Dear Abby,
I supported a woman I knew had a history of criminal activity, who is married to a rapist and who left 4 men to die in Benghazi. She put our national security at grave risk by leaving top classified emails on her private server, and she took money from nations who throw gays off rooftops and treat women worse than cockroaches. She is likely very sick and would be unlikely to serve out her first term without someone there to prop her up, but nevertheless, I supported her anyhow, because she’s a Democrat and has a vagina. Someone told me she still has a chance of winning the presidency if I just signed a petition. They said that Trump really didn’t win, because Hillary won the popular vote. Is that true? 

Okay, let’s address this “Hillary might win the popular vote, isn’t that Electoral College situation just awful” thing head on.

No, it’s not awful. It’s great, and it protects the importance of your vote. It’s also uniquely American and demonstrates yet again the once-in-creation brilliance of the Founding Fathers.

First of all, she’s probably not going to win the actual number of votes cast. She may win the number of votes counted, but not the votes cast.

States don’t count their absentee ballots unless the number of outstanding absentee ballots is larger than the state margin of difference. If there is a margin of 1,000 votes counted and there are 1,300 absentee ballots outstanding, then the state tabulates those. If the number of outstanding absentee ballots wouldn’t influence the election results, then the absentee ballots aren’t counted.

Who votes by absentee ballot? Students overseas, the military, businesspeople on trips, etc. The historical breakout for absentee ballots is about 67-33% Republican. In 2000, when Al Gore “won” the popular vote nationally by 500,000 votes and the liberal media screamed bloody murder, there were 2 million absentee ballots in California alone. A 67-33 breakout of those yields a 1.33- to 0.667-million Republican vote advantage, so Bush would have gotten a 667,000-vote margin from California’s uncounted absentee ballots alone! So much for Gore’s 500,000 popular vote “victory.” (That was the headline on the N.Y. Times, and it was the lead story on NBC Nightly News, right? No? You’re kidding.)

Getting back to the “win the popular vote/lose the Electoral College” scenario: Thank G-d we have that, or else California and N.Y. would determine every election. Every time.

But the Electoral College brilliantly smooths out the variances in the voting proclivities among states and regions. Farmers in the middle of the country and importers and exporters on the shore get roughly equal say, as do Madison Ave. execs and factory workers in Tennessee.

Shortcomings? Sure. The E.C. can make an R vote meaningless in a very few heavily D states or vice versa. But without the Electoral College, the country’s entire population is subject to the disproportionate voting preferences of the few most populous states. –American Thinker

 

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