Popular vote totals 20161/27/2024 ![]() ![]() Those wanting a stronger national government tended to favor Congress, while states’ rights adherents preferred state legislatures. In addition, there was considerable discussion regarding whether Congress or state legislatures should choose the chief executive. The former advantaged small states since each state had two senators regardless of its size, while the latter aided large states because the number of House members was based on the state’s population. Many of the latter worried that states such as Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia would dominate the presidency so they devised an institution where each state had Electoral College votes in proportion to the number of its senators and House members. According to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper Number 68, the body was a compromise at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia between large and small states. The framers of the Constitution set up the Electoral College for a number of different reasons. ![]() The original rationale for the Electoral College The remainder of this essay outlines why it is crucial to abolish the Electoral College. Several developments have led me to alter my opinion on this institution: income inequality, geographic disparities, and how discrepancies between the popular vote and Electoral College are likely to become more commonplace given economic and geographic inequities. In this paper, I explain the history of the Electoral College, why it no longer is a constructive force in American politics, and why it is time to move to the direct popular election of presidents. In recent years, though, I have changed my view and concluded it is time to get rid of the Electoral College. I said the founders created the institution to make sure that large states did not dominate small ones in presidential elections, that power between Congress and state legislatures was balanced, and that there would be checks and balances in the constitutional system. Bush, the AP reported.For years when I taught campaigns and elections at Brown University, I defended the Electoral College as an important part of American democracy. The only other time this has happened this century was in 2000, when Democrat Al Gore came up short in the Electoral College but won the popular vote by 540,000 more votes than George W. Clinton won 227 electoral votes.Ĭlinton is the fifth presidential candidate in history to win the popular vote and lose the Electoral College. Trump won the presidency by clinching 304 electoral votes, well over the minimum 270 needed. The Associated Press announced today that all votes had officially been certified.Ĭlinton had 2,864,974 votes more than Trump, the largest popular vote margin of any losing presidential candidate in U.S. Trump received 62,979,636 votes, 46.1 percent of all votes cast. — - The now officially-certified votes from the 2016 presidential race show that Hillary Clinton surpassed Donald Trump in the national popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes.Īccording to vote tallies from The Associated Press, Clinton amassed 65,844,610 votes across all 50 states and Washington D.C., 48.2 percent of all votes cast.
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