Hillary Clinton won the popular
vote but lost by a wide margin in the Electoral College. (The popular votes are
still being counted and while she is currently ahead 990,758 votes, there are
still millions uncounted in California as of 11/15/16.) So, there’s going to be
a lot of talk about the Electoral College (EC) between now and the time that
they take action in December. If the count holds then this is the second time in
this century that Democrats will have won the popular vote but lost the
presidency due to the EC. The last time was Gore v. Bush in 2000.
The electoral votes NOT the popular
vote determine who wins at the national level. With the exceptions of Maine and
Nebraska the winner of the popular vote in states gets ALL the electoral votes.
Just real quick there are currently 538 electoral votes. The number comes from
there being 435 House members, 100 Senators and the District of Columbia gets
3. No federal official can be an elector of the EC. To be elected a candidate
for President needs to win 270 electoral votes. If two candidates got 269 votes
then the House of Representatives would vote and decide who would be President.
The Senate would vote to decide the Vice President.
There are concerns now that somehow
the election is going to be stolen from Donald Trump by electors of the
Electoral College not voting as their state has voted. (There is no legal
requirement that forces electors to vote a certain way.) NOT going to happen. (Of
course I also said that Donald Trump couldn’t get elected. Shows what I know.)
Trump has too big a point spread for a couple of rogue electors to make a
difference. There will be no groundswell of opposition among EC members. The
vote in the EC will be like the Republican “Never Trump” movement that “Never
Was” when it comes time to vote. Seriously, don’t lose any sleep or get
yourselves worked up either way over this.
I’m going to start off with examples
of how things could really appear out of whack because of the EC.
While this scenario isn’t realistic
today it is possible to win the election by winning only eleven states and
disregarding the rest of the country. A candidate, by winning the following
states by a majority vote, even if the vote was only 50 + 1, could win the presidency.
If one ticket were to take California (55 votes), Texas (38), New York (29),
Florida (29), Illinois (20), Pennsylvania (20), Ohio (18), Michigan (16),
Georgia (16), North Carolina (15), and New Jersey (14) that ticket would have
270 votes—enough to win. Eleven states. Even if they lost every other state by
huge margins. I don’t know how probable that is but it is statistically
possible. What these states have in common is they have lots of people.
Just because it’s interesting I’m
going to share that when Kennedy beat Nixon in 1960 Kennedy did NOT win Florida
or California. A little over 100,000 votes separated them. Al Gore won the
popular vote in 2000 by a little over a half million votes but lost in electoral
votes. Bush got 271.
Now let’s say that California had
chosen to award electoral votes proportionally. Then Donald Trump would have
picked up a few more EC votes giving him an even larger win. Had Florida
awarded EC votes proportionally then Hillary Clinton would have picked up a lot
more. M’kay? With me so far?
These ‘make believe’ examples can ‘make
believe’ go anyway that a person wants. So is that enough out-of-whackiness for
one day?
I read a brief article about the
Electoral College when I was on Facebook that gave a nice perspective about the
Electoral College. BUT I am no longer on Facebook and have been unable to find
a link to the article in its entirety.
Anyway, I think one of his examples
of the EC vote used a sports analogy. I hate sports analogies but here goes my
memory of it. Let’s say in the World Series that in one game one of the teams,
let’s call it the “A” team, gets a bunch of runs and wins like 8 to 1. A real
blow out. A 7 point spread. (I have no idea if that’s a blow out in baseball. I
believe I mentioned that I don’t follow sports.) Now the opposition team wins
every remaining game by a 1 point spread. Should the “A” team win the series
because they got more points in that one game or should the other team win
because they won the most games? The rules say the team with the most “wins”
wins. (I really like that last sentence.)
Most of the maps shown on
television as to how the votes are awarded are state maps. These maps are
representative of geography NOT population density. Changing how votes are
counted for the Electoral College doesn’t change population densities. Even if
popular votes were the deciding factor in the election population densities
would still be the same. Heavily populated states like New York and California
would have big concentrations of popular votes.
My point with this is that the
country can change the way the President is decided and end up with the same or
at least a similar conundrum. A
candidate could win the popular vote in only 11 states because of population
density but lose the popular vote in every other state and still be President.
Despite the fact that it comes up
after nearly every election, there has never been a serious push to change the
way we vote for President by either of the main parties. It isn’t in their best
interests. They are able to concentrate their resources in the states and areas
where population densities are the greatest. Where the most people are is going
to get the most attention. What is truly unique about this election is that it
is the rural areas where Trump built up his votes across the country while both
parties poured money into the urban areas.
Changing the ways that things are
done can often bring up foreseen and unforeseen consequences. Deciding what is
fair depends on where you live and who your candidate is. There was a lot of
gnashing of teeth after Gore lost to Bush. There were calls then to change the
way the President is elected. In 2012 Donald Trump tweeted, “The electoral
college is a disaster for a democracy.” What is fair is often a matter of
perspective.
It’s almost poetic that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost
the election.* The people voted in the majority for her. The Electoral College
will vote for Trump. So, technically Trump was correct about the election being
rigged. It just turns out that it was rigged in his favor by the designers of
our Constitution.
In terms of changing the way that
we vote for President I think that the caveat is to be careful what we ask for
because you don’t always get what you think you asked for. In this fast paced
age do we really want to wait for weeks to have a decision while states keep on
counting, recounting and fighting in court? Remember, at this time (a week
after the election), California still has millions of ballots to count, and it
doesn’t seem to be going very fast. Fortunately for us, the outcome of the
California count is not significant in terms of the EC votes for that state,
unlike Florida in 2000.
NOTE: Here’s a link
to an excellent video explaining the Electoral College. This is the link to the total popular vote.
* Now I understand that the fake news sites are already
saying that Trump won both the EC vote and the popular vote but as of this writing
that simply isn’t true. You can check out the popular vote at the California
Secretary of State’s web site.