Media bias lost election for Clinton

On Monday, December 19, seven prominent citizens – three from Vermont, four in New Hampshire – will assemble in their respective state capitols to participate in a curious, historic ceremony – casting votes for the next president and vice-president of the United States. If he takes office, it is because 538 Americans put him there, not because the majority of Americans who voted put him there. Clinton got 47.8 percent of popular votes as of November 15; Trump got 47.2 percent. As of Friday, her popular vote total has edged over 63 million, to Trump’s 61.6 million, giving Clinton more votes than any white male presidential candidate in history, second only to Barack Obama. JFK’s election in 1960 was “disputed”. To refine his metaphor: Most people don’t really care how many points they get in Super Mario, they just want to defeat Bowser. Electors are being individually lobbied and sometimes harassed. That’s less than one-half of 1 percent of the total votes cast. That means a person’s vote in Wyoming counts significantly more than a person’s vote in California. Instances of faithless electors are rare – it’s happened 157 times in American history – and only once, in 1836, did it truly effect the outcome. Unpledged electors have no pledge to break.

Lichtman added, “It’s desirable to abolish the Electoral College, but I don’t see it as a practical reality right now”. Thus, democracy in America would be enhanced and the Electoral College itself would be preserved. “That would require a lot of electors to change their mind”.

There are usually a handful of states that screw something up.

What if we threw a presidential election without any electors? And then we have a president.

Green party candidate Jill Stein and Constitution Party candidate Darrell Castle earned.8 percent and.4 percent of Pennsylvania’s votes, respectively. Black people couldn’t vote. “Because this is how it’s been since 1789”. The Electoral College is merely an extension of our republic form of government, no different than the very reason why each state is represented by two (2) Senators, regardless of population. As Jason Linkins noted in the Huffington Post, the kinds of states “ignored” most under the current system are also the ones that would get the shaft if we shifted to a pure popular vote system.

The problem is not the Electoral College itself, but the winner-take-all system.

We can’t protest the election of candidates when some of us are not even registered to vote. “It is in truth the most hard of all on which we have had to decide”, one wrote.

The Electoral College is especially problematic for people of color.

A system that allows candidates to ignore the nation’s most heavily populated states, year after year, is no way to run an election.

Despite being on opposite ends of the political spectrum in many ways, some of those populist ideas from Trump were similar to the ones Sanders made the cornerstone of his insurgent primary campaign, particularly an outspoken opposition to trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The Civil War ended slavery and the three-fifths of a man compromise, but the Electoral College is still in place. It was originally formed by our country’s founders to bolster the political clout of slave states.

Each state has a certain amount of electors, and the number in each state is equal to how many representatives the state has in the House of Representatives plus two senators in the Senate. All in all, as contentious as our elections can be, America can be proud of its traditions and commitment to the rule of law.