dean and the bernie sanders and a 50 state strategy and the idea that you don't only dough into swing states you know and talk to folks about what they. there about in those areas you go to every state you listen on the issues you don't rack up your delegate count and play out that strategy as much as actually hear what's on the minds of all americans and so

you know moving away from but the electoral college system it takes all in swing states would really help but hear about actual issues on americans nights jennifer we only have about 90 seconds left let me ask you what i ask asia which is how much more complicated does it get if there is a tie and this goes to the house 1st of all let me just say it's it's extremely unlikely it's never happened in u.s. history so i don't expect it to happen this year however essentially what happens even if you wind up with a tie in the electoral college the house of representatives is asked to resolve that tie and the way that system works is that each state is given $11.00 vote so the electors of the delegates are speaking the delegates from that state representatives from that state come together and try to offer a consensus choice from that state and he and i do that math i mean there's a lot of uncertainty there about exactly how that would go but it was all it would also be pretty close if it was donald trump and joe biden it would be pretty close

it's hard to say exactly which way that would go it looks like trying to might have an advantage on a state by state count overage or by me but again i think that scenario is pretty unlikely to occur all right we have run out of times we're going to have to leave it there thanks so much to all our guests jennifer victor and jim watch and thank you too for watching you can see the program again any time by visiting our website al-jazeera dot com and for further discussion go to our facebook page that's facebook dot com forward slash a.j. inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter our handle is at a.j. inside story from emergency room in the whole team here bye for now. when i think of my nature i think of potential when i think of potential i think of what could be what is not i think of the young people need to do to get control to

the island and do something that they come to. tell me it's impossible i think as a challenge. the reason a child included alex. my name is mendacious or and this is my. my nigerian on al-jazeera. trust is fundamental to all our relationships we trust banks without money talk to us without really. what happens to trust in a world driven by alpha. as more want to see chanson made for us by these complex piece of code the question that comes up is inevitable can we trust algorithms in the 1st of a 5 part series ali rate questions the neutrality of digital deductions trust me i'm an algorithm on a. i want you to know our nation is going to do defeat is that terrible china virus as we call it there is no place for hate in america well i'm feeling great out of

about your worry mask is not a political statement it's a scientific recommendation the final presidential t.v. debate live on al jazeera. shots fired during protests in nigeria against the government and police brutality several people have reportedly been killed. my bedroom for good this is al jazeera life and also coming up at least 12 women are killed in a stampede in afghanistan after thousands of people gather to apply for visas to pakistan. from handy search told a global monopoly the u.s. justice department plays out its case against google. and a nasa spacecraft grow.