Search This Blog

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

2016 Presidential Electoral College result if awarded proportionally

    With yesterday's elector votes in each state we are once again impacted by a compromise in the Constitutional Convention that gave us our antiquated system for electing a president.  While we changed the election of United States senators to a popular vote in 1913 we still have not been able to reform the way we select our president.  It seems to be the only election held in the US that isn't by popular vote.  
     As Democrats we realize that the system will not change as a constitutional amendment would never get the necessary votes in Congress or the required states.  The present system gives small states a disproportionate power in selecting the president and they aren't about to change that.  Additionally, as many of the small population states are Republican they will never favor a change from the electoral college.
    The problem of the electoral college system is that it awards all of a state's electors in a winner take all basis except in two states.  With Democrats congregating in fewer states we may be in for more elections like 2016 with large majorities in states like California and New York being meaningless in the electoral college. Guess what the result would have been is the electors would have been selected proportionally with just the two major candidates awarded electors?
  
  Clinton 271
  Trump  267

   Of course in a proportional system with minor candidates getting electors in some states more elections might get thrown into the House of Representatives which is probably worse than our present system.  We will all live with the compromise of the 1787 for many more years.

No comments: