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Senator Boxer Introduces Bill to Eliminate Electoral College
"This is the only office in the land where you can get more votes and still lose the presidency," Boxer said in a statement. "The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately. Every American should be guaranteed that their vote counts."
[...] "When all the ballots are counted, Hillary Clinton will have won the popular vote by a margin that could exceed two million votes, and she is on track to have received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history except Barack Obama," Boxer said.
Trump will be the fifth president in U.S. history to win the election despite losing the popular vote. George W. Bush won the most recent such election, in 2000.
Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3wLQz-LgrM
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Thursday November 17 2016, @08:21PM
No look, here's an article from 2012 saying the same thing [usatoday.com] and 2008 [google.com] and 2000 [cbsnews.com] and pretty consistently the reasons have been the same.
The fact that you don't want to admit that it fucked the country over this time is more central to the debate.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by art guerrilla on Thursday November 17 2016, @09:05PM
no, IF you believe in the popular vote being the operative measurement of winning an election AND the electoral college is a vestigial remnant when white, landowning elites were trying to ensure we did not get *too* democratic, then, yes, the electoral college SHOULD HAVE BEEN already eliminated AS A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE and equity...
it SHOULD NOT have taken the 'disaster' of one or the other party's candidate 'lost' because of it, THAT is rank partisanship...
as i said to someone else, i would not vote for t-rump in a thousand years, but i would not vote for killary in a million years... my point is NEITHER hydra-head of the One, True Korporate Money Party has bothered to address this inequity for hundreds of years, FULLY REALIZING the potential issues at stake, NOW it is so damned important ?
funny, the ONLY mention of our broken system during the campaign was t-rumps toss-away line he was unfairly excoriated for (especially given it is the people who had mock outrage about it who ARE ACTUALLY BEHAVING as they accused him of going to do) about the process being rigged (which he is absolutely correct about, just not for the reasons he thinks)...
no, there is plenty of hypocrisy and blame to spread between both sides who have avoided fixing an election system they want to stay a mess so they can control it more easily...
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday November 17 2016, @09:56PM
I neither believe that both parties are anywhere near free from massive corrupting influences, nor that removing the electoral college will even begin to address that.
And hoenstly, any sort of electoral reform has long been a standing point for me such that I'd vote waaaay across my normal beliefs for a candidate who endorses it. It's an issue now because, well, everyone's attention is drawn to how much it can suck. Guess what: even in a slightly to very, depending on your cynicism, broken democracy like the US, national attention is how things get changed.