It appears that like in 2000, the losing candidate received more votes than the winning candidate. This is one of the absurdities of the Constitution. Or at least how it has come to be used.
The original intent of the Electoral College is very different from what is has become. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison came up with the system. In their version the people elected electors to go to a convention to discuss who should become President and to examine the qualtities of the candidates that wanted to become President. So essentially there would be many many different campaigns by people across the states telling people what they would look for in a President. And then there would be an election and the people would select the thinkers who would get together for the actual Presidential election.
Once the Electors were chosen, they would go on to the convention or meeting and then they would hammer out who they were going to select to be President.
Soon the states began to force all the electors from their state to select the same person, ie a Party candidate. They did this in order to get more influence in the election. Madison and Hamilton both objected to this. They said it was not the intent of the system to have the districts all vote the same way in a state. They argued that the electors were supposed to get together and analyze who would be the best President. To go to the meeting already predisposed toward a candidate meant they were violating Article 2 of the Constitution because they were not getting together to analyze.
Both Hamilton and Madison wanted to add an amendment to the Constitution that forbid the states to send electors to the meeting that had to vote a certain way. They wanted all the electors to be free agents, independent thinkers, or deliberative representatives.
But the amendment did not get accepted.
So today we have this system in place that the original founders did not like and spoke out against. And really the whole point of the system was to help find the best candidate possible by having the electors come together and discuss things. Instead, it does the opposite where no discussion happens.
And supporters today claim that it helps the smaller states by diminishing the voice of bigger states. But think about it.
The number of electors is based on the number of representatives in the House and the 2 Senators in the Senate. Since the House is based on population, so are the number of electors. So that means a bigger state by not having its vote split among different candidates has a bigger say than the smaller states.
Many supporters of the EC say that California's say would dwarf all the smaller states if it was popular vote based. But with 55 electors it does anyway when the smallest states have 3.
By making it winner take all, California's voice in the Electoral college is actually increased. In a popular vote system, its vote would be split in 2016 with 5.5 million voting for Clinton and 3 millions voting for Trump. With the Electoral college as it currently runs, its like 8.5 million voted for Clinton.
The system as it currently runs is exactly what the founders were against. So those saying the founders' system is brilliant and should not be changed are actually arguing against the founding fathers since they objected to the winner take all system. The founders would be arguing against the current system as they did when the system was in its infancy..
Based on their argument they gave later in life and their attempt to get an amendment passed, they would be for either making the electoral college be distributed by percentage of the popular vote or they would go straight to popular vote. Because the original intent of the Electoral College was to send smart people together to determine who was the best potential candidate.
The people's say originally was simply who do they send to the conference to discuss it by district.
