Have you heard the news that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote?
Unless you live under a rock you likely have stumbled across a barista or aspiring novelist mumbling something about how the Electoral College is unfair and undemocratic and how electors should follow “the will of the people” and vote for Hillary on Dec. 19. Because “democracy!” or something.
If we lived in a democracy, they’d have a point. Thankfully, we do not.
What too many of these uneducated and unshowered drum circlers don’t know, or don’t care to know, is the popular vote is a meaningless unit of measure. The Electoral College exists, and it is how we determine who is president. We are a union of states, hence the name United States of America, not singular blob on a map. Candidates must appeal to a broad swath of the nation with differing and sometimes conflicting interests. It’s a brilliant system.
Donald Trump didn’t campaign in California because there was no point in campaigning in California. Unless Los Angeles and San Francisco fell into the ocean, the state wasn’t in play. This left a lot of potential Republican voters deciding to skip the lines on Election Day. Same goes for New York.
More nefariously, Democratic pundits and journalists have expanded the deception of the presidential popular vote to Congress as well. “Democrats got more votes for the Senate than Republicans, yet the GOP controls it. That’s not fair!” – or some such childish refrain has been making the rounds on social media and TV since people voted.
The Nation magazine put it this way, “The preliminary count had Democratic Senate candidates gathering 46.2 million votes to 39.3 million for Republican candidates.” That and $2.50 will get you a cup of coffee from the aforementioned unshowered, probably with earlobes stretched to the size of Frisbees and an impromptu lecture on the “justice” of fair trade coffee beans.
Read more:
The Unpopular Truth About The Popular Vote - Derek Hunter
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