If 100% of all voters had voted for Hillary, would Trump have won anyway due to the Electoral College?
Obviously a hypothetical question but just go with it. I still don’t quite understand how the EC works. Maybe taking it to extremes will help.
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No, not unless they all were mind controlled by Trump.
The main thing to understand is that each state has a process to determine which candidate gets ALL of its points. Trump won on that basis.
The points per state is not directly proportional to population of the state, either. So there’s a bit more weight added to the less populous states than their population would suggest.
The more confusing part: But points are actually people (electors) who could in theory go against the vote and vote for someone else. So some people are actually suggesting some of them do that to keep Trump out of office.
For some reason, I can’t link the article here. Look up “Electoral College (United States)” on Wikipedia. It will explain it.
I’ve looked on Wikipedia, @Hawaii_Jake. I’ve looked here and there and everywhere! I’ve read comments and opinions, and I just don’t really know what to think. Do other countries use a similar system? Didn’t the idea originate around the fact that in pre-industrial days the rural people were hard pressed to travel anywhere to vote? Didn’t it originate as a way to represent them as equally as possible?
This article was interesting to me. I guess it’s more of a comment about those who chose to vote 3rd party. Where they manipulated? (Bold emphasis mine.)
”Many of the elections with the most-inflated electoral votes featured prominent third-party candidates, who served to hold down the winners’ popular vote share without being significant Electoral College players themselves.”
Your figures might not be much better, but it helped clarify things @Call_Me_Jay. That’s what I’m really looking for…a full understanding of that process.
Didn’t the idea originate around the fact that in pre-industrial days the rural people were hard pressed to travel anywhere to vote?
It originated because it was thought the masses were not qualified to choose the President, their betters had to do it for them. The first plan was to have Congress choose the President.
James Madison led the effort to use the popular vote, but the best we could get was the electoral college as a buffer between the dirty groundlings and the President election.
The undemocratic idea was pretty strong. Americans did not get to vote for Senators until 1914, the state legislatures appointed them before that.
No! The citizens like you and me who vote, basically cast their vote to tell the electors in each state who to vote for. The electors aren’t going to go against 100% of the voters.
No. Basically, Trump won by a small margin in many small states, while Clinton won by a large margin in populous states like MA, CA, NY. The electoral college makes this margin not matter as much (or at all).
The electors aren’t going to go against 100% of the voters.
If they follow directions, they are going against more voters than not. Clinton won the popular vote.
And they can legally elect Clinton now. It is very unlikely, but they could do it. Only Michigan and Minnesota will void an electoral college vote that does not follow the popular vote.
The electoral college isn’t defensible, but it won’t go away because Republicans need it. They have won the popular vote once in the past seven elections.
@Call_Me_Jay “And they can legally elect Clinton now. It is very unlikely, but they could do it. Only Michigan and Minnesota will void an electoral college vote that does not follow the popular vote.”
Yes, as I keep saying, isn’t this the exact purpose of the electoral college? If they were supposed to perfectly reflect the vote count, there would be no reason to have electors with minds and wills of their own. All you’d need is a calculator, not actual people casting the votes.
Yes, the purpose is to reserve power for the “right kind of people”.
In case it’s unclear, I’m not advocating that it be kept, I’m saying that now is the time for it to either fulfill its purpose or admit it never will or can. This is clearly a “shit or get off the pot” moment.
@JLeslie How is there a difference between going against what 100% of the people want, and going against 60% of what the people want?
They can get away with going against 60%.
That would be impossible. If 100% of voters voted for one candidate I think we can assume that candidate would also wing the EC.
But apparently the popular vote doesn’t really matter. SOME state EC had to have voted against the popular vote.
No they did not have to vote against the popular vote.Small-state voters are over-represented.
Just comparing two small states, a Wyoming voter gets twice as much say as a Montana voter.
Wyoming 3 electoral votes 259,000 people voted
(86,000 voters per electoral vote)
Montana 3 electoral votes 510,000 people voted
(170,000 voters per electoral vote)
And on the extremes, a Wyoming voter has almost 4 times the influence in the Presidential election as a Florida voter.
