election desiderata

[Peter Reagan]

Feel free to spread around. Or not, I guess… anyway, some random thoughts:

     Hillary Clinton won this election handily, but lost the presidency.  This century we have so far chosen 3 presidents. One was a Democrat. The other two were Republicans, both of whom lost the popular vote.

       The most votes any presidential candidate has ever gotten in an election was 69.5 million by Barack Obama in 2008; second most 65.9 million by Obama in 2012. Third most is Hilary Clinton 64.2 million in 2016.  Note that African Americans and women are therefore the top vote getters in US history.

      Hillary won 47.9% of the vote and thus had a higher percentage of popular vote than Bush in 2000, more than her husband in 1992 (43%) . Her percentage was higher than the winning percentage for 11 presidents, including Woodrow Wilson, Abraham Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.  

    The last winning presidential candidate with a vote percentage lower than Trump’s was Wilson in 1912. Most of the recent LOSING candidates have had a higher percentage than Trump’s. These include, besides Hillary Clinton herself,  Mitt Romney, John Kerry, Al Gore, and Gerald Ford. 

    6 times in US history the a candidate losing the popular election has won the presidency in the electoral college. Only once, in 1876, has the election been won by a person with a wider percentage spread in the popular vote and that was Rutherford B Hayes winning with 48% against Tilden who had 51%.

    Note that because of the electoral college, if the average US citizen gets one vote for president, a Californian only gets 0.83 of a vote, an Oregonian, 1 vote, but each Wyomingite gets 3 votes . 

Not so surprising that many people are very angry

[Michael Cook]

I think it's the very last point that people fail to realize. The electoral college undermines the concept of one person, one vote. And that's not a political statement either way, just a factual observation and something we need to think about. Add to that the fact that something like 6 billion dollars are spent by special interests during an election cycle and it's hard not to think that our system may need some tweaking. Again, I mean these to be apolitical.

[John Kraske]

Good political post, Pete. In todays rapid transportation and information age the electorial college is antiquated and contrary to Democracy. What is meant by, "...goverment by the people and for the people..."?  Democracy in America is DEAD.

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[Reed Gleason]

I have every hope that the electoral college will not be used for the next presidential election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairVote

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[Steve Forslund]

 Of course we are a republic not a democracy

SF

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[Dirk Larson]

Nice, Reed! I'm a big fan of ranked choice voting.

Hoping to see ranked choice voting to be on the ballot in two years in Oregon. There's a meeting in Portland soon for those who want to help push for the ballot initiative or just learn. 

Cheers! 

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