The Electoral College

There are 3,141 counties in America. Trump won 3,084 of them. Clinton won 57.

Large, densely populated cities should not speak for the rest of the country. That is the genius of the Electoral College. It gives every county and every state in the country a say in how they are governed.

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The electoral-vote system in 2016 (as in 2000, when George W. Bush became president despite losing the national popular vote) functioned as its defenders have long claimed. It prevented a single region (in this instance, a single state) from overruling the verdict of the more populous and diverse nation.

Donald Trump’s election is difficult for many Americans to accept, but there is no good reason to question its democratic legitimacy. For better or worse, Trump won the presidency by constitutional and sensible democratic rules that guided both campaigns and were known to any politically conscious citizen. He also won the national popular vote cast outside of the single state of California. Moreover, Clinton won all of California’s 55 electoral votes despite the fact that 4.3 million of the state’s voters voted for Trump. That big winner-take-all advantage for California’s Democrats and Clinton was certainly felt, but it wasn’t enough to override her losses in many other states.

Under our electoral-vote system, American voters elected a national president, not California’s choice. It is in the nation’s interest for Democratic Party’s leaders and for Clinton voters to fully recognize the legitimacy of the election as they had urged Trump to do after the third presidential debate.

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