Sick and Tired of Popular Vote Argument
As anyone who has followed the complete melt down of the American Left following the election of Donald Trump has heard, “But Hillary won the popular vote”. I am truly tired of the so called intellectuals, students and MSM types beating this poor dead horse. The popular vote in America isn’t how a President is chosen, never has been. The Electoral College has been in place since the founding of our Nation and has gone through several changes over the years to keep up with a changing Country.
A quick history lesson, the Electoral College was created to try and insure that smaller States had a voice in our election of a President, each State didn’t just vote for the “Favorite Son” and to try to eliminate cronyism. Many ideas were debated; from having Congress chose a President, having State Legislatures choose, a straight popular vote count of the people and others. Each one of these failed do the different reasons and so the Electoral College was created. Over time and due to issues that arose in different elections, the process of choosing Electoral College delegates has changed. Several papers and articles have been written on the subject and are there for anyone to read who wishes to enlighten themselves. So it has evolved to the Electoral College we have today which has 538 electors. The numbers of electors for each State is derived from the number of Senators each State has, 2 per State, so 100 electors, then there is 1 for each member of the House of Representatives 435, finally 3 from the District of Columbia. 100+435+3=538. This allows for the number of electors from each State to represent it population and allows it change as population shifts to different areas of the Country over time. OK, brief history lesson now over.
So why is the argument of “Hillary won the popular vote” easily dismissed? First, since we don’t elect a President on popular vote, the argument at its core is a useless talking point. Since we are bombarded with argument over and over again, let’s discuss why it is a failed argument. Since each State’s electors are given as a whole group to one candidate, except Maine and Nebraska, many people who feel disenfranchised politically in a State simply do not vote. Did anyone notice that with less 1% of the votes counted in California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii the networks were able to call those States for Hillary Clinton? It is such an ingrained fact that these States would vote for the Democrat on the ballot, they really didn’t need to count the vote. So people in these non-battleground States that are not backing the candidate of choice for that State, unless they have other ballot initiatives they wish to vote for, see no reason to vote. This skews the popular vote numbers, who is to say if we did elect our President via popular vote, how many of these citizens would make the effort to vote.
Another issue is Absentee Ballots. It is estimated almost 7 million absentee ballots will not be counted this election. The reasons vary, but with the rise of absentee ballots being the main thrust of voter fraud, election commissions are quick to disqualify an absentee ballot. Many are just because people forget to sign the outside of the envelope, non-expert hand writing analysts look at the signature on file versus the one of the envelope and can say they don’t match, plus a myriad of other reasons. These ballots denials are not scrutinized unless they could actually impact a States election. To break it down; let’s say a State disqualified 100,000 absentee ballots, but the winning candidate won by 300,000 votes, there is no reason for the time and money to be spent to see if any of those ballots that were liberally disqualified should be reconsidered to be counted. This is why I never vote absentee; I want my vote counted every time.
I am in favor of the Electoral College system. I can hardly imagine the absolute chaos a popular vote system would cause. Remember the lawsuits, recounts, hanging-chads, rhetoric and charges of cheating from the Florida recount in the 2000 election. Imagine that in every State for every Presidential election. Our Country is divided pretty close to 50/50, so a Presidential election would probably come down to a few 100,000 votes. Candidates would be crazy not contest every State they lost and even the ones they won looking for a few more votes. This would go on for months after the election, in every election except for landslide victory and when was the last time we saw one of those? Think of damage this would cause to our transfer of power, both candidates would have to start filling over 4000 appointed positions, even though they wouldn’t know if they were the winner or not. What happens if the challenges and recount carry on until Inauguration time? We could actually have a case were a candidate is inaugurated as President and then removed because the final court battle didn’t come down in their favor.
I live in a battleground State that went to Trump, but the county I live in voted heavily in favor of Clinton. So I have been constantly bombarded with this popular vote argument over the past week. Most of the people I know who voted for Clinton are rational people, so it is possible to have a debate. Even with that being the case and after I have laid the facts out in front of them, they still can’t let go of the popular vote meme. Sometime even coming back to it days later maybe expecting me to have changed my thoughts on the matter or that the facts had changed. I’m tired of this argument, it has no merit and relies on emotions not facts, unfortunatley you have little chance explaining this to distraught Hillary voter. So now when I hear “But she won the popular vote” and I lay out the case for why their argument is meaninless and they still persist, I just say; if you don’t like our system you have 3 choices 1) move to country that has a system you like, 2) work with Congress to enact a Constitutional Amendment to change it or 3) Just realize your candidate lost an get over it.
“So why is the argument of “Hillary won the popular vote” easily dismissed? First, since we don’t elect a President on popular vote, the argument at its core is a useless talking point”
Nice, see Amerikommunistica (this doesn’t just concern the USA)? This is why you don’t really live in a democracy, unfortunately, even if popular vote mattered, a tiny fraction of a polarizing advantage somehow is representative of your country. See where teh fails lie, yet?
The huge failure, the american at large public has to be able to embrace is that they are polarized sellouts. Red vs Blue, like a sport or something. Consider that a large portion of America actually voted for either Trump or Clinton.
How, as a reasonable person, do you explain that?
It is a republic, not a democracy. Considering the rampant vote fraud (some 3 million illegals or so voting), it is likely Trump actually won the popular vote as well.