EJ Montini

opinion columnist





Hillary Clinton received more votes than Donald Trump and lost.

If this had happened to Trump I’d guess the first word out of his mouth would be: “RIGGED!”

And I would agree with him.

It’s time to eliminate our idiotic Electoral College.

ROBB:Let's un-neuter the Electoral College

You know that there is such a thing but none of us spends a lot of time thinking about it. A president, unlike any other candidate in any other race, is not elected based on the number of votes he or she receives in a general election, but by the number of Electoral College votes they receive.

The Electoral College is a college in the same way that Trump University was a university. Which is to say, no way at all.

Millions of votes don't count in this system

Each state is allotted a number of ''electors'' based on the total number of congressional representatives it has. In every state but Maine and Nebraska, a candidate is awarded all of the electoral votes of a state if he or she gets the most popular votes in that state. Win by a single vote. Take all the electoral votes.

For example, Hillary Clinton got roughly 5.5 million votes in California. Trump got roughly 3 million. But Clinton got all 55 of the state’s electoral votes.

Three million Republican votes in California did. Not. Count.

LETTER:Fix the Electoral College, don't nix it

Likewise, in Texas Trump got 4.6 million votes and Clinton got nearly 4 million. But Trump got all the state’s 38 electoral votes.

Four million Democratic votes in Texas did. Not. Count.

In Arizona, Trump got 940,000 votes to Clinton’s 861,000. He got all 11 of our Electoral College votes.

So, yes, 861,000 votes from Democrats did. Not. Count.

Win the popular vote, lose the election

Four times in our history a presidential candidate has won the popular vote and lost the election. Al Gore was the last.

Imagine if that’s how we ran a statewide election: A candidate who wins by one vote in, for example, Maricopa County, gets credit for ALL the votes in the county.

Imagine if that’s how we ran city elections: A candidate who wins by a vote in a neighborhood would get credit for ALL the votes in the neighborhood.

We’d never stand for that.

In any election.

And yet that’s exactly what we do with the most important election we hold, for the most important elected office in the world.

Trump spent the past several months saying the system is rigged.

In this case, he’s right.

Montini: Can America look itself in the mirror...and smile?