A guest essay in the Daily Messenger’s Dec. 9 issue put forward a completely and obviously false premise that Donald Trump has a "mandate" from the people.

He does not, not by any stretch of the imagination. He received millions of votes less than Hillary Clinton did, and contrary to what he is claiming, those were not millions of "illegal" votes. Voter fraud is rare and has never had any effect on a national election.

The argument put forth sounds much like the silly observation I saw the other day from another far right-winger. The majority are not ultra conservative as these people suggest. He points to the number of governor's mansions occupied by Republicans and the number of legislatures they control as "proof" that the majority support them. The "proof" that I saw put forth the other day was that if you look at a map of the U.S. depicting the results of the election, it is nearly all red. This, he said, was evidence that liberals and Democrats live only in a handful of states on the coasts.

Like that delusional individual, the guest essayist should be looking at individual state maps showing the breakdown of the vote by district, and he will see that those red states aren't quite as red as he thinks and that the districts have been drawn in such a way as to ensure the outcome of all elections.

If all states apportioned electoral votes according to the popular vote rather than the current winner-take-all system, Trump would have lost that election in the electoral college just as he lost the popular vote.

There is a popular saying that says "don't urinate on my leg and tell me that it is raining." That could be modified here to say, "don't use a fault in our electoral system to tell me that the candidate receiving fewer votes has a 'mandate' to institute all of his policies." He may not, and in this case, he most assuredly does not.

Robert Cull is a resident of Attica.