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One man one vote has been a long standing principle of elected government and the Supreme Court has weighed in on the matter, declaring States must district themselves so that the populations of each district is nearly equal. The political parties have for decades tried to draw these districts to their own advantage, a concept called Gerrymandering. The courts have declared this unlawful and when challenged the states have had to come up a resolution that satisfies the court.
On the national level this is not the case. When concocting the means to elect the President and Vice President the framers devised the Electoral College system where each State gets votes equal to the number of Senators and Representatives. This system favors states with larger populations that tend to be in favor of a government regulated economy as opposed to a free market. It worked well for two elections, 1790 and 1794 but all of a sudden Thomas Jefferson, a state’s righter and Arron Burr, a Federalist tied. A compromise was reached where Jefferson would ascend to the Presidency and Burr to the Vice Presidency but the Constitution would be amended to tie the two posts together in terms of party instead of the one with the most votes getting the Presidency and the second place finisher the Vice Presidency.
The damage to free markets had already been accomplished with the tariff acts passed by the Congress in 1790 and 1791 but the President still held the veto over the acts of Congress he deemed unconstitutional. The backers of a government regulated economy still held sway in the House of Representatives and would increase their power in every Congress since. The Power of the President, already limited by the power of the Congress to override a veto was further emasculated when John Marshall declared it was the Supreme Court who decided constitutionality. The free market supporters who dominated the Senate for decades were finally stripped of their power by the 17th Amendment that called for election of Senators by popular vote.
The idiosyncrasies of the Electoral College have evidenced themselves in five Presidential elections, the last of which was the latest. It turned out as it has in the past, the loser got more popular votes than the winner, which was the intent of the system in the first place and that was to insure the popular vote was meaningless, because some constituencies, such as the big city regulated economy supporter votes count for more than those of the free marketers. They have done the same thing with the tax code, which favors those in the regulated market.
The actual popular vote in the last election was Clinton 65,853,516 to Trump’s 62,984,825. The Electoral College vote was 302 for Trump and 207 for Clinton. It takes a majority of 256 to win. If you tally up the top eleven states with enough to win they add up to 267. Clinton garnered 117 and Trump 150.
A most interesting facet of how the two parties have determined the distribution of these votes within the state. With the exception of Maine, all of the electoral votes go to the candidate with a majority of the popular vote. It means that the winner need get only one more vote than his opponent to take the whole shebang. That again favors the city vote that leans toward a regulated economy. As it is now impossible to go back to a free market economy and the Republicans are now doomed if they threaten the welfare state supported by a regulated economy, it really makes no difference who is elected, the result is only the speed at which we will reach economic disaster. That is before the turn of the century when the population exceeds the country’s food production. (kcals to Bruce and Mel)
An interest exercise reveals that if the winner of the state’s electoral votes won by merely 1 popular vote, Trump would have won 62,773,000 to 62,657,000. This doesn’t tally to the totals because I have ignored the votes for other candidates as well as take away excess votes from the winner in each state.
Prior to the current era there were three elections in which the popular vote getter did not win. They were J.Q. Adams versus A. Jackson, S. Tilden versus R. Hayes and B. Harrison versus G. Cleveland. I can state categorically that the Russians had nothing to with either of these as the Soviet Union did not exist at the time.
Hillary’s biggest mistake was adding an avowed Socialist and not even a member of the party to share the primary ticket. I believe it was to make appear Hillary wasn’t being anointed by the party. Sanders turned out in many instances to be more popular to the Democrat base than Hillary and it showed in quite a few primaries until Hillary began her behind the scenes campaign against him. That Hillary was still popular, despite the release of damaging charges of corruption against her, not by the Russians but by WikiLeaks, shows in the popular vote that, in my opinion, would have been considerably higher and probably enough to defeat Trump had she not lost the support of those who preferred Bernie Sanders.
Looking for significant dirt on the Russians as responsible for the Democrat debacle can be quickly set aside by asking yourself what did they do and how did they do it to achieve a result where under any normal democratic one man one vote system Hillary won, but didn’t. If you think the American government doesn’t interfere in a more active way in other country’s elections I give you Mohammed Karzai.