Trump won the 2016 election on a technicality.

[Tommy Carcetti]

The majority of Americans did not vote for him; only the technical aspect that is the Electoral College saved him. (And that's not to mention the fact that even that technical win was in good part due to Russian interference and manipulation of public opinion.)

So he won on a technicality in court today.

That's just how he rolls.

When it comes to a clean fight, he still can't win. Pass it on.

[Walleye]

1. This is really why democracy dies, there has to be a majority of the people behind the President

It messes up our whole theory of self government if we don’t go with the majority. People aren’t gonna accept decisions made for them by a minority of the population. We managed to get through the whole 20th century without the electoral college vote exceeding the popular vote. Why have we done it twice in the 21st-century

[Omnipresent]

37. Wealthy, land owners with powdered wigs...

Created this nation for themselves, and the rest of us just live here.

[Walleye]

52. Good point. I think it was Will Rogers who said something like

“This is a free country but you can’t live here for nothin”

[Voltaire2]

53. and slaves.

The protection of the plantation system was paramount.

[Fiendish Thingy]

2. Well, it's a constitutional technicality...not just some legal hairsplitting. Nt

[Tommy Carcetti]

3. Still a technicality.

He's never garnered the support of a majority of the American people.

I don't believe even his polling average topped 49% in his four years of average.

So the idea that he was ever popular with most Americans is a complete lie.

[Zeitghost]

11. Bill Clinton never had a majority win in a presedential election

He still won, twice. In some forms of democratic elections, that would not be allowed. But nobody claims he won on a technicality because our presidential election doesn't require a majority vote.

You don't win a football game getting the most yards. Trump won by the well known and long established rules of the game. We need to focus on making sure that does not happen again.

[Tommy Carcetti]

16. I'm not saying a president who loses the popular vote but wins the electoral vote is illegitimate.

It is, however, a rather glaring asterisk mark where the less popular choice is somehow still deemed the winner.

Even a plurality winner (less than 50%) is still the most popular choice nationwide of all the candidates on the ballot. Lincoln, for example, won with less than 40%.

A popular vote loser who wins solely by the electoral vote is a far more glaring aberration.

That's not to say I would refuse to accept it if Joe Biden were to somehow win the electoral vote but not the popular vote. (If a few votes in Ohio had gone differently, that's what would have happened with John Kerry in 2004). That would be crazy.

But the greater point remains: The electoral college, looked at objectively, is a rather bizarre technicality.

[Zeitghost]

19. I guess it's an interesting political fact

But so is Clinton winning with 43%. If I were to keep rolling with the sports analogies, either is like a wild card team winning the Superbowl or a split decision in boxing.

In the grand scheme of things, being President doesn't constitutionally require a vote at all and we never have been and never will be a pure democracy. So I guess I don't see the distinction of having an asterisk beside your name in the minds of some when you don't meet some arbitrary definition of true/pure democratic win. There is one number that counts, electoral college votes.

[Tommy Carcetti]

23. But even a wild card winning the Super Bowl...

...wins the most games during the postseason.

And really if you weigh into the sports analogy morass, any of our professional leagues would be illegitimate. Even before major league baseball instituted playoffs in 1969 and the World Series was simply the team with the best record in the American League versus the team with the best record in the National League, there was always the chance that the AL team with the worse record might beat the NL team with the better record (or visa versa) in the World Series.

In the end, trying to compare democracy to sports is futile.

We like to consider ourselves a democracy (even if were not a pure democracy, we're still a representative one.) So any system where the Head of State ends up winning while not having the most votes amongst all the candidates on the ballot runs counter to that fundamental notion.

[Zeitghost]

25. It runs counter to your opinion

And that opinion is at least partly rooted in that particular aspect of our representative republic being disadvantages to our political party in a recent election. Had the results been the reverse in 2016 and it was a theoretical President Clinton winning while losing the popular vote, would we see the same level of outrage over the electoral college here? I think it would be hard to make that argument. Like packing the court and ending the filibuster, they are positions that will change based on the political climate of the day.

It's an office that was not originally intended to be elected at all. Our system is full of examples of impure democracy because, it was never intended to be a pure democracy.

[Tommy Carcetti]

26. Answer to your question:

If in 2016 Hillary Clinton had won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote, and by that virtue still been elected President, I would have:

1. Counted my lucky stars that Clinton won and Trump lost
2. Still view the Electoral College as an outdated, undemocratic technicality in need of abolition

Since the Constitution was ratified, there's always been a popular vote. Even in 1788, where turnout was ridiculously limited and you basically had no set uniform rules as to the choosing of electors (who in the end unanimously choose Washington), there was still a popular vote.

