The “Unfairness” of the Electoral College Didn’t Swing the 2016 Election

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The “Unfairness” of the Electoral College Didn’t Swing the 2016 Election

Member Mark Wilson November 14, 2016 20 COMMENTS

 

2016 election results via google’s election map.

In the wake of the election, there have been renewed complaints about the Electoral College, specifically, how it unfairly rewards small states with disproportionate voting power. The supposed implication is that Donald Trump won the election, despite losing the national popular vote, because small states vote Republican. Well, I did a little number crunching.

 

If the Electoral College’s 538 votes were redistributed proportionally to their populations (i.e., removing the “bonus” small states receive from their senators) but kept the winner-take-all format, Trump would have won about 56 percent of the electoral votes. In real life, he won about 57 percent of the electoral votes (assuming he wins Michigan, Clinton wins New Hampshire, and Maine goes 3-1 for Clinton). If anyone’s been worried about the Electoral College favoring small states, it didn’t affect this election. The determining feature of the Electoral College this time around was its winner-take-all format, at least, outside of Maine and Nebraska.

 

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November 14, 2016

The Electoral College Is Brilliant

By Robert Curry

The progressives are determined to get rid of the Electoral College. Of course they are. Abolishing the Electoral College would complete their project of overthrowing America's unique federal system, begun about one hundred years ago.

 

The direct election of senators was the first and greatest victory of the progressives over the Framers of the Constitution. Made possible by the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, it mortally wounded the Founders' system. Abolishing the Electoral College will finish the job. And the progressives mean to do just that.

 

If we want to understand the efforts of the Framers during that hot summer in 1787, we must see them as trying to design self-government with a sober assessment of human nature in mind. When in the next century Lord Acton wrote that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," he captured in a ringing aphorism the view of the Founders.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/11/the_electoral_college_is_brilliant.html#ixzz4Q2VJD2Yo

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Cherry Picking James Madison

By Dave Benner on Nov 15, 2016

Legal “scholar” Akil Reed Amar made waves recently by arguing that a single comment from James Madison proves that the Electoral College had an intrinsic pro-slavery bent and was designed to perpetuate the institution. According to Amar, Madison suggested that Virginia’s stature would be hindered by a national popular vote for president, an idea proposed in the Philadelphia Convention by nationalist delegate James Wilson of Pennsylvania. Madison’s position on this matter is not disputed by anyone; a national popular vote surely would have weakened Virginia’s influence in the federal system.

 

Amar’s argument, however, is a classic case of cherry picking. If Amar is correct, then he has to reconcile the fact that some of the most vocal opposition to a national popular vote came from delegates from states that had already abolished slavery. These men made it clear that Wilson’s proposal was unpopular not because of slavery but because it would have allowed small geographical regions and metropolitan areas to control presidential elections for a Union of states with differing regions, penchants, and dispositions. http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/cherry-picking-james-madison/

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Why the Electoral College?

By Ryan Walters on Nov 18, 2016

 

For the second time in the last 16 years it seems that we have a new President who did not win the national popular vote, although there are those who contend that once all the votes are counted, Trump could very well come out on top. But whether that’s the case or not the discussions have begun, especially by Democrats, for in both of these instances since 2000, the winner was the Republican Party.

 

The debate sprouting up since Election Day, aside from the chaos and near-anarchy in the streets of our major cities, is a renewed national conversation over the Electoral College and the usual litany of calls to abolish it.

 

The detractors say our President should be elected by the popular vote, and the archaic, indirect system should be scrapped. And they’ve used every excuse in the book, everything from the Electoral College is “outdated” and “undemocratic” to the leftist’s tried-and-true smear of “racism,” meaning the Founders crafted the system to protect slavery. http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/why-the-electoral-college/

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Ignore the Mob. Long Live the Electoral College

By David Harsanyi
November 18, 2016

 

This week, anti-Trump protesters hit the streets in big cities around the country, chanting "This is what democracy looks like!" Yes. That's the problem.

 

For many Democrats, the greatest political system is the one that instills their party with the most power. Now that it looks like Hillary Clinton will "win" the fictional popular vote over Donald Trump, people -- not just young people who've spent their entire lives being told America is a democracy, but people who know better -- are getting hysterical about the Electoral College. Not only is it "unfair" and "undemocratic" but like anything else progressives dislike these days it's also a tool of "white supremacy" and "sexism."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/11/18/ignore_the_mob_long_live_the_electoral_college_132378.html