Your analogy is exactly backwards. Clinton won the popular vote. Clinton had more voters that voted for her, than voted for trump. It is a technicality that Trump is the winner.
It would be like giving the trophy to the person with the most horsepower, even if they didn’t win the race by crossing the finish line first.
That said, I do not think it would be good for the EC to give the presidency to Clinton. I think that would be very divisive and not so good for the attitudes of our country.
However, like others have said, our founding fathers did put the EC in place to avoid exactly the problem of an unqualified demagogue being elected by the mob of democracy.
I think the EC’s should watch trump very closely the next few weeks, and see if their constitutional powers should be necessary. If he’s salivating over the nuclear codes and talking about bombing California because people there want to leave, then it may be a good idea for the EC to find someone more stable to be commander in chief.
I don’t know who would be best to pick, personally I think they should go with Stein or Johnson. Enough people voted for them to upset the election, so why the hell not.
They’d be terrible presidents, but they wouldn’t be able to do as much damage as Trump if he so chooses.
i only see very narrow paths for the ec to vote other than the election results. that trump is incompacitated or trump or his campaign is found in an illegality. then they could use the popular vote as a reason for going to clinton.
Last time I checked, America had 50 states, not 19 states separated by rural farms. Now are you saying that only those cities should have a say in politics? And I should mention that I never mentioned anything about race on my previous post, so I don’t know where minorities and whites came from on my post.
You can win the World Series by scoring fewer runs. Ditto in Tennis or volleyball.
Also, suck or not, both candidate campaigned with the EC in mind. If it had been popular vote only, then, say, California would’ve been hit with more GOP “get to vote”.
I should have said the effect of what you are advocating leads to such inequalities. I wasn’t accusing you of deliberate racism.
“Cities” don’t vote, people do. They live in the suburbs too. It’s irrelevant. The president is the leader of all the people. One man, one vote, not open discrimination based on geography. It’s nonsensical.
I’m surprised this thread has gone on so long with people repeating that a constitutional amendment would be necessary to get rid of the EC. In fact, there are already 10 states that represent 61% of the 270 electoral votes required already signed up for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Yeah, can’t help us right now, but in the future, it’s not nearly as improbable as a constitutional amendment.
Some people like people who would really know?
Some people like self-deluded Clinton-supporting Dems?
Some people like Bernie Boys still convinces he’s going to win?
Some people talking out their ass?
True but remember Congress still needs to approve the compact and that hasn’t happened yet.
And think about this. If a state were really serious about it, why not unilaterally declare that their electors go to the popular vote winner? Why need a compact?
It shouldn’t happen and it won’t happen, but it could. And that’s the problem. It would be a disaster.
But…suppose Trump went completely berserk between now and Dec. 19th? Let’s say he vowed to nuke Iran on January 21st, and that he would be declaring martial law until all Muslims were removed from the country. Would you want the electors to use their power in that scenario?
But you’re also wrong. There are supporters and detractors on both sides. Of course, if the EC consistently favored Democrats, I’m positive that Republicans would still be ardent in their support. Um, yeah.
I’m not aware that Congress has to approve anything and I don’t think they do. The states have all the power to decide how to allot their electors.
Individually awarding their electors to the winner of the popular vote in a piecemeal fashion wouldn’t have much of an effect. The whole point of the Compact and the way it’s set up is so that it will automatically kick in for any election that follows after states with 270 or more electoral votes join the Compact. Until that point, signatory states just carry on with their regular method.
The fact that two states have done this without any apparent upheaval supports the notion that some sort of nation-wide reform of the EC system might be possible.
This won’t come as news to anyone reading, but it’s perfectly possible for a candidate who got 77% of all the votes cast to be shown the door, while the candidate who got only 23% of all the votes is handed the keys to the White House:
The chart starts out like this:
You get the idea.
Of course it’s an extreme example–but it’s perfectly possible under our current system for someone getting 77% of the votes to lose. There’s something pretty radically undemocratic about that.
Congress is only required to approve interstate compacts where matters of federal supremacy are involved. Each state has the right to appoint their Electors in any manner they choose, and there is no federal impediment to a bunch of states deciding to do so in the same way.