The US Electoral College is getting a fair bit of criticism for letting the US Presidency be decided, recurrently, with less than 50% for the winner.
However, it seems to me that at least some other countries have arrangements that are expressly put in place, rightly or wrongly, to stop really "big parts of the country" from deciding politics on behalf of "little parts of the country".
For example, wiki on the Japanese parliament has this to say:
For example, the Liberal Democratic Party had controlled Japan for most of its post-war history, and it gained much of its support from rural areas. During the post-war era, large numbers of people were relocating to the urban centers in the seeking of wealth; though some re-apportionments have been made to the number of each prefecture's assigned seats in the Diet, rural areas generally have more representation than do urban areas.[6]
Canada's Senate has this to say:
Like most other upper houses worldwide, the Canadian formula does not use representation by population as a primary criterion for member selection, since this is already done for the House of Commons. Rather, the intent when the formula was struck was to achieve a balance of regional interests and to provide a house of "sober second thought" to check the power of the lower house when necessary.
Now, I totally realize that the intent of the Electoral College as a sober 2nd thought, well removed from flighty and emotional citizens is dated. And also that the pure logistics of a country-wide count are not an issue, as they may have been at first. I also realize that a senate/parliament seat is not the same thing as choosing a powerful Presidency.
But it seems to me that measures expressly put in place to favor smaller constituencies are not totally unusual and that, in a federal system, smaller states (in the US sense of the term)/provinces may sometimes insist on, and get, outsized representation.
Do any countries have similar arrangements in place for positions equivalent to POTUS?
(To clarify: similar to POTUS means powerful head of state in this case, with real powers, whether a PM or President. Doesn't have to be a direct vote or even a really federal system - systems like Canada's, UK, etc are fine - results ridings still determine who gets the top job. If those ridings are not roughly allotted by population, then that gives some more voting power )
p.s. Obviously, past arrangements like slaves counting for 3/5th of a free person are obscene. Neither am I expressing support for, or criticism against, the Electoral College, I am mostly wondering if it is an uniquely American phenomenon to adjust pure numerical vote counts.
The intent here is very much to examine whether frequent concerns that the POTUS can get elected with significantly less than a majority of votes is a uniquely American phenomenon. It is not to debate the nuances of parliamentary systems compares to republics, PMs vs Presidents, or the like, merely to see if there is something unique to the disenfranchisement concerns voiced by some US voters.
p.p.s. I had a, now deleted, comment about ruling out arrangements like Lebanon's because those arrangements, while they can be useful, do not really correspond to normal vote counting systems because the outcome is predetermined. (Please don't delete comments that pertain to the actual intent of a question even if I really should have put it back in here).