And yes, there were popular votes when people who were either US citizens (women) or should have been US citizens but instead were considered property or later actively disenfranchised (African Americans) could not vote.

But your idea that the President was never intended to be an elected position or that there's never been a popular vote component is just a rather bizarre claim.

[Zeitghost]

27. Not all States had binding public elections

To select their EC electors until I believe 1824.

The constitution does not require a public vote. Each state legislature has the power to decide how their electors will be selected. Have you read Article II?
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-2/#:~:text=The%20Person%20having%20the%20greatest,Ballot%20one%20of%20them%20for

[ffr]

31. 1992 & 1996, Bill Clinton won popular and electoral college

1992 popular democratic win by nearly 6 million votes: 44,909,889 to 39,104,550
1996 popular democratic win by over 8 million votes: 47,401,185 to 39,197,469

He was and still is one of the most popular American presidents EVER.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_presidential_election

[Zeitghost]

33. Yes...

But as I clearly said, he did not win by a majority. He won by a plurality.

Some democratic systems require a majority winner. That Clinton did not meet this "more pure" version of democracy did not make his win any less valid or put some imaginary asterisk next to his wins. That was the point I was making.

[ffr]

48. You said: "Bill Clinton never had a majority win in a presedential election"

He still won, twice. In some forms of democratic elections, that would not be allowed. But nobody claims he won on a technicality because our presidential election doesn't require a majority vote.

You don't win a football game getting the most yards. Trump won by the well known and long established rules of the game. We need to focus on making sure that does not happen again.

Just to be clear on what you wrote. I ran a spell checker and still didn't find Plurality.

Just to be clear, so others don't misconstrue alternative facts in believing that Bill Clinton never had a majority win in a presidential election, when he DID WIN BOTH in popular vote and electoral college, by sizable margins.

[Zeitghost]

51. I think you need to look up what Majority means

Bill Clinton never had majority win.

[Dr. Strange]

54. You cited Wikipedia.

According to the source you provided, Clinton won 43.01% of the popular vote in 1992. That is explicitly not a majority.

[triron]

49. Clearly not a good comparison with popular vs electoral vote.

[Kaleva]

32. Did Hillary get a majority if one counts non voters?

[Tommy Carcetti]

47. No doubt a majority of voters did not want Trump.

Playing Devil's Advocate, I suppose you could say the same thing about Hillary, but on the flip side, less people didn't want her than people didn't want Trump. Of all the candidates, she was the most popular, regardless of whether she got to 50% or not. And without a runoff system, it's undisputed she was the popular choice among the American electorate who cast a vote that year.

[Turbineguy]

4. In the end....

America's voters will have to protect themselves.

[All Mixed Up]

5. Had Hillary won, it likely would have been a technicality too.

Since she also didn't receive a majority and wouldn't have if she flipped MI, PA & WI.

That's a pretty big technicality.

[Tommy Carcetti]

7. She would have certainly still had a plurality at the very least.

Meaning she was the most preferred candidate of all of those on the ballot.

Trump can't even say that.

[All Mixed Up]

15. Let's hope he doesn't change that in November.

[Hugin]

6. The horse race pie just came out of the oven.

Helped along by a milquetoast decision by the SCrOTUS. Leaving the United States’ international commitments twisting in the wind once again. But, you know… Mouse clicks.

[Silent Type]

8. Hardly a technicality, it's been the mechanism we've elected Prez for a long time. It is frustrating at times, for sure.

[Tommy Carcetti]

28. When it's a mechanism that would otherwise be declared unconstitional...

...but for its inclusion in the Constitution, yes, it's a technicality.

[MichMan]

30. What?

When it's a mechanism that would otherwise be declared unconstitional...but for its inclusion in the Constitution, yes, it's a technicality.

[Tommy Carcetti]

34. Reynolds v. Sims, 373 U.S. 533 (1964)

Last edited Mon Mar 4, 2024, 04:24 PM - Edit history (1)

https://www.supremecourt.gov/qp/14-00940qp.pdf

In Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), this Court held that the Equal Protection Clause
of the Fourteenth Amendment includes a "one-person, one-vote" principle. This principle
requires that, "when members of an elected body are chosen from separate districts, each
district must be established on a basis that will insure, as far as is practicable, that equal
numbers of voters can vote for proportionally equal numbers of officials."

