Washington – The fact that Hillary Clinton most likely won the U.S. popular vote but won’t be president has some people wondering, “Wait, why do we do it this way?”
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Thank — or blame — the Founding Fathers for creating the possibility of a so-called “divergent election” when they set up the Electoral College.
A look at how and why the U.S. selects its presidents this way:
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ORIGINS
The Electoral College was devised at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. It was a compromise meant to strike a balance between those who wanted popular elections for president and those who wanted no public input. Alexander Hamilton wrote, “If the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent.”
At the time, the country had just 13 states, and the founders were worried about one state exercising outsized influence, according to a white paper from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Small states were worried that states with large populations would have extra sway. Southern states with slaves who couldn’t vote worried that Northern states would have a louder voice. There were concerns that people in one state wouldn’t know much about candidates from other states. The logistics of a national election were daunting. The thinking was that if candidates had to win multiple states rather than just the popular vote, they would have to attract broader support.
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HOW IT WORKS
The electoral system has been tweaked over the years, but the gist endures. The president is selected by a “college” of 538 electors from the states. Each state gets as many electoral votes as it has members of Congress, and the District of Columbia gets three. To be elected president, the winner must get at least half the total plus one — or 270 electoral votes. Most states give all their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins the state’s popular vote. So while Clinton is leading Trump in votes nationwide 47.7 percent to 47.5 percent, Trump’s total in the Electoral College stands at 279, with races in Michigan, New Hampshire and Arizona yet to be called. In 2000, Democrat Al Gore narrowly won the popular vote but lost to Republican George W. Bush in the Electoral College 271-266. Overall, there have been four such cases of divergent elections.
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THE PROS
A lot has changed since the Electoral College system was established, making many of the original reasons for its existence outdated: The U.S. now manages to run national elections quite well. Voters nationwide have no shortage of information about candidates. Slavery no longer exists. But there are still concerns that small states and rural areas would be ignored in favor of those with bigger populations if the race hinged strictly on the popular vote.
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THE CONS
In 1967, a commission of the American Bar Association recommended that the Electoral College system be scrapped, finding it to be “archaic, undemocratic, complex, ambiguous and dangerous.” Fifty years later, critics are still complaining, arguing that the system results in huge swaths of the country being ignored while candidates focus on a dozen or so battleground states.
“It’s a terrible system,” says George C. Edwards III, a Texas A&M professor who’s written a book on the subject. Edwards tracks every campaign stop by the major candidates, and he says big states that are sure to vote for one candidate or another — say, California for the Democrats or Texas for the Republicans — now get completely ignored, and small states largely get overlooked, too.
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IS CHANGE AFOOT?
Don’t count on it. Republicans have benefited the most from the system in recent years, and they’re in control of Congress. However, there is an effort underway to get around the winner-take-all aspects of the system without abolishing the Electoral College.
A group called National Popular Vote is pushing an interstate compact under which states would pledge to deliver all their electoral votes to the nationwide winner of the popular vote. Over the past decade, 11 states have approved such a bill.
John Koza, chairman of the group, is quick to point out that both Trump and Clinton are on record in recent years saying the system is flawed. He’s hopeful Trump’s election won’t make Republicans less amenable to changing it.
“We’re talking about a policy change that’s largely dictated by the need to create a 50-state campaign for president instead of a 12-state campaign for president,” says Koza.
Liberals lost the race so we need to change the system.
I’m all for changing the electoral college but the idea that Clinton would have won if we would use the popular vote is baseless. People didn’t vote because the states they live in we’re already forgone conclusions to go democratic or republican. If we would have used the popular vote then more people would have voted and we just don’t know who would have won the popular vote. As a matter of fact if we went by the popular vote there’s no way to know if Obama would have won.
Let’s not forget that the European / Israeli style of voting for a prime minster does not work via popular votes either. Popular votes can be dangerous when the majority live in only a few cities and all small towns are lost. The idea of somehow ensuring that rural areas are fairly part of the process is why in Europe the parliament elects the prone minster. It’s concept is very similar
“there’s no way to know if Obama would have won”? With 58.2% of all voters voting in 2008, Obama beat McCain by 9.5 million votes. With almost 55% of all voters voting in 2012, Obama beat Romney by almost 5 million votes. Not bad margins at all. By comparison, with 56.7% of all voters voting in 2004, Bush beat Kerry by 3 million votes. In 2000, with 51.2% of all voters voting, Gore outpolled Bush by 500,000 votes.
But you’re right. If 80 of 90% of all voters had voted, who knows what the results would have been?
People vote and politicians campaign accordingly, if the popular vote would count Trump would campaign in California and NY and people who dot vote would go out and vote, there is no reason to believe Clinton would have won.
The founding fathers created the electoral college process because they saw from the French Revolution what can happen from mob rule. The protests now are a perfect example!
Highly inaccurate article. The Pros listed gave very short shrift to the problems of a strictly popular vote. The EC was not simply because of poor communication and slavery!
Balancing direct votes versus the needs of states, large states versus small states, and urban versus rural led to the compromises that created the Electoral College.
In the absence of the EC, the flyover states would be just that and candidates would simply focus on the five or ten big cities.
In fact, this election showed the need for the EC: the media and polling experts missed what was going on in most of the country. Both Parties, Democratic and Republican, were caught unawares and flat-footed. The fact that Trump was able to tap into a huge portion of the country and became their representative speaks to the blind-spot the experts had.
This happens every time a winning president loses the popular vote (see below). The electoral college is here to stay, folks.
1824: John Quincy Adams
1876: Rutherford B. Hayes
1888: Benjamin Harrison
2000: George W. Bush
2016: Donald J. Trump
If Clinton would have won the electoral vote & Trump the popular vote, would they still be “outraged” by the flawed system?
Why didn’t they protest before the election if that is their problem with it.
No, they are just a bunch of crybabies throwing a tantrum because they didn’t get what they wanted. If they want to change the system, become a politician like Trump did!
If Clinton had won the electoral vote and Trump the popular vote, the Republicans would be outraged by the system and protesting like hell! The fact remains that no prominent Democrat has criticized the election results;. And please remember that once the Florida mess was decided by the Supreme Court, the Democrats from Al Gore on down, accepted the results.
Remember how messy and drawn out the recount was in 2000? That recount was focused on one state (Florida) and in only 4 counties (Broward, Miami Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia). The recount took 5 weeks and required a Supreme Court verdict to come to an end. If presidential elections were decided by national popular vote, recounts would have to be nationwide. They would take forever. At least in the current system each side knows the rules and plays the game to best benefit from those rules. It also means that elections are not only decided by Californians, Texans, NYers and Floridians. Other states have a limited, but not immaterial, say, too.