Tag Archives: popular vote

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Don’t ditch Electoral College

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Call me a fuddy-duddy if you wish, or old-fashioned, or even a “strict constitutional constructionist.”

I am not going to climb aboard the  vessel that seeks to throw out the Electoral College.

You see, I happen to like the way we elect presidents. It’s the method concocted by the nation’s founders. Their intent was to create a more equitable distribution among the states. They intended to give more sparsely populated states a greater voice in selecting the president.

Has it worked perfectly? Well, no. It hasn’t. However, name any government policy that works perfectly and I’ll be willing to consider buying that bridge you’re offering to sell me.

I traveled to Greece in November 2000. You’ll recall how that election was hung up in the courts for weeks after Election Day. The Supreme Court ended up settling it with a 5-4 vote. Al Gore had more actual votes than George W. Bush, but Bush became president.

I had the challenge in 2000 of trying to explain to my Greek friends — most of whom are highly sophisticated government-watchers — how someone can collect more votes than the other guy but lose the election. I sought to explain as best I could the founders’ vision of what the Electoral College was intended to do. I think I made my point then.

Still, the debate rages on, even after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in both the actual vote and the Electoral College.

OK, the system ain’t perfect. In 2016, Hillary Clinton collected nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, but she lost. We have the Bush-Gore election of 2000. Grover Cleveland outpolled Benjamin Harrison, but lost the 1888 election. Samuel Tilden lost the presidency in 1876 to Rutherford B. Hayes in the same fashion.

By and large, though, the system works as the founders intended.

Consider that Nevada became a battleground this time around; it was just as critical to Biden winning as, say, Pennsylvania.

I am just not ready to toss the Electoral College system on its ear because of an occasional hiccup.

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Are we heading for a repeat of the great electoral fluke of 2016?

It pains me to the depths of my gut to acknowledge this, but my fear is growing that Americans are going to get Donald John Trump for another four years as president of the United States.

Yes, it looks to me at this moment that the Democratic Party is quite capable of squandering a golden opportunity to restore the presidency, to return it to a level of respectability and reverence that has been dismantled during the Trump Era.

That once-monstrous field of contenders has been culled to a more reasonable size. Who, though, is left standing? Who are the top contenders?

A zillionaire. A couple of “progressives,” including a “democratic socialist.” A former vice president who cannot stop tripping over his own tongue. A one-time mayor of a smallish Midwest city. A sitting U.S. senator who is trying to appeal to the center-left of her party. Another zillionaire who rose to prominence by funding an effort to impeach Donald Trump.

Joe Biden once was thought to be the unstoppable Democrat. At this moment his campaign is imploding. His so-called “firewall” in South Carolina is showing severe fracturing as African-American voters are now looking for an alternative to Barack Obama’s wing man.

Nominating a far-left socialist is the death knell for sure, in my view.

What is most maddening is that Donald Trump has spoon-fed the opposition all kinds of electoral grist to use against him. The House of Representatives impeached him; the Senate acquitted him, but the impeachment still stands.

Trump has angered millions of Americans with his hideous pronouncements, his foul mouth, his trashing of allies, his incoherent campaign-rally riffs, his pandering to religious groups with whom he has no actual alliance, his disparaging of the nation’s top military minds, his standing with hostile strongmen, his denigration of our intelligence analysts.

Oh, and then there’s the lying. It’s incessant. He cannot tell the truth about anything at any level. He gets caught lying and his political base blows it off.

On and on it goes.

Still, this most astonishing politician — the president — very well might win re-election because he is somehow, amazingly able to claim credit for an economic recovery that he inherited from his immediate predecessor.

This clown never should have gotten elected in the first place. He squeaked in by the narrowest of margins, losing the actual vote by nearly 3 million ballots but winning just enough Electoral College votes to win the election. I do not dismiss that he won according to the rules spelled out by the U.S. Constitution, a document of which he has zero understanding.

The 2016 election stands in my mind as the greatest political fluke in U.S. history. If he wins again in November, then we will have committed the next greatest fluke in history.

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Could we have a 2016 election result repeat itself in 2020?

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I was chatting with a friend this afternoon about the 2020 presidential election when a horrifying thought occurred to me.

It is that we well might see a repeat of the 2016 election in which the winner of the contest receives fewer votes than his foe but manages to win just enough Electoral College votes to be declared the winner.

Yep, I refer to Donald John Trump possibly being re-elected in that manner. Here’s what my friend and I didn’t discuss today: Trump and whoever he faces might have an even larger ballot differential than Trump had against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Clinton garnered nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, but lost the election when the carnival barker corralled 304 electoral votes; he needed 270 to win.

Suppose for a minute that Trump is able to squeak out another Electoral College win in 2020. He could lose, say, Pennsylvania or Michigan or Wisconsin — maybe all three — and still eke out just enough electoral votes to win another four years in the White House. Trump won those Rust Belt states against Clinton, which was critical to his winning the presidency.

Such a result — the second consecutive such result and the third outcome in the past six presidential elections — could doom the Electoral College. That would produce the other poor consequence of an election result that might occur in November 2020.

