“Hillary won this election, and when the votes are all counted, by what will likely be more than a million votes. So how come she isn’t going to the White House in January?" Michael Dukakis wrote in an email to POLITICO. | AP Photo Dukakis calls for end to Electoral College

Former Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, who lost to George H.W. Bush in 1988, re-upped his call to abolish the Electoral College after Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump on Tuesday.

“Hillary won this election, and when the votes are all counted, by what will likely be more than a million votes. So how come she isn’t going to the White House in January? Because of an anachronistic Electoral College system which should have been abolished 150 years ago,” he wrote Sunday in an email to POLITICO.


“That should be at the top of the Democratic priority list while we wait to see what a Trump administration has in store for us. So far, all we know is that dozens of lobbyists are all over the Trump transition — a strange way to drain the swamp."

The former Massachusetts governor’s call echoes a sentiment expressed by none other than Trump himself in 2012. When it briefly looked like Mitt Romney had won the popular vote, he tweeted, “The Electoral College is a disaster for a democracy.” And, during the 2000 recount, Clinton herself called for its abolishment.

“I believe strongly that in democracy we should respect the will of the people, and to me that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president,” she said at the time, shortly after her own election to the Senate. “I hope no one is ever in doubt again about whether their vote counts."

Dukakis lost the popular vote to Bush in 1988 by 7 million votes, but since then, the Democrat has won the popular vote in six of the past seven presidential elections, and Clinton’s lead is now up to over 700,000 votes with more still to count from Democratic-leaning states like California, according to a count compiled by David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report.

This article tagged under: Electoral College

Michael Dukakis