Wyoming 3 electoral votes 259,000 people voted
(86,000 voters per electoral vote)
Florida 29 electoral votes 9,580,000 people voted
(330,000 voters per electoral vote)
Dutchess, if the entire states of MA, CA, and NY vote for Hillary, that counts equally as much in her favor because of the the EC as if only 51% of the state voted for her. So imagine that a whole bunch of small midwestern and southern states voted 51% for Trump while a handful of large coastal states voted in much larger numbers (I don’t know the real numbers, so let’s say like 80% for illustration). Now can you see how the EC allows somebody to be elected with only about 40% of the vote? But it couldn’t work if 100% of the country voted one way, because then the other person wouldn’t get any states at all. The only way that could happen is if a majority of the electors were unfaithful, which is nigh impossible.
@Dutchess_III It’s done by state. If a state with only 3 electors was 60% for Trump, and 100% (3 in this case) of the electors vote for Trump. Because of this it creates part of the problem with feeling it doesn’t accurately represent the vote of the people. Some states allow a split electors vote, but even in those states they rarely exercise the ability.
Well, do you guys think they should do away with the Electoral College?
There’s 1. I say “Yes,” too, so there is 2. And one Fluther vote=100,000 votes in the rest of the country. So that’s 200,000 yeses. Wow. That’s a word, according to spell check….
Even Trump said he thinks we should use the popular vote to elect our president. He said it in the past, and said it again a week ago in a 60 Minutes interview.
Republicans lost 6 of the past 7 presidential popular votes.
The only way Republicans will agree to discard the electoral college is if the electoral college chooses Hillary Clinton for president right now.
And they should do it.
A double win – the actual vote winner becomes President and the electoral college will soon be eliminated.
I’ve discussed the electoral college in facebook recently, and of course republicans are against it. They have all the talking points and links to why we should keep it. I have wanted the popular vote since before the Gore fiasco, it’s an old topic for me not having to do with political party.
Republicans are referencing the constitution, the brilliance of the founders, and their typical schtick, and so on. I started thinking just a couple of days ago, didn’t we refuse the vote to women and black people in our beginnings? Why should the supposed tradition, wisdom, or constitution necessarily be held up as an example of our brilliance regarding the vote? It’s obviously needed to be tweaked before.
…didn’t we refuse the vote to women and black people in our beginnings…
You see that as a bad thing. Conservatives don’t.
When they say “I want my country back”, that’s the country they want.
^^That’s not what most conservatives mean by getting the country back. Geez.
Are there some white guys out there who want the vote only for them? Probably so. I don’t doubt it, I can name examples of it. But, women and black conservatives don’t, and not all white conservatives either. Your overgeneralization and negativity regarding conservatives is not helping the cause. People like you will never reach the minds of people you want to sway and change. What is your goal? Maybe you just talk like that here where we are mostly like minded liberals?
^^That’s not what most conservatives mean by getting the country back.
That’s what elected officials, people with real power mean.
And you’re accommodating them for fear of hurting the feelings of their supporters.
^^I’m just talking about the people, but I’m glad you clarified you mean elected officials. The people do elect the officials though, so it’s good not to offend the people too much. People ignore what they don’t like about a candidate if they like the candidate enough.
If you say that isn’t what they mean when they say they want their country back, then I have to assume you know what they DO mean @JLeslie. Please explain it to me because, for the life of me, I can’t figure out what they mean.
^^I think it means different things to different people. It’s completely vague so you can fill in your own blanks. I think for some people it means making a better wage. For others it means being able to afford a house and college easier. Maybe some people want the days when schools had Christmas break and a prayer before a football game wasn’t under scrutiny. For others it probably does mean fewer minorities in their neighborhoods. Maybe some horrible people take it further and want separate but equal to be law.
We can’t throw everyone in one pot.
I don’t think it was difficult to persuade blue collar workers, who in the Midwest often are Catholic, to give a Republican a try if he is promising their job situation will get better with him as president. Maybe a lot of them have gone through layoffs, are underemployed, lost their homes, and they want to rewind to days when they felt more control over their life.
So when @Call_Me_Jay said, ”…didn’t we refuse the vote to women and black people in our beginnings…You see that as a bad thing. Conservatives don’t. When they say “I want my country back”, that’s the country they want.” might be what some actually want, right?
Along with a lot of horrible other things. Back when rape couldn’t really be prosecuted because “She was asking for it,” because of what she wore, or because she was drunk or whatever. When sexual harassment was a male privilege. When beating your wife and children was a male prerogative because “A mans home is his castle.”
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