A Quote by Thomas E. Mann
Presidents are elected not by direct popular vote but by 538 members of the Electoral College.
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The presidential campaign was oriented toward the way we elect the presidency, Electoral College, not the popular vote. The popular vote doesn't matter. This is not a direct democracy. We have a representative republic, and the popular vote doesn't matter and it never has, by design.
I got elected president. I won easily. I won a race that should never be won by a Republican because it's so stacked in the Democrats' favor. I mean, if you figure California, New York, and Illinois, you start off with losing that - you have to run the entire East Coast and every - and the entire Midwest. I won an election that should never be won, because the Electoral College is far harder to win than the popular vote. The popular vote, for me, would have been much easier.
Twenty-one years ago today Saddam Hussein was first elected president of Iraq and he has been re-elected ever since. Apparently they have the same electoral process we do, you don't need the popular vote to win.
As much as progressives hate the Electoral College - and we can argue its flaws all day long - in 2020, the Electoral College is the only game in town. There's not going to be some miracle where it's not the rule book. The winner of the Electoral College is president. Doesn't matter how many popular votes you get.
Donald Trump wasn't vying for the popular vote. He was vying for the Electoral College, as was Hillary Clinton. The only difference is he got over 300 electoral votes, and she did not.
I ran for the electoral college. I didn't run for the popular vote.
There is a route to the presidency in this country, and it's called the Electoral College, and both candidates base their campaigns on winning the Electoral College, not the popular vote. And in that pursuit, Donald Trump won in a landslide or near landslide. And in that pursuit, Barack Obama and his agenda was repudiated. And not just this year. In the 2010 midterms, the 2014 midterms, and this election.
That's what I'm doing here, throw out New York and California, Donald Trump wins the popular vote by nearly three million votes. But you can't throw out New York and California. This is exactly why we have the Electoral College. Had there been no Electoral College and had the election be defined by the popular vote, I guarantee you that the two states where the candidates would have been all the time are New York and California. There would have been some time in Texas and they would have ignored the vast majority of people in the country.
I would've easily won the popular vote, much easier, in my opinion, than winning the electoral college.
I promise that as a president elected in a direct popular vote, I will try to be the voice of all citizens.
Now that Donald Trump has won the presidency despite losing the popular vote, there's a growing cry to rethink, or even abolish, the electoral college. This would be a mistake.
It took a course from me for the Democratic leadership to realize we have an electoral college. 'But we got the popular vote!' Well you can take the MTA from Dorchester to Brookline. That's how far it'll get you.
Every citizen's vote should count in America, not just the votes of partisan insiders in the Electoral College. The Electoral College was necessary when communications were poor, literacy was low and voters lacked information about out-of-state figures, which is clearly no longer the case.
I remember George W. Bush, who spoke about bringing the country together. Here's a man who knew that he lost the popular vote but ended up with the Electoral College vote. He had lost that, and he spoke in a very inclusive way of bringing Republicans and Democrats together. It reflected what a president should do.
Even without voting, illegal aliens do affect who gets elected president, and that's since the Electoral College elects the president, and the states are given 80% of their electoral votes based on their population, whether they include illegals or not, is the assessment that that is how they affect elections.
The way to lessen the grip of the Tea Party on the electoral process would be to do what a handful have done and have a primary where all voters, members of every party, can vote, and the top two vote-getters then enter a runoff.
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