trump did not won in 2016 and 2024 via an electoral college. Theres no “electoral college” in the Constitution. No body meets to discuss anything. [FN1] Each State determines how to select its electors. [FN2] There are several things Art. II to remember. 1/8

1) POTUS is the only office that the winner of the popular vote necessarily wins. [FN3]
2) This is important because “electors” were not created as an aspect of strategy. Nowhere does The Federalist discuss electors as anything but an “emergency brake.” 2/8

3) The “winner-take-all” award of electors in all but two States [FN4] was not envisioned by the Framers. Given how they viewed “factions” (their term for political parties) such a system not only removes that check, it awards political parties that disenfranchise [FN5] voters. 3/8

"It is a fundamental idea in all republican forms of government that no one can be declared elected and no measure can be declared carried, unless he or it receives a majority or a plurality of the legal votes cast in the election." [FN6] In 2016, Secretary Clinton, according 4/8

to the FEC, won 65,853,516, or a margin of victory in the popular vote of nearly three million more than trump. I leave you with these thoughts and shall follow-up in my next blog. We must persevere in this (non-violent) battle to save democracy. 5/8

Footnotes:
FN1. “[A]n organized body of persons having common interests or duties.” The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, pocket ed (1974), p. 149.
FN2. U.S. Const., Art. II, sec. 1. Electors “shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President...” Amend. XII. 6/8

FN3. Finkelman, “The Proslavery Origins of the Electoral College,” 23 Cardozo L Rev 1145, 1146 (2002).
FN4. Those States are Maine and Nebraska. 7/8

FN5. “disenfranchise”: “deprive (someone) of a right, esp. the right to vote; to prevent (a person or group of people) from having the right to vote.” Black’s Law Dictionary, 10th ed., 2014, p. 567.
FN6. 29 C.J.S., Elections, § 243, p. 353. Oviatt v. Behme, 238 Ind. 69, 78 (1958). 8/8