by Robert Slater
Blog post represents opinions of the author.
Predictions for the 2016 election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump forcasted a close race but polls had Clinton winning. When the votes started coming in, all the news reports showed that Clinton with more votes than Trump. But that isn’t the way we chose a new president. That fateful night on Nov. 8, 2016, was one of the very few times that something happened in an election that shocked the world. Despite Clinton’s popular vote win, Trump became president through winning the Electoral College.
The Electoral College created in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention requires 270 votes. The founders worried smaller states would not get their voices heard with just a popular vote, according to the Wall Street Journal. The southern states thought the northern states would have an advantage if it was on popular votes alone.
Elections won without winning the popular vote don’t happen often—only in 2016, 2000, 1888, 1876 and 1824, according to the Wall Street Journal,
The possibility that a presidential candidate could win the election without the popular vote confuse voters like Ryan Menetrey, a former contractor at Creech Air Force Base in Las Vegas.
“It definitely made me do more research and become more informed this year than any other year previously,” Menetrey said.
Some voters believe it’s time for a change away from the Electoral College.
“I see both sides of the argument and I think that a popular vote is more important when determining a president, but I don’t see a way out of the electoral vote,” Menetrey said. “Until there is a better system that is proven and can work to make sure that each state has a say, no matter how many people are in it, I think it’s just something we will have to deal with.”
Not every state has the conventional electoral college voting systems either and this could be a possible solution to a situation that has happened twice in the past 16 years.
Maine and Nebraska don’t conform to the winner-take-all formula, according to the Wall Street Journal. Their systems allow for the state to be split up into sections to more accurately reflect the local results. They give two electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in the state and then one goes to the winner of the popular vote in each congressional district.
Maybe this could be the solution that would allow all states to report more accurate results. Only time can tell, but no matter how the election goes, it will be interesting to see how the Electoral College votes play their part this election.
