Hillary appears to have won the national popular vote, assuming we have trustworthy numbers, while Donald won the Electoral College's vote count. This discrepancy has happened only a few times before in our near 240-year history.
But it raises the perennial question about why we even have an Electoral College, why the same question arises every four years, or why two sitting senators, Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Charles Rangel (D-NY) have sponsored a bill to eliminate the Electoral College once and for all. Each of these senators has served over 20 years, and they still don't understand the Constitution they swore to uphold; or worse, are putting ideology over the interests of the country. But after all, we live in a democracy and Hillary won the national popular vote.
Actually, we live in a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy. We also live in a Federation of Sovereign States, bonded together for the purposes of defense and trade. Each of us is a citizen of a Sovereign State, not the Federation of The United States. It is shameful that most Americans have no clue as to why the EC is part of our system of voting.
There is no such thing as a national popular vote, only the popular votes of each independent and autonomous state. There is no way to combine the popular votes of each state into a meaningful regional or national popular vote count.
No one would think to combine the popular votes of Spain, Italy, Germany and France to determine their newly elected political representatives. These four countries are part of the European Union, which is somewhat similar to our Federation of States. Though they are part of a group, the EU, each country remains sovereign, and does not interfere in each other's politics. Each of our states is every bit as sovereign as those nation-states or countries.
In these United States, the person who wins the majority of electoral votes (270 or more) becomes the new president. The EC ensures the sovereignty of each state's votes. It also helps the less-populous states compete with more-populous states.
For example, Delaware with less than a million citizens and three electoral votes, can compete more fairly against the more populous states, like California with 39 million citizens and 55 electoral votes, by including each senator of each state as an additional electoral vote. So California has 40 times the population of Delaware, but its electoral vote advantage is only 18 times Delaware's, or less than half the population advantage. In practical terms, it would require fewer less-populated sates to counter California's huge population advantage, through the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is essential and advantageous to these United States and must be understood and defended by We the People.
It would be a fatal mistake to allow the forces of the political left to continue moving our republic toward a democracy and mob rule, and further destroy the sovereignty of our states through miseducation and propaganda. We must reintroduce our history, culture and values to our children in our families, schools, and in the media. The federal government, teachers unions, and possibly, even state control, must be eliminated from our schools; and parents of students put back in control. Parents alone know what is best for their children, and parents alone are responsible for what their children learn.
Armand Carreau
Ocean View
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