Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton may have won the popular vote but she lost to Donald Trump in terms of electoral votes. This made him the fifth person in American history to be proclaimed as President-elect without winning popular vote. The public is upset and some have taken to the streets challenging the legitimacy of Donald Trump's win and some have been petitioning that the Electoral College change its procedures so the winner of popular votes does not lose in the electoral votes.
Despite the clamor to revise the Electoral College's processes, don't hold your breath because it might not be happening soon. Historically, calls for Electoral College reforms don't get enough traction. Petitioners don't push the issue to Congress and Senators from small states are always on guard.
Though there had not been any amendments in the constitution to move to popular vote since 1804, one came close in 1968 but it never made it in the Senate.
The most recent was back in 2000, when Vice President Al Gore won popular vote but George W. Bush was proclaimed the winner because the Electoral College gives disproportionate votes to states.
Today, we have yet another brush with the flaw in the system but the question remains: is are we going to push hard to reform this major political issue or are we going to conform with the status quo.
One interesting note:
According to some, the Founding Fathers chose the Electoral College over direct vote because of one thing: slavery.
During the Philadelphia convention, James Madison argued that the Northern state will outnumber the Southern if the system counted direct vote. Further, many of the southern states' slaves cannot vote. So Madison instead proposed that each southern state's vote should count its slaves and proposed a proportionate value.
If you may have missed the pro-slavery tilt of the constitution, consider this: Virginia which had a number of slaves has produced the most number of Presidents.
So come to think of it, given the reason why it was created in the first place, does modern day America still have a need for this peculiar system of electing the leader of the free world?
