The genius of the electoral college is that it doesn’t allow the East and West coasts, which house the majority of America’s population, to be the deciding factor in our Presidential elections. As one writer explains, while more populous states argue that this is unfair, that states with low populations like Wyoming, Alaska, North Dakota etc. receive disproportionate voting power in the presidential election. This is a fallacy to assume that people are the only factor that should decide an election.
What states produce our food, deliver us our oil, provide us our coal and let us extract their numerous other natural resources? Hint: it sure as hell isn’t Massachusetts. The less populous states have always been areas that provided important resources to our population centers, and the founders identified that, which is why they are given an elector count that is not proportional to their populations.
California is one State whose government has done a great job in bankrupting themselves, and it’s the voters who elected those geniuses who would’ve decided our Presidential election had we not had the electoral college.
While Clinton’s overall margin looks large and impressive, it is due to Clinton’s huge margin of victory in one state — California — where she got a whopping 4.3 million more votes than Trump.
California is the only state, in fact, where Clinton’s margin of victory was bigger than President Obama’s in 2012 — 61.5% vs. Obama’s 60%.
But California is the exception that proves the true genius of the Electoral College — which was designed to prevent regional candidates from dominating national elections.
In recent years, California has been turning into what amounts to a one-party state. Between 2008 and 2016, the number of Californian’s who registered as Democrats climbed by 1.1 million, while the number of registered Republicans dropped by almost 400,000.
You read that right, the state in which many residents are now pushing for it to leave the U.S. would’ve decided the election. The popular vote total outside California was Trump: 58,474,401, Clinton: 57,064,530, meaning Trump is ahead by 1.4 million votes outside of California.
There are 3,141 counties in the United States. Trump won 3,084 of them… and Clinton won 57. Thank GOD for the electoral college!
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