5. Winner Takes All

Clinton headquarters in Manchester NH

So if Trump didn’t win because of either of the two reasons that the Electoral College was created, then what happened? It turned out that he won because of a third factor, which the Founding Fathers did not even consider: the winner-take-all approach that is followed by all states except two (one being the strange Electoral Vote split in Maine).

The obvious result of such a system is to give more power to voters in close states. They are called "swing states," “key states,” or “battleground states.” In recent years, as campaigns have gotten more sophisticated, these states have become increasingly important, until these days these are the only states that the media or the candidates seem to care about. An obvious example is here in Massachusetts, which was ignored by the media and ignored by the candidates. Everyone from Massachusetts, myself included, flocked to New Hampshire, which has one-fifth of our population. Rather than talk to our family or neighbors, we made the one-hour drive across the border to canvass voters we didn't know. While we were there, we got to see Secretary Clinton, who, as far as I know, never set foot in our own state. We have a system where the candidates ignore the voters, and perhaps the concerns, of the people in the majority of the states.

But the unfairness could go even beyond that. According to the MetroWest Daily News editorial, “Leaders of the National Popular Vote movement point to the disproportionate attention presidential candidates pay to a handful of states during the election - and after. According to NPV's research, battleground states get more federal grants, more federal disaster declarations and more waivers from certain federal regulations.”

So why should this hurt Democrats more than Republicans?  For some reason, Democrats tend to win states by wider margins than Republicans. Look at the four states with the largest plurality in 2016 (i.e. the largest difference between one party and the other). (Source: David Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, data as of 11/18/16) All were won by Clinton:

	California	3,218,676
	New York	1,509,506
	Illinois	915,338
	Massachusetts	881,699

All of these votes can be considered “wasted votes,” since these people could have stayed home without changing the outcome. No wonder we kept hearing people in Massachusetts saying that they would not vote -- or they would vote for a third party -- because their vote didn’t count anyway. On the other hand, when we went to New Hampshire, everyone knew that one vote was critically important.

Some have suggested that small margins in a lot of states are better than large margins in a few states – that this somehow represents a “diversity” of supporters. Jeff Jacoby stated in his Boston Globe column (Nov. 16), “No one becomes president without commanding the support of many states.” Sounds good – but one could also argue the opposite point: that several passionate states give a more definitive statement than a bunch of indecisive states. But both of these viewpoints miss the central question: Does the President represent states or does he represent people?

Donald Trump has rightly stated that if the rules were different and the popular vote mattered, he would have campaigned differently. George Bush made the same point after the 2000 election. Yes, if we got rid of the Electoral College, candidates would campaign differently. They would visit all 50 states and the District of Columbia. They would address the issues and concerns of all of us – because every vote would count. We would see the candidates in Massachusetts as well as New Hampshire. Someone will have to explain to me why that’s such a bad idea.