You’ve heard it a million times since Nov. 8: It’s unfair that Hillary Clinton lost the election, because she beat Donald Trump in the popular count by 3 million votes. She would be president, the argument goes, if it weren’t for an outdated, outmoded electoral college system that just thwarted the will of the majority 66 million voters who backed her.
But none of that is true. In fact, the electoral college worked exactly as it was intended. The Founders set up the system specifically to prevent a few population centers from ruling the entire country, similar to the way they set up the House and Senate so that populous states wouldn’t have outsized power over less-populated states.
One set of numbers in particular really drives this point home. Trump won the vote in 2,626 counties nationwide, while Clinton won the vote in just 487 counties. That’s a stunningly low number, even for a Democrat. When former President Barack Obama won 689 counties nationwide in 2009, he set a record for the lowest number of counties won by a winning presidential candidate.
Half of Clinton’s popular vote lead over Trump came from 1.5 million voters in the five counties that make up New York City.
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Counties are land not people so the number of counties doesn't matter. And the electoral college was put into to maintain southern control to maintain slavery.
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