Clinton trump popular vote totals1/5/2024 So, you can win the most populated states and still not be a winner? Really? Thus, by taking more states, he captured the election. Clinton’s victory in large states was overwhelmed by the electoral votes from many smaller states that swung for Trump. If you look at the map of the 2016 presidential election, you will see the map is almost all red because Donald Trump won with a disproportionately larger geographical spread. Electoral votes are awarded not on a national level but state by state. But that is how the system is set up, and it all comes down to local balloting. To resolve this crisis and to make sure nothing like it ever happened again, Congress passed the 12th Amendment in 1804 that required separate votes for President and Vice President.Įnough of that. The tie was eventually broken by the House of Representatives on the thirty-sixth ballot. Things came to a head in the presidential elections of 1800 when the two candidates, Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson, tied in electoral votes. Party bosses became powerful enough to handpick electors who (surprise, surprise) voted for candidates the party bosses (not the people) wanted. As the parties grew, their influence started to expand beyond state lines. It seems that the founders of the Republic in setting up the process had not counted on one thing: the emergence of political parties. It should be noted that this was not an original idea in itself and it can be traced back to the Roman Senate of which many of the men present at the convention had a deep admiration for. The biggest drawback to this idea was the fear that a president would be so indebted to state legislatures at the expense of the federal authority, it would undermine the whole system.įinally, they settled on indirect election of the president. The second idea, which was also rejected, was to have state legislatures select the president. In other words, what would pass as normal stuff these days. Some of the conventioneers felt this method was too divisive and would leave the system open to corruption, interference from foreign governments and other bad behavior. The first proposal was to have the Congress choose the president but this suggestion was quickly thrown out. Because the United States is a republic, they had to come up with a way to elect a president, and they considered three alternatives on how to accomplish that. Well, back in 1787, a bunch of men met in Philadelphia for a constitutional convention to try and fix the weak central government that was in place at that time. Nebraska and Maine have this other way of apportioning votes that’s too complicated to go into here. All states, except Nebraska and Maine, have a winner-take-all system, which means whoever wins the popular vote gets to keep all the electoral votes. When you cast your vote, it doesn’t go directly to the candidate of your choice but rather to a group of electors in your state who are then required to cast that vote in the Electoral College. California has two senators and 53 Representatives for a total of 55 electoral votes, the most in the nation. Illinois has 18 Representatives, and like all states has two senators. But in terms of the popular vote, she won 60 million votes compared to Trump’s 59.8 million. This year Clinton won 228 electoral votes while Donald Trump won 290, according to the most recent figures. There is a total of 538 votes, and at least 270 are needed to win the presidency. Each of the 50 states (and the District of Colombia), has as many electors as it has Representatives and Senators in the Congress. Constitution through which the President and Vice President are elected. The Electoral College is a uniquely American process enshrined in Art. Is that where electrical engineers get their degrees? She won the popular vote but still lost the election. In almost any other democracy, Hillary Clinton would be president today.
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