However, a rising tide against the Electoral College would be a distant second to the notion of Donald Trump being re-elected.

I shudder at the thought.

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Don’t mess with Electoral College

I am a blue voter who lives in a red state. I tilt toward Democratic candidates for president while residing in heavily Republican Texas.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I want to redeclare my view that efforts to circumvent the Electoral College are counterproductive. They shouldn’t go forward.

However, it appears that Democrats in states that lean blue are intent on monkeying around with the Electoral College with legislation that bypasses the system codified in the U.S. Constitution by the nation’s founders.

They want their states to cast their electoral votes for whichever candidate wins the popular vote. It’s part of what is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

Is the nation’s electoral system in peril of breaking down? I don’t believe that is the case.

We have had 59 presidenti

al elections in this country since its founding. Only five times has the candidate with fewer votes been elected president.

However, what has alarmed those who want to overhaul the electoral system insist that such a trend is in danger of escalating. They point out that it’s happened twice just since 2000! George W. Bush was elected that year despite getting about a half-million fewer votes than Al Gore. Then in 2016 Donald Trump was elected with nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It fascinates me to know that the move to tinker with the Electoral College is coming from aggrieved Democrats, given that the 2000 and 2016 elections went to the Republican nominee for president.

We are witnessing what I believe is a knee-jerk reaction to an overblown issue. It kind of reminds of me how Republicans in Congress pushed for enactment of the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to two elected terms; they did so after Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt won election to four consecutive terms as president.

Let me reiterate an essential point. If we’re going to change the electoral system, then eliminate the Electoral College. It is an absurd notion to tweak and tug at the edges of the system.

I happen to still believe in the Electoral College system of choosing our president. I endorse the idea that it helps spread the power among more states, giving less-populated states a stronger voice in choosing our head of state.

If we’re going to mess with the Electoral College, then go all the way.

Or else leave it the hell alone!

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‘Overwhelming victory’? Actually, no … not even close

I have given Sarah Huckabee Sanders the benefit of the doubt during her time as White House press secretary.

She’s got a tough job, speaking for a president who lies out of both sides of his mouth. I didn’t actually believe Sanders was a fellow liar, incapable of telling the truth. Until just recently.

She declared at a press briefing that Donald Trump won an “overwhelming victory” in the 2016 presidential election.

Oh, my. Sigh. I want to revisit a matter that I’ve looked at already. It just needs a revisiting.

Donald Trump collected nearly 3 million fewer popular votes than Hillary Rodham Clinton. The totals are: Trump, 62,985,134, or 45.93 percent; Clinton, 65,853,652, or 48.02 percent. Clinton won the popular vote by a significant margin, although she didn’t win an outright majority of popular ballots.

Trump won the Electoral College vote — which is where it matters — by a 304-227 margin. He needed 270 electoral votes to be elected.

Overwhelming margin? Let’s see. If three swing states that Trump won — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — had flipped fewer than 80,000 votes, Clinton would have won the Electoral College by three votes and, thus, would have been elected president.

OK, please let me stipulate — once again — that Trump was elected legitimately. I believe in the Electoral College and I don’t want it repealed. Trump managed to pull off one of the nation’s most historic upsets by campaigning in precisely the right states at precisely the right time in a hard-fought, bitter and nasty campaign.

The president keeps casting his victory in historic terms. He keeps saying he won handily. He didn’t. Sarah Sanders knows he didn’t. I know he didn’t and if he’s honest with himself — even if he cannot be honest with the rest of us — Donald Trump knows it, too.

In a way, Trump’s victory was historic in at least one sense. Damn few so-called “experts” thought he’d win. He did. Despite having no public service experience, let alone any interest in it prior to running for president, Trump was elected to the only public office he’s ever sought.

Overwhelming victory? Not even close. So, Mme. Press Secretary, stop repeating that lie.

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POTUS wasn’t elected ‘easily’ … honest!

As long as Donald John Trump continues to re-litigate the 2016 presidential election, allow me a brief moment to set the record straight.

The president said in that frightening, mind-blowing press conference this week with Vladimir Putin that he was elected “easily” over Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Let’s see. How easy was it?.

Trump finished with 304 electoral votes; Clinton ended up with 227. To be elected, a candidate needs 270 electoral votes.

Trump went over the top on the strength of about 80,000 votes in three critical states: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. A 40,000-vote switch in those states and Clinton wins the election.

Clinton finished with nearly 3 million more popular votes than Trump.

Let me state once again for the record: Donald John Trump was elected fairly and squarely, but not “easily.”

Stop telling that ridiculous lie, Mr. President.

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Why get rid of Electoral College?

The 2016 presidential election produced a doozy of an outcome.

The candidate who won the Electoral College finished nearly 3 million votes short of the candidate who lost the election.

Thus, the result has produced an ongoing debate over whether we should eliminate the Electoral College and elect presidents based solely on the popular vote.

Here’s what I wrote just a few days after the 2016 surprise:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/11/now-about-the-electoral-college/

I have wrestled with this notion for some time. I have decided that I am unwilling to get rid of the Electoral College.

