Posted on 11/15/2016 9:58:25 AM PST by Kaslin
Trump took to Twitter this morning to refer to the Electoral College as “genius” because it forces candidates to pay attention to all states, even ones that would presumably be ignored in a popular vote-based campaign.
The Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the smaller ones, into play. Campaigning is much different!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2016
Some critics are arguing this is an about-face from a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday night where Trump said, despite winning, he had issues with the Electoral College.
“I’m not going to change my mind just because I won,” said Trump during the interview. “But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win.”
The president-elect made an even more important point in the preceding tweet.
If the election were based on total popular vote I would have campaigned in N.Y. Florida and California and won even bigger and more easily— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2016
A lot of Trump-haters are criticizing Trump for winning the Electoral College, but not the popular vote. Some are even saying his victory is illegitimate because he did not win over the majority of voters.
However, this is an accusation based on assumptions. We don’t know if Trump would have won the popular vote because the campaign was not based with that objective in mind. Neither Trump nor Clinton ran the 2016 election with the goal of winning the majority of voters. They ran to win the Electoral College. Trump prevailed in that pursuit.
If we lived in another universe and the 2016 election began with all candidates vying for the popular vote – the campaign would have been run entirely differently. Clinton would have made many more stops in Texas. We would have seen Trump camping out in highly populated states (and dark blue) states such as California and New York. These are two states that have no chance of going red statewide, but still contain a bountiful amount of red voters. In a popular vote-based election, it would make total sense to campaign in those places. In an Electoral College-based election, that would be a complete waste of campaign resources.
Understanding this concept explains why criticism of Trump being awarded the White House should be considered unfair. The objective of the game was to win 270 Electoral College votes or more. Trump did this. Fair and square.
Glad Trump corrected his comment from the 60 minutes interview.
Yup.
This part of the Constitution was replaced by the 12th Amendment, which was supplemented by Section 3 of the 20th Amendment and by the 23rd Amendment.
Glad to know that Trump clarified (or corrected) his remarks from the 60 minutes interview. It was more than a little startling to hear him say what he did. The good news is that he can quickly recalibrate potential missteps.
Got ya
Trump overwhelmingly won the LEGITIMATE popular vote.
The states shouldn’t even publish the popular. It’s irrelevant. Just say who won the electoral votes.
I also agree that each state should apportion the votes as do Maine and Nebraska. I call for a grass roots effort from FReepers in each or our states to get this enacted.
Who’s in?
>Trump Makes Case for Electoral College
He should have made their heads explode and tweeted:
“It’s in the CONSTITUTION. Liberals\D.C. should look it up and read it some time.”
The electoral college was not created by a constitutional amendment. It is included in the original document.
The 12th amendment changed the way the vice-president is chosen so that VP is no longer the person with the 2nd most votes. But as l read it, the pres and vice-pres should be on completely separate ballots ( i.e. not on the same “ticket”). I don’t know what political machinations allow the parties to form “tickets”.
We need to rid ourselves of the concept that in our REPUBIC we have CITIZENS OF THE U.S voting for president.
That is NOT what happens. We have STATES voting for president. Citizen RESIDENTS of each STATE have had the right to vote for their STATE LEGISLATORS, to whom the U.S. Constitution empowered to chose the electors to represent each state in the presidential contest.
So folks should be constantly reminded on election day that their vote is only required because their state has delegated that choice to them, but more importantly, and this is a critical cognitive difference that needs to be stressed and taught ...
THEIR VOTE IS AN EXERCISE OF STATE POWER, NOT FEDERAL POWER!
Good point. She did not win a majority of the popular vote.
In fact, with any number of candidates running (this time four) a majority is unlikely. This is one of the reasons for the electoral college system - it is more likely to result in a candidate winning a majority.
Another is that it keeps the urban areas from dominating the rural areas.
Many of the states would never have ratified the constutution without the electoral college system.
I think it should go further than it does. I think it should be the 438 electors allocated to the states based on population, plus 6 (instead of 2) for each state, for a total of 838, and 420 required to win.
This would mean (approximately) half of the electors would be based on population and half based on simply being a state. Maybe that isn’t even going far enough. It bothers me that bigger states can control the smaller states. The sovereignty of a state government should be above the federal government.
In which case, Trump's VP would be Herself, her crooked and skanky Self! At least until Trump's Justice Department got into gear. And God help us if the Donald should croak first!
But that got changed when the Twelfth Amendment was ratified in 1804. It required that each elector vote separately and specifically for President and Vice President, instead of simply casting two votes for President. That reform gave rise to the notion of a ticket, in which a presidential candidate teams up with a compatible vice presidential candidate.
It took a while for the process to be debugged. For instance, as late as 1864, the first Republican president chose a 'Rat as his running mate, in the interest of fostering national unity, in the wake of the Civil War. But, unfortunately, on 16 April 1865, the President got shot, and the Vice President became President. He was totally incompetent and escaped removal from office by one vote when he was impeached in 1868.
Thanks
“I’m not going to change my mind just because I won,” said Trump during the interview. “But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win.”
The dumbest tweet he’s ever tweeted.
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