Your Mail 11-13: Popular vote vs. Electoral College

“This is the only office in the land where you can get more votes and still lose the presidency”, Boxer said in a news release.

Little did she know that 16 years later, the same constitutional anachronism would cost her a presidential election. A petition on change.org calling for members of the Electoral College to vote for Clinton rather than Trump got more than 2 million signatures in under 36 hours, but if people really want change, they should lobby their state legislators to support the Electoral College compact.

Trump’s victory appeared unlikely, up until the evening of November 8, The New York Times gave Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton an 85 percent chance of winning.

According to the Constitution, electors will meet in their respective state capitals on December 19. MI and its 16 electoral college votes at this point are reportedly leaning to Donald Trump.

“In reality, you’re not casting a vote for Donald Trump, you’re casting your vote for five or six, or in Arizona, 11 electors, or Hillary’s 11 electors”, McWhirter said. Virtually all of southwestern Wisconsin, an area that voted for Obama in 2012, went solidly for Trump.

Democrats have used Clinton’s lead in the popular vote to downplay any mandate Trump might claim.

Even before any election happens, it’s pretty easy to predict where the demographic fault lines will be: whites tend to vote more Republican than non-whites. Parker said. “I am afraid for my own life right now”.

Trump went on to praise the Electoral College as “genius”. As I write this – with millions of votes still to count around the nation – the tally stands at 60,910,473 votes for Donald Trump and 61,867,572 for Hillary Clinton. Each state has an established number of electoral votes – currently, there are a total of 538 electors.

Senator Boxer’s legislation would amend the Constitution of the United States and abolish the Electoral College.

Brad Johnson, president of the UC College Republicans, believes that the Electoral College is one of the best institutions established in American politics. (Photo by Natalie Tarangioli/Cronkite News). The idea is that once enough states buy in, the electoral votes that are actually coming from the popular vote would exceed 270 and circumvent the electoral college without ever changing the Constitution. As a result, it was felt that they could be easily influenced by a charismatic but unqualified leader who could persuade them to vote for him.

This is the second time in five presidential elections that the victor was projected to lose the popular vote. The other three times all happened in the 1800s. Instead, the election fell to the House of Representatives, as dictated by the 12th amendment, and they appointed Adams. Trump has 290 Electoral College votes and Clinton has 232, with MI still undecided.

Unfair? Not in the least: Power in the House is determined in 435 separate district-level elections, not one mass nationwide vote.

More than likely, Boxer is proposing this legislation to raise awareness. In accordance with Alexander Hamilton’s vision for the Electoral College, Hamilton Electors will deliberate in the days to come in order to provide an alternative to the unqualified and unvirtuous person our country is faced with.