It’s a difficult system to explain to those abroad who don’t understand how someone who gets fewer votes than the other candidate can “win” a national election. I had the pleasure of trying to explain the 2000 presidential election outcome in Greece while the courts were trying to determine whether George W. Bush or Al Gore would become the next president.

I guess I come down finally on the notion that the Electoral College was created to give rural states with smaller populations a greater voice in determining the election outcome.

As the system is currently constructed, presidential elections usually are fought in those “battleground states” that could tip either way. That has been the case over the past several presidential election cycles. As it has turned out, states such as Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and occasionally Montana have gotten a greater amount of attention than other larger states.

Absent an Electoral College, my hunch is that candidates wouldn’t venture past the huge population centers: New York, Los Angeles and the Bay Area of California, Chicago, the Metroplex.

Indeed, I’ve seen the county-by-county breakdown of several recent elections and I’ve noticed how, for instance, Barack Obama won despite losing the vast bulk of U.S. real estate to John McCain (2008) and Mitt Romney (2012). How did he win? By targeting those “battleground states” and campaigning effectively for those voters’ support. He ended up winning decisive Electoral College and popular vote victories.

I get that progressives are chapped at losing the 2016 election. They want to change the system that generally has worked well.

Is it time to scrap the Electoral College? Sure, but only if smaller states want to surrender their time in the national political spotlight. As that logic applies as well to Texas, which isn’t a battleground now, but it could once again become the political prize that lured presidential candidates from both major parties in search of votes.

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How about all those ‘illegal voters’?

While the world is fluttering over a British royal engagement, sexual misconduct among members of Congress, the media and entertainment moguls and that “Russia thing,” let’s turn briefly to one of Donald Trump’s many lies.

It involves his declaration shortly after becoming president of the  United States that but for the “millions of illegal immigrants” who voted for Hillary Clinton he would have won the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election. Hillary collected nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, but the president won where it counted: in the Electoral College.

He defamed local election officials without offering a shred of proof. He just said it. Then he formed a commission to examine voting practices. He sought to obtain previously confidential information about voters to confirm their U.S. citizenship.

What in the world has happened to this made-up “crisis” in our electoral system? Has the president given up the effort to prove something he knew all along didn’t exist?

We’ve already passed the first year of Trump’s election. Coming up is the first year since his inauguration as president, which is really when much of the fun started. He’s been using his high office as a pulpit to spew out lie after lie.

The phony illegal immigrant voting lie ranks up there with the best — or the worst — of them.

Some of us — perhaps many of us — are interested to know how this lie has been resolved.

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Still no sign of national unity under Trump

It has been a year since the nation was stunned by the results of its most recent presidential election.

The candidate who won that bitter contest, Donald J. Trump, made a solemn vow to unify the nation, to bring us all together, to bind the wounds that tore us apart … blah, blah, blah.

That’s what is has been: so much blather.

One year after that historic election, we are as divided as ever. Maybe more so.

Has the president delivered on his pledge? Obviously not. What’s worse is to ask: Has the president really tried to deliver? The answer to that is just as obvious. No!

Trump continues to play strictly and exclusively to his base, the shrinking core of voters who stand with him no matter what. You see it in his immigration stance, his views on environmental protection, his hideous tolerance of bigotry (see his response to the Charlottesville riot), his “America first” rhetoric.

A president who took office with zero political capital to spend has acted as if he had it in spades. Trump continues to ignore the numbers, which tell us that he got nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. Yes, he won the Electoral College — and was duly elected president.

However, the man who pledged to be the president for all Americans has gone out of his way since his election to be anything but what he promised to be.

This division didn’t start with Trump. Barack Obama also presided over a divided nation, as did George W. Bush before him, and Bill Clinton before that.

Still, when a president takes office promising explicitly to do something, one should expect him to follow suit.

Donald Trump has failed.

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Robby Mook: campaign loser lands on his feet

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I occasionally become amazed at how failed political operatives have this way of continuing to land on their feet.

They lose national elections and yet the TV news networks — cable and broadcast — seek them out for their “expert analysis” on all things political.

Robby Mook is the latest such example of that.

It puzzles me a bit.

Mook managed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Clinton was the prohibitive favorite to win that election. Every pundit from coast to coast to coast said she’d clobber Donald J. Trump. Some of them predicted a landslide … for Hillary!

Well, it didn’t happen. She lost, albeit narrowly. Sure, she won the popular vote and finished ahead of Trump by about 2 percentage points, which is about where the polls had pegged it.

However, the campaign missed a number of key strategic opportunities in critical Rust Belt states. Trump captured those traditional Democratic strongholds.

Who’s to blame for all of that? You’ve got to lay it squarely in the lap of the campaign manager. Mook called the shots. He ran the show. He was supposed to ensure his candidate won. It was his job to make sure Hillary spent her time where it counted the most.

He blew it, bigly.

How does this guy hold up as an expert?

Oh, wait! He’s “telegenic.” That’s got to be it.