Donald Trump lauds Electoral College as Clinton wins popular vote
Despite losing election, Clinton will win the popular vote by more than 1 min votes as she runs up big leads in the biggest, bluest states. Published Nov 17, 2016, in Deccan Chronicle
Trump has 290 Electoral College votes and Clinton has 232, with Michigan still undecided
(Note: We already noted in our first article “Trump Triumps in US”,(See article in CCV, Nov.10/16) called also the oldest democray, that the fly in the ointment or the villain, in the Oldest Democracy, is the electoral college votes which is slanted in favour of money power and pressure groups; that the true basis of any democratic election ought to be “one man/woman one vote” and one who gets the majority in this “popular vote” count should be declared the winner.
It means that Majority in the electoral college system is a flawed practice and so should be scrapped. This happens to be the view of CCV, which we don’t intent to force on any one. Even Trump was of this view before elections. But now he has changed to say “the Electoral College is a pretty smart way to elect a president after all”. Otherwise he would have lost out to Clinton, who has already won more than one million popular votes than Trump (hands up in praise to Clinton for taking it with a smiling face, and not with wild protests, had this happened in India) and there are more than 4 million votes to be counted still. As a result now there is a hue and cry even in US, as there are protest demonstrations against the president elect all over US, for scrapping electoral college system as the article below points out.
The number of electoral college votes can be decided fast and easily, as soon as the elections are over. This number is based simply on how many house of representatives each state has. If a state has only 3 to represent it in the people’s house, it has only 3 votes, that is, one vote for each representative. Thus California the biggest state in US has 55 electoral college votes because it has 55 representatives in the US people’s house. Seven other smaller states have only 3 representatives and so only 3 college votes each. Here again there is an exception. Washington the capital of US is in the district of Colombia which has 3 representatives in the people’s house but it has no electoral votes at all.
Counting the popular votes (one man one vote) is a time consuming process even in US which has only a fraction of voters compared to India. We are a nation of 2.2 billion while US has only a total just over 312 million. The total popular vote count in US in this election is expected to be completed only by the end of November. So we all can wait and watch with baited breath to see who actually wins a true democratic election in US: Trump or Clinton or both! james kottoor, editor)
Washington: After losing the popular vote, President-elect Donald Trump has decided that the Electoral College is a pretty smart way to elect a president after all. Despite losing the election, Democrat Hillary Clinton will win the popular vote by more than 1 million votes as she runs up big leads in the biggest, bluest states.
Democrats have used Clinton’s lead in the popular vote to downplay any mandate Trump might claim.With more than 130 million votes counted, Clinton leads Trump by more than 1 million votes. The Associated Press estimates there are more than 4 million votes left to be counted. The bulk of those votes are in California, so Clinton’s lead is likely to grow substantially.
If Clinton continues to receive more than 60 percent of the vote in California, her lead could grow to more than 2 million votes. Most states count votes after Election Day. Often they are absentee ballots that arrive in the final days before Election Day. Some states, like California, count absentee votes that arrive after the election, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day.
Trump won the vote that counts, in the Electoral College. Trump has 290 Electoral College votes and Clinton has 232, with Michigan still undecided. It takes 270 votes in the Electoral College to win the presidency.
Trump leads Clinton in Michigan by about 13,000 votes, according to the Michigan Department of State. That’s less than one-half of 1 percent of the total votes cast. The state has until Nov. 28 to make the results official.Trump would be the first Republican to win Michigan in a presidential election since George H.W. Bush won the state in 1988.
Under the Electoral College system, each state gets one vote for each member of Congress representing the state. California has the most, with 55. Seven states have only three. The District of Columbia has three, even though the nation’s capital has no vote in Congress.
There have been occasional calls to scrap the Electoral College, with no success. The latest push came after the 2000 presidential election, in which Democrat Al Gore lost to Republican George W. Bush, despite winning the popular vote.
Any calls to scrap the Electoral College aren’t likely to go anywhere this time, either, with Republicans controlling both the House and Senate. In the past, Trump has been critical of the Electoral College.
