Donald trump won the presidential election in 2016 even though he lost the popular vote by 3 million votes, all because of the election college. What is the electoral college and how does It work?
How the president of the states gets elected gets elected;
When Americans vote for their future president they are actually in fact voting for representatives that represent the candidates party and these representatives are known as electors who vote for the president for the people of their particular state and there are 538 of these electors with over 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency.
In the 2016 elections trump won by the barest of margins against Clinton because of a key swing state like Florida by winning 29 of its electoral votes. Swing states if you didn’t know are states that can be won by either the republican or democratic party meaning one election year the democratic party won the next year the state can be flipped and the republican party can win which is in contrast to safe states which usually votes for the same party every year and thus these states are very important and these are the states that the parties do the most campaigning in, to gain those important electoral votes that could win them the presidency.
The unbalanced distribution of electoral votes;
There are many activists that are for the abolishment of the electoral college for many reasons; one of them being the unbalanced distribution of electoral votes.
See every state in the US has a minimum of 3 electoral votes per state now the thing is; this leads to a lot of unbalance as states with smaller populations like Wyoming have 1 electoral vote for every 193,000 people and states like California has 1 electoral vote for every 718,000 this leads to under representation for bigger states like California, Florida, Texas and overrepresentation for smaller states like Wyoming.
Conclusion
The electoral college is very important as it is needed in order for us to find out who will be crowned the next president of the united states of America but it also leads to a lot of unbalance and chaos.
Even if the candidate won the popular vote, which again is still very important, but if he/she lost the electoral vote then he/she has lost the election.
This happened in 2000 and 2016. So, 2 times this century and if it will happen for a 3rd time, is something we will have to find out on the night of this upcoming election.
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