Asdell letter: Popular vote

I keep hearing that Hillary should be president-elect because she won the popular vote by over 2.5 million. Let’s look at that logic and ask if these same people would have been protesting the 2004 election of John F. Kerry. A 400,000-vote switch (roughly 2.5 percent) in the popular vote of Florida would have given Kerry the election in the Electoral College 278-259. (One faithless elector from Minnesota cast an electoral vote for John Edwards for president.) The popular vote would have been Bush 61,640,610 to Kerry’s 59,428,444. Bush would have won the popular vote by over 2.2 million, but Kerry would have been president. So both parties should be ready to scuttle or alter the Electoral College.

This story was originally published January 12, 2017 at 4:02 PM with the headline "Asdell letter: Popular vote."