For those people who fell asleep in civics class…
- There are 3,141 counties in the United States. Donald Trump won 2,626 of them. Hillary Clinton won 487.
- There are 62 counties in New York State. Donald Trump won 46 of them. Hillary Clinton won 16.
- Yet Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by approx. 1.5 million votes.
- In the 5 counties that encompass NYC, (the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Richmond & Queens) Clinton received well over 2 million more votes than Trump. (Clinton only won 4 of these counties; Trump won Richmond) Therefore these 5 counties alone, more than accounted for Clinton winning the popular vote of the entire country.
- These 5 counties comprise 319 square miles. The United States is comprised of 3,797,000 square miles.
- When you have a country that encompasses almost 4 million square miles of territory, it would be ludicrous to even suggest that the vote of those who inhabit a mere 319 square miles should dictate the outcome of a national election.
Large, densely populated Democrat cities (NYC, Chicago, LA, etc) don’t and shouldn’t speak for the rest of the country.
And this is WHY we have an Electoral College. It’s a safety net so that EVERYBODY’s vote counts.
Additionally: The safety net prevents either high or low population areas from having too much power over the others. There are two alternative options to the Electoral College based on the structures of Congress and the Constitution:
- Population-based with either a pure popular vote or electors apportioned by population (as is argued by some Democrats). This results in highly populated areas having disproportionate control and likely fail to meet the needs of low population areas.
- State equality-based where each state gets an equal number of votes. This leads to disproportionate control by low populated states and likely fails to meet the needs of high population areas.
The Electoral College is the balance between the two. A “both/and” option. Each state has votes according to its members in Congress. Power is divided between the chambers of Congress with equal state representation in the Senate and population representation in the House.
Executive power is divided the same through the Electoral College.