One helluva an if

When it is pointed out that in our last presidential election Trump lost the national vote by close to 3 million, and by just over 2 percent, a common response from Trumpeters is that Clinton's popular vote margin was attained in California, which she carried by more than 4 million. So . . . Trump got more votes, if California doesn't count.

A helluva an if. Why is this not the same as saying, "We would have won, if you don't count the runs we allowed in the other team's good inning?"  To stay within the realm of electoral politics, it seems an apt response to the casual denigration of California voters might be: Well, if you throw out instead the votes cast in states that seceded from the Union at the time of our Civil War, then Clinton's margin goes from a little under 3 million to around 6.5 million, and she wins about 54 percent of the remaining two-party vote, as well as the Electoral College by 219-159. 

It all depends on whose votes you throw out! Funny how that works! 

Trumpeters betray themselves, I think, when they almost reflexively discount ballots cast by Californians.  They never talk that way about white southerners.  Since we're all Americans, how about we don't throw out any votes, and weigh them all the same, no matter where and by whom they are cast?

I ask this rhetorical question on a day in which two astute observers of demography and American electoral politics independently published their view that in 2020 the Democratic candidate for president could win the national popular vote by somewhat more than 3 million—they both name the figure 5 million—and still lose in the Electoral College.  As long as it's in one side's partisan interest to run the ballots through an 18th-century Rube Goldberg machine, said Rube Goldberg machine is unlikely to be retired.

Comments

[Stephen Fiebiger]

It fits with the Supreme Court's recent pronouncement that while one person one vote issues are within its purview, partisan gerrymandering is not. In other words, who gets to vote matters but how they are counted does not. Those able to fix the problem would benefit least from change. Voters deserve better.