Editorial: Another view: Clinton's popular vote win irrelevant
58 min ago (…) dailyprogress.com
OK, class, today’s lesson is “Why It’s Irrelevant that Hillary Clinton Won More Votes Than Donald Trump.”
Oh, we already see some Republican eyes sparkling.
Yes, over on the left? No, Democrats, can’t have a safe space. You need to learn this lesson more than anyone else in the room.
Yes, Clinton won more votes than Trump—more than 2.6 million at last count. But here’s why that doesn’t give Democrats a moral claim that she really should have won. If the presidential election had been decided by the popular vote, both candidates would have run completely different campaigns—so different that we really can’t speculate what would have happened.
Here’s how the system works: Neither candidate is trying to get the most votes. They’re trying to get 270 electoral votes. Every decision is made with that 270 figure in mind.
Let’s look at that in practice: New Hampshire is one of the smallest states in the country. Yet Trump made about a dozen visits to Granite State. Why? Because the race there was close and he hoped to win the state’s four electoral votes.
Likewise, Trump made five trips to Maine, trying to win just a single electoral vote there—Maine being just one of two states in the country that awards its electoral votes based on congressional districts. Trump’s trips to Maine paid off— he won that one electoral vote, which wound up not mattering that much since he won so many other places. His trips to New Hampshire didn’t pan out, but he came close.
Meanwhile, neither candidate had any reason to campaign in some of the biggest states—California, New York and Illinois, for instance, were locks for Clinton, while Texas was a sure thing for Trump.
Now, let’s try to imagine how the campaign would have looked if there were no Electoral College, only the popular vote. Should be pretty clear, right?
Trump wouldn’t have gone to Bangor, Maine—he’d have gone to Bakersfield, Calif. He wouldn’t have gone to New Hampshire—he’d have gone to upstate New York. For her part, Clinton wouldn’t have spent so much time in Nevada trying to win six electoral votes—instead, she’d have been in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Instead of Las Vegas, she’d have been trying to pump up her turnout in Los Angeles.
So many things would have been different that we really can’t say who would have won.
If the election were decided by the popular vote, you can bet that Trump would have invested in California. How many Trump supporters there simply didn’t vote because they knew their vote wouldn’t count? You can ask the same question about Clinton supporters in Texas, or states in the Deep South.
Clinton’s lead in the popular vote is both awkward—and accidental. The question is: Should we change how we elect presidents?
This is one of those “be careful what you wish for” moments. You think campaigns are polarized now? They’d be even more polarized in a popular vote election. Right now, candidates do feel some mild tug toward the center to be able to win some of these contested states. In a popular vote election, they’d feel none and focus even more on simply energizing their base.
Also, voting irregularities now are confined to a single state. In a popular vote election, they’d contaminate the entire pool. In a close race, we might have a national recount. Fun!
Question over on the right? You ask about Trump’s claim that there was “serious voter fraud” in Virginia? You mean other than the fact there’s no evidence? If “millions voted illegally” as Trump claims (presumably for Clinton), why didn’t they vote for Democratic candidates for Congress, too?
Even in Northern Virginia, which went heavily for Clinton, voters in the hotly contested 10th District re-elected Republican Barbara Comstock. Did these phantom illegal voters split their tickets?
Anyway, back to the lesson: There are now lots of proposals to do away with the Electoral College. These will go nowhere for one simple reason: The current set-up benefits Republicans. Since the Electoral College is based on states, it has a slight skew toward less populated, more rural states, which presently vote Republican.
There are other proposals to modify right here in Virginia. Del. Mark Cole, R–Spotsylvania County, has proposed the commonwealth junk its winner-take-all system for awarding electoral votes and instead award them by congressional district, the way Maine and Nebraska do.
This is simply an attempt to game the system and secure some Republican electoral votes from a state that has now voted Democratic three times in a row. Congressional districts are routinely gerrymandered (that’s one reason why Virginia presently has eight Republicans and three Democrats in its congressional delegation). Cole simply proposes to gerrymander the presidency, too. Nice try, but no. At least state lines are not subject to being redrawn by partisan mapmakers. We’d call this a bald-faced power grab except Cole has a beard.
Class dismissed.
Adapted from The Roanoke Times |