You're welcome.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

9. What other Constutional requirements do you regard to be a technicality? NT

[Tommy Carcetti]

17. We purport ourselves to be a democracy (at least a representative democracy.)

So yes, a constitutional mechanism that divides the entire citizen's votes up by a byzantine method which unduly empowers citizens of smaller states and essentially disenfranchises citizens of larger ones is a technicality.

Put it this way: If the electoral college were not in the constitution, it would have been deemed unconstitional under the equal protection clause. The courts have actually struck down similar mechanisms under state elections under the notion of one person, one vote.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

22. So, the Senate goes too, right? NT

[Tommy Carcetti]

24. The Senate has always had problems.

Given that at one point its members were voted on by State legislatures and not the actually people themselves. At least that got fixed.

But at least Senators themselves are directly elected by the majority/plurality of their own constituents, and no longer through an arcane indirect system.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

35. Isn't that how electors are chosen? *

* With most states being "winner take all," but not in a few that I can't think of right now, where the vote is proportional.

[Tommy Carcetti]

44. Not necessarily.

Each candidate on the ballot will have his or her own a slate of electors. They are overwhelmingly expected (although not legally required) to vote for that candidate during the electoral college process.

Which slate of electors gets chosen depends on which candidate is the winner of that state's certified popular vote.

This is where Trump ran into trouble in 2020. Georgia, Pennsylvania, etc. certified Biden as the winner. Therefore, the official electors were Biden electors who ultimately voted Biden during the electoral process. What Trump wanted to do is basically say screw the certified vote, here are my own electors and those will get counted when Congress certifies the final count on January 6th. He even argued that the Republican legislatures of those states should also say screw the certified vote, we're sending the Trump elector votes to Congress on January 6th.

That of course is not how it works and is indeed illegal to conspire to subvert the vote like that.

Now, if you remember 2016, you might remember this wonderful pipe dream that some of us here had (even myself in the most blissful recesses of my mind) that maybe, just maybe, some of those electors from the states that Trump won (i.e. Trump's slate electors) could just say, "You know, screw it. Hillary won the popular vote. We're just going to vote Hillary instead."

That actually was not illegal because electors are not technically required to vote for the candidate in which they are part of a slate.

But they almost always do. So that just wouldn't have happened, except in our happiest of dreams.

[J_William_Ryan]

10. At the time of the founding, the office of president wasn't considered to be important.

Yes, it was co-equal among the three branches of the Federal government, but the Framers intended the president to administer laws, nothing more.

Hence presidents were elected via the EC, an undemocratic, anti-majoritarian process that was a concession to the states.

The advent of the imperial presidency in the early 20th Century is an aberration contrary to the original intent of the Framers.

And as correctly noted several times: it was naïve to expect the courts to stop Trump.

[Karadeniz]

12. House gop at the time knew he had russian support.

[PSPS]

13. Every republican president after Ike "won" via malfeasance of one sort or another

[Voltaire2]

14. you've diluted the meaning of the phrase 'on a technicality' to basically

mean 'using the well understood common rules'. Technically you re correct.

[Tommy Carcetti]

21. If our country wishes to consider itself a democracy...

...then yes, the Electoral College is indeed a technicality. No rhetorical dilution about it.

[MorbidButterflyTat]

20. He didn't "win"

I have not forgotten Manafort, Kilimnick, Putin and who knows who else fuckery. The oozing sore invited corrupt conspiracy with Russia and everyone saw it, and everyone knows it. He brought his criminal "family" into our WH to do nothing more than grift and fuck with his "enemies," which is basically everyone everywhere except maybe Vlad and Bibi. EVERYBODY KNOWS IT.

I am sick to fucking death of weeks and months of MAGAt unwarranted waste of time and taxpayer money based on NOTHING, disgusting harassment of Hunter Biden, including a poster of his genitalia glaring to the world from the fucking House of traitorous MAGAt Reps; Fani Willis who is trying to do her damn job, making usually reasonable minded people to doubt her integrity and the entire blatantly obvious case against that revolting pig swill; I'm sick of it all! SICK.

Meanwhile talking heads take poisonous money to make idiotic public statements and laugh, Oh look what that silly rascal has done now! Incited violence and stumbled through a teleprompter while spewing hundreds more provable lies! Let's show his putrid alleged "face" for hours and cite polls some rich dude bought for him and conclude his inevitable election win! Which equals $$$$ for us! Oh then I heard Biden ate an ice cream cone in public! Also he's old! And that's BAD, so BAD for Democrats!

I feel like

[triron]

50. I still believe Russian hackers together with Cambridge analytica

Messed with the election results in some key states including at least Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. It may very well be that
This is known at highly classified levels ; the public will never be allowed to know.

