2012 Elections results finally in US officially applies 4 Banana Republic status @ UN

[Tiberius]

In almoust every single European democracy in which the president is more than a ceremonial figure (France, Poland....), there are mainly 2 elections held. In the first, in which all candidates are on the ballot, the 2 candidates with the most votes are decided.
If neighter of them reaches over the 50% limit another election is held in which only the two canidates who had the most votes in the past election are on the ballot.
France has been a functioning democracy ever since our troops had enought of their arrogant habits and cheese and therefor left, and so far I havent noticed anything "unfair" about their electoral system.
The popular vote should be the deciding factor since a elected official should represent the majority of the population and not some bürocratic institutions.

That is a flawed electoral system as well, just not as flawed as the standard single election. For instance, if we have 5 candidates and the votes in the first election are spread this way:

A: 21%
B: 20.5%
C: 19.5%
D: 19.5%
E: 19.5%

By the French system, nobody gets over 50%, so A and B are the only two candidates in the second election. However, the combined votes of A and B equal 41.5%, a minority of the electorate. 58.5% of people's votes are effectively discounted.

I personally prefer AV, which is similar to the French model, but rather than having multiple elections, all of the electorate can rank candidates in order of preference, voting for as many (or as few) candidates as they like. In the first round of voting, only the first preference votes are counted. If nobody wins more than 50%, the candidate with the least amount of votes is disqualified, and the votes that went to them are divided amongst the remainder, according to the 2nd preference votes. The process continues, eliminating and re-distributing votes until one candidate has over 50% of the vote.