The electoral college cools the passions of current popular will by spreading popular power over time. History has shown us why this is a better system.

Trump won a big popular vote victory as measured by House seats To win 306 electoral votes, a candidate must win jurisdictions that govern a majority of the population of the United States. Electoral votes are allocated in part based on population and Trump won a majority of those electoral votes. Trump did not win because of electoral votes that are allocated in proportion to Senate seats which are not popularly allocated. He won a majority of electors based on allocation by House seats, which is a popular vote win. If we subtract the electoral votes allocated by Senate seats, Trump won 246 electoral votes to Clnton's 192 electoral votes. This includes only electoral votes allocated by popular vote. The sustained popular will, not the latest popular vote, governs presidential elections in America Our founders designed a complicated system of government that spreads out power as much as possible. Not only is power spread throughout different branches of government, but power is spread over time as well. Popular will is not determined in a single election in our system. The elected branches of government are elected on a staggered schedule so that no one wave of populist will in one election can sweep a party into power. Rather, the popular will is expressed every two years in the House, every four years for the president and every six years for the Senate. To truly take dominant power a party must perform well in several successive elections. But even then we have a federal judiciary that is appointed for life. So to gain dominance over the judiciary a party may have to perform well in as many as five or six federal elections over a period of ten to twelve years. The senate is only elected every six years and the president every four, so to really dominate in the judicial selection process a party needs to dominate for quite a long time. Does that mean that the federal judiciary is not an expression of popular will? Not really, it's just an expression of popular will in the past, a popular will sustained over time. In the same way, the presidential election we hold every four years is really the result of the expression of both current and past popular will extending as far back as eight years. The census takes place every ten years. The census determines how many congressional representatives each state has, which in turn determines how many electoral votes a state has. You might ask, but isn't the census just a straightforward headcount? How could that be political? The census is very political. The political part comes in when the Census Bureau attempts to count people who have traditionally been hard to count, usually racial and ethnic minorities, poor people and immigrants, both legal and illegal. Yes, illegal immigrants count for the census. The primary controversy with regard to the census centers around statistical sampling. The Census Bureau did not use it in 2010 but it has been used in the past. Essentially methods would be used to estimate how many people are not being counted, including racial and ethnic minorities, the poor and legal and illegal immigrants. This approach would likely give more congressional seats to California, Texas, New York, Florida and Illinois, and other states where illegal immigrants tend to gravitate. As you can see, it has the potential to influence the presidential election for this reason. Don't want to miss the latest in politics from a fair perspective? Like our Facebook page. Beyond the census, the presidential election is also an expression of the popular will as expressed in state elections for as many as eight years prior to the actual election. State legislatures and other organs of state government actually draw the new congressional district lines once the Census is completed. How these lines are drawn can influence which party is more likely to win each district. Who controls congress can potentially influence who wins the presidency in the case that no candidate reaches 270 electoral votes. The party that controls congress also controls funding for the Census Bureau, so that probably has an impact on how the Census is conducted. Follow me on Twitter