2. But Some Votes Count More Than Others

In the 10 days since the Election, Hillary Clinton's popular vote margin has been steadily growing, and now stands at 1.4 million, or 1 percent of the total votes cast. Yet that is not enough. Since Kennedy in 1960, no Democrat has won a Presidential election without obtaining a plurality of at least 2 percent of the votes. (Source: David Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, data as of 11/18/16) In other words, the first 2 or 3 million Democratic votes essentially don’t count. In the current election, we could say that the system is discounting African-American votes (who voted 88% for Clinton), GLBT (78%), Latinos (65%), Asian (65%), non-Christians (Jews 71%, No Religion 68%, Other 58%), immigrants (64%), or even women (54%). (Source: Exit Polls) Basically, the only group that is counted fully is straight American-born white Christian men. This pretty much describes the America that our Founding Fathers had in mind – but it doesn’t describe the America of today.

Most of us would not intentionally adopt a system that discriminates against all these groups, yet our present system does so. Or at least seems to. The MetroWest Daily News notes in its Nov. 14 Editorial, Ditching the Electoral College, that the Electoral College could just as easily work the other way: “Had John Kerry convinced 59,301 George W. Bush voters in Ohio to support him instead, he would have taken the presidency in 2004 despite losing the popular vote by 3 million.”

So perhaps the Electoral College is not necessarily biased in favor of one group or the other, but rather simply introduces a bit of randomness into the process. A skilled poker player can get a bad deal, but that's the way the game is played. Maybe so, but is this a rational way to elect a President?

From everything I’ve read, the Founding Fathers created the Electoral College for two reasons: (1) to give the job of choosing the President to knowledgeable leaders, so the choice is not subject to the whim of the masses, and (2) to give extra representation to small states, so they are not dominated by large states. Add to that a third characteristic not anticipated by the Founding Fathers: to award all Electors in a state to the candidate with the most votes, regardless of the percentage of votes the candidate receives. I’ll look at each of these in turn.