Clinton wanted to “curl up” after election loss

Grassroots campaigns have sprung up around the country to try to persuade members of the Electoral College to do something that has never been done in American history – deny the presidency to the clear Election Day victor. Once all votes are counted, Secretary Clinton will have won the popular vote by possibly two million votes.

Calls for scrapping the Electoral College or making an end run around it via the Electoral College compact are ill advised (“One person, one vote”, November 14). Until that date, it’s constitutionally possible – although unlikely – that the electors could change their votes. “His scapegoating of so many Americans, and his impulsivity, bullying, lying, admitted history of sexual assault, and utter lack of experience make him a danger to the Republic”, part of the petition reads. However, each state is allocated a number of electors supposedly in proportion to the population of that state.

Finally Trump campaigned based on the Electoral College pure and simple. Under this system, candidates are awarded a certain number of votes for winning each state, with a total of 270 necessary to clinch victory.

Misgivings about the presidency of Donald Trump are understandable.

“It would be nearly beyond comprehension to think that a new president would be involved in the prosecution of his opponent who ended up getting some two million more votes than he did”, he said, as reported by The Washington Post.

The truth is that the Electoral College worked exactly as designed. Later, however, he took to Twitter to call the Electoral College “genius” for bringing “all states, including the smaller ones, into play”.

The argument against the Electoral College vote determining the president has gone on for almost two centuries and it has ramped up every time the victor popular vote did not get the presidency.

On Jan. 6, the U.S. Congress will officially count the electoral votes. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote, but his opponent became president.

I hesitate to type Trump’s name, and it angers me to put in so much emotion into an article when I’ve refrained from doing so the entire election.

We need to let our legislators know that we want them to support the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

So there is in a very real sense a harmony in the arrangement, save and except for the fact that, after over 200 years of nationhood, the question arises from time to time as to whether the Electoral College should be continued in a modern democracy. You can say what you will about the circus that was this year’s GOP primary (and I did many times), but at least the voters were given a good selection of candidates to choose from. Yet, Trump lost the popular vote by over a million votes so far, resulting in calls by Clinton supporters to abolish the Electoral College and an online petition encouraging members of the electoral college to be “faithless electors” and cast their votes for Clinton instead of Trump. The answer is: the Electoral College.

“But the Electoral College can actually give the White House to either candidate”.

Undemocratic. In reality, the system has many more quirks. There are 538 electors.

Each of the 50 USA states-plus the District of Columbia-determines by local law how the electors are to be chosen.