[TexasDem69]

29. Trump won because he prevailed under the process

That’s been in place for over 200 years. Hillary knew the way it worked she just didn’t get enough votes in the states that decided the outcome. That’s not winning on a technicality that’s winning in the very manner every prior president has won.

[Tommy Carcetti]

39. You're confusing "winning on a technicality" with "winning illegitimately."

I'm not saying that Trump won illegitimately--at least not to the extent that votes cast were unduly changed, over counted, or under counted (Russian interference and its influence on public opinion is a whole other matter)--I'm saying that his win was not reflective of the popular will of the people.

When the first three words of the Constitution set out the general theme for the rest of the document--even though actual history might not have immediately followed that theme (for example, human beings being counted as three-fifth's a person)--anything that runs counter to that theme is a technicality, a legal exception to the facts at hand.

So while We the People, speaking as a whole, may have preferred Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump in 2016, because of the recognized and occasionally convolute mechanism that is the Electoral College, strictly by the express technical terms of the US Constitution itself and no other concept, Donald Trump was the winner.

Let's say you have a group of five friends traveling in a car, two in the front seat and three in the back seat. And let's say they're trying to decide where to stop to eat for lunch.

And they take it to a vote. The three friends in the back seat all vote to eat at McDonalds. The two friends in the front seat vote to eat at Burger King.

So under a normal, traditional vote, they go to eat at McDonalds.

But let's say that there's some sort of longstanding, pre-understood agreement with these friends wherein whoever happens to be sitting in the front seats gets twice as many votes as whoever is sitting in the back seat.

So under this agreement--this technicality--even though the actual majority of friends in the car would prefer to go to McDonalds, under this mechanism, the vote actually is 4 votes for Burger King, 3 votes for McDonalds. So by virtue of technicality, Burger King has it.

Notably, this technicality does not always have contrary to popular will. Let's say one person in the front seat votes for Burger King, one person in the other front seat votes for McDonalds, and two people in the back seat vote for McDonalds and one votes for Burger King.

So the actual vote remains unchanged--3 to 2 in favor of McDonalds, and the technical result likewise is 4 to 3, but this time it favors McDonalds.

Or you might end up with two people in the front seat voting for McDonalds and only one out of three people in the back seat voting for Burger King. And in that case you have an exaggerated result of 5 votes for McDonalds but only two votes for Burger King. But in that case, it still reflects the popular majority in basic principle, but over reflects it as a matter of law.

So yes, a system where certain states are assigned a certain amount of electoral votes, even though it isn't guaranteed to proportionately match the overall popular vote across the entirety of the states, it is a technicality. That doesn't make it illegitimate. It simply makes it a technical matter of law.

[TexasDem69]

42. But you are referring to the sole deciding factor as a "technicality"

And it isn’t. If Trump had won both the popular vote and the electoral college he would be president solely because he won the electoral college. That is the only thing that matters in presidential elections. The popular vote is simply irrelevant. Its pointless as anything other than a side note to the election.

On edit, a “technicality” is defined (among many definitions) as a “small detail” that forces an “unexpected result.”

[Tommy Carcetti]

45. Cambridge Dictionary's definition:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/technicality

technicality
noun [ C ]

a decision based only on a specific rule or rules and not on any other consideration:

The general worldwide principle of a democratic election is whoever has the most votes wins.

The Electoral College, on the other hand, is a mechanism exclusive to the US Constitution and nowhere else.

So where one wins only because of the mechanism and not the the general principle, it is winning by a technicality.

[Tommy Carcetti]

46. See this story that just coincidentally popped up on my news feed:

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/dumbest-rule-swimming-college-swimmer-143246235.html

Owen Lloyd, the swimmer at issue, had the fastest time of all the swimmers in his race.

But because he crossed lanes afterwards to celebrate with a teammate, and because NCAA swimming Rule 2, Section 5 states that “a swimmer who changes lanes during a heat shall be disqualified," he lost and I'm presuming the second place winner was deemed the winner by default.

[DavidDvorkin]

36. The Electoral College is not a technicality

It's an abomination.

[sarisataka]

38. That "technicality" is the election

The popular vote is a custom that has been around so long we believe it has meaning.

[Tommy Carcetti]

41. See Post 39. nt

Last edited Mon Mar 4, 2024, 04:11 PM - Edit history (1)

[sarisataka]

43. I agree with post 38 and believe it is 100% correct nt

[LetMyPeopleVote]

40. The electoral college needs to go