WhatFinger


Hillary won a plurality, nothing more, but lost the election. That's the way it is.

Stop Obsessing Over the Meaningless Popular Vote!



I am quite fascinated with the obsession the Left currently has with the popular vote for President. As usual this is a matter of expediency, desperation to get their own way given the results of the election, and the usual public deception for how our system actually works. There certainly isn't a shred of principle involved. So let's investigate this a bit. We are a Republic, thank God, not a Democracy, so the popular vote is irrelevant to presidential elections. It simply doesn't matter, it is meaningless, so talking about it is just an obsession with nothing. We elect by Electoral College, a brilliant system that involves the whole country in the election, and not just a few big, urban cities full of government dependent Democrats. The system is designed to make the best decision for President, and in this case it worked perfectly.
Just for fun, let's look at the popular vote in detail. Here is the key. *** NO CANDIDATE WON THE POPULAR VOTE!!!" To win the popular vote you have to get over 50%, that is what a majority is. What Hillary Clinton won was a PLURALITY. She got 48.2% of the vote. Donald Trump got 46.5 % of the vote. Not a big difference. Now here is where it gets interesting. Bill Clinton in 1992 only got 42.9% of the popular vote... Which means, Donald Trump won more of the popular vote than Bill Clinton, and no one on the Left said a word about Bill Clinton not being a legitimate President. Bill Clinton won a plurality, just like many presidents before him. It happens all the time. There is nothing unusual about this election. Hillary won a plurality, nothing more, but lost the election. That's the way it is. I got to looking at other countries to see how they elect their leaders, and how many actually elect a president on a straight popular vote. So far, I have found Brazil elects a president by popular vote. They can serve two consecutive terms. But this is only since 1988 when they adopted a new Constitution, so this is a relatively new process. Mexico elects their President by straight popular vote. But it's only for one 6 year term. Presidents can only serve one term, so once in, they can do what they want for 6 years, and they are done. I guess that's how you get losers like Vicente Fox. Canada has no vote from the people to the Prime Minister. People vote for Representatives of Parliament much like we vote for Representatives for Congress. It is the Governor General of Canada, who is the Queens' representative to the Canadian Government who actually appoints the Prime Minister. It's not a written law, but it's understood that the Prime Minister will be appointed from Parliament when that person has the confidence of over 50% of Parliament. When one party has over half the seats, the leader of the party is usually appointed Prime Minister.

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Australia has a somewhat similar system. There it is the Lower House or the House of Commons where the Prime Minister comes from. Either one party or a coalition of parties have to win a majority of 150 seats. Once the government is formed they elect a Prime Minister from the Representatives. The people have no direct vote for their leader. England is similar but they don't have to win over 50% of the seats in the House of Commons. The party with the most seats forms a government, and the leader of the party with the most seats becomes Prime Minister. So if you want a parliamentary democracy, you aren't ever going to vote for Prime Minister directly. Some parliamentary systems have direct elections for a president, but those offices are mostly ceremonial. The real power lies in the Prime Minister. Iceland has a similar system. Direct popular vote for a President who has no real power. In Germany the people don't vote directly for Chancellor. They vote for members of the Bundestag, which is the lower house of Parliament. Germans don't vote for the upper house either. Germans have two votes, one for their representative, and another vote for the party in their state. Somehow these two votes are combined to make the Bundestag, and then the majority party elects a Chancellor. I tried looking up how Russia elects a President. But since again power resides in the Prime Minister, it doesn't matter. The President is a direct vote, and the Prime Minister comes from the Duma, the lower house. But as you might expect, voting and vote counting irregularities make Russian elections a mess.

No one has a direct vote for the leader of China. They have a series of people's congresses, which get higher and higher, where each level starting with the local congresses elect each successive level up to the National People's Congress, and it is they who elect the leader of China. In Japan they have a two house system called the Diet. People have two votes, one for their local representative, and one for a party. The Diet is then filled both directly and proportionally. Both houses of the Diet elect not only the Prime Minister, but the whole Cabinet, the previous one having all resigned together. But again, there is no direct vote for Prime Minister by the people. What I found is that very few countries have a direct vote for the leader who has the real power. Our Electoral College by comparison is by far the more representative system than the parliamentary democracies could ever hope to be. The equivalent here, if Congress were a Parliament, would be that we vote for members of Congress, then the party with the most seats, in this case the Republicans, would choose the President, and in that case, Paul Ryan would be President of the United States. Kind of makes our Electoral College look pretty good, doesn't it. Win another one for the authors of our Constitution. Back to plurality, non majority vote Presidents. You might find this interesting.


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Greg Penglis -- Bio and Archives

Greg Penglis is the morning host at 1330 AM WEBY, 6-9 Central time.  He is turning “talk radio” into “action radio,” by creating a “citizen legislature” out of the radio/internet audience.  He also authored “The Complete Guide to Flight Instruction,” a blunt critique of our flight training system, and how best to get through it.


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