Hillary Could Win Popular Vote, Reviving Dangerous Arguments About Abolishing Electoral College

Amid all the triumphalism about how the polls were wrong, it’s worth pointing out that Hillary Clinton looks to be headed towards winning the popular vote:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton finds herself on the wrong end of an electoral split, moving ahead in the popular vote but losing to President-elect Donald Trump in the Electoral College, according to the latest numbers emerging Wednesday.

As of 9:39 a.m. ET, Clinton had amassed 59,238,524 votes nationally, to Trump’s 59,088,024 — a margin of 150,500 that puts Clinton on track to become the fifth U.S. presidential candidate to win the popular vote but lose the election.

This will inevitably lead Big Media and lefties (but I repeat myself) to renew the calls they made in 2000 about abolishing the Electoral College. This is dangerous and must be resisted.

Explaining why requires us to revisit where the Electoral College came from. I know everybody reading this already knows this, but I’m writing it down anyway, so you can show it to the next millenial who starts yammering about doing away with the Electoral College.

The Electoral College is a reflection of the very compromise that formed the Constitution. The large-state delegates proposed the Virginia Plan, which would apportion Congressional representation by population. The small-state delegates proposed the New Jersey plan, which would give each state an equal vote. The ultimate compromise was, as we all know, to have one part of the legislature (the Senate) in which each state had an equal say, and another (the House) in which representation was apportioned by population.

The Electoral College reflects this compromise. The 100 votes of the Senate, the 435 of the House, and three extra votes for the District of Columbia make up the 538 electoral votes.

It’s a central part of the compromise that made this country possible.

This used to teach this stuff in the schools. In case they don’t, pass this along to anyone who complains about the Electoral College today.

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