Hilary Clinton won the so-called \u201cpopular vote\u201d for the U.S. presidency this week, but Donald Trump became president. How so? Our arcane, outdated, Electoral College. The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0informs today in the first three paragraphs of an article:<\/p>\n \u201cIn November 2000, as the Florida recount gripped the nation, a newly elected Democratic senator from New York took a break from an upstate victory tour to address the possibility that Al Gore could wind up winning the popular vote but losing the presidential election.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was unequivocal. \u2018I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people,\u2019 Hilary Clinton said, \u2018and to me that means it\u2019s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cSixteen years later, the Electoral College is still standing, and Mrs. Clinton has followed Mr. Gore as the second Democratic presidential candidate in modern history to be defeated by a Republican who earned fewer votes, in his case George W. Bush.\u201d<\/p>\n Donald Trump had been alleging constantly during the closing months of his campaign that \u201cthe system is rigged.\u201d As it turns out, he was right. On Election Day of 2012, in a Twitter post he called our Electoral College \u201ca disaster for democracy.\u201d Since Clinton won the most votes this time, yet Trump won the most electoral votes, does this scenario make him \u201ca disaster\u201d? He\u2019s president now, so we\u2019ll show him some respect even though he highly disrespected his opponent Hilary Clinton by constantly getting his crowds to chant, \u201cLock her up.\u201d<\/p>\n How did we get our Electoral College? Our founding fathers didn\u2019t think ordinary people should decide who is president. Why? They believed ordinary people were too dumb to decide such an important thing. So, Alexander Hamilton, with the influence of John Adams and James Madison, crafted the Electoral College. Only certain free, American men could vote, and in some counties or states they had to own land. Then \u201celectors\u201d had been preselected in the states. These electors were the \u201cintelligent,\u201d more informed men. \u201cOn the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December,\u201d\u00a0the electors in each state would meet to consider the popular vote and then cast their votes, the only ones that counted. And they did not have to vote the same as the popular vote, as is customarily done in more modern times.<\/p>\n Then too, small states are allotted more electoral votes per capita of population than large states. Thus, less populated states such as North Dakota and South Dakota have three electoral votes whereas the highly populated California has only 55 electoral votes. If the same ratio for the Dakotas was granted to California, it would have over 190 electoral votes. Here is one thing Mr. President-elect Donald Trump is right about\u2013it\u2019s a rigged system!<\/p>\n How can you call that democracy? It\u2019s a farce, an outdated, archaic system when women couldn\u2019t vote, many men couldn\u2019t vote, and of course slaves couldn\u2019t vote. The world is totally different now. We\u2019ve had such an information technology revolution for so many decades that the U.S. Electoral College needed to be abandoned a long time ago. Today, all Americans know enough about the candidates to make a calculated decision. What should take the place of the Electoral College? Very simple\u2013majority rules. That\u2019s real democracy.<\/p>\n Thus, forget individual states with their electoral votes. To me, that\u2019s not the United States of America (USA); it\u2019s the Individual States of America (ISA).<\/p>\n I\u2019ll give George C. Edwards III the last word. He is a political science professor at Texas A&M University. He has authored a book on the Electoral College. He says, \u201cI think it is intolerable for democracy. I can\u2019t think of any justification for it, and any justification that is offered doesn\u2019t bear scrutiny.\u201d<\/p>\n \n<\/p><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hilary Clinton won the so-called \u201cpopular vote\u201d for the U.S. presidency this week, but Donald Trump became president. How so? Our arcane, outdated, Electoral College. The New York Times\u00a0informs today in the first three paragraphs of an article: \u201cIn November 2000, as the Florida recount gripped the nation, a newly elected Democratic senator from New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1477,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2660],"tags":[2797,734,2796,2589,2798],"class_list":["post-2856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-alexander-hamilton","tag-donald-trump","tag-electoral-college","tag-hilary-clinton","tag-popular-vote"],"yoast_head":"\n