Steve Bantly: Trump right, Electoral College is a disaster for democracy
A candidate has again won the presidency while losing the popular vote. This happened in 2000 George W. Bush got Florida’s electoral votes only after the Supreme Court arbitrarily stopped the Florida recount. Eventually, Al Gore won the popular vote by 500,000 votes.
This year, Trump will win the Electoral College vote but lose the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. Why, in a democracy, doesn’t the will of the majority prevail? Because voters don’t directly elect presidents. There are 538 appointed “electors” in the Electoral College, apportioned to each state based on the number of senators and representatives each has in Congress, plus three from Washington, D.C. All but two states give all of their electoral votes to the winning candidate, no matter how close the race. A candidate receiving electoral votes from lots of less-populated states can achieve the necessary 270 electoral votes while simultaneously losing the countrywide popular vote. Under this system, small states – who wouldn’t merit three electoral votes if based solely on population – can have an unfair advantage over states where the number of electors more accurately reflects the number of voters.
In 2012 Trump called the electoral college a “disaster” for Democracy. It still is.
Steve Bantly, Merced
This story was originally published November 29, 2016 at 4:34 PM with the headline "Steve Bantly: Trump right, Electoral College is a disaster for democracy."