by FireAndSun » November 9th, 2016, 5:55 pm
The populace doesn't elect the president directly. The electoral college is what does. What a citizen is really voting for is an elector who votes for one of the candidates for you. They usually vote along party lines, but they don't have to. Each state has a certain number of electoral votes, the larger it is the larger the number, and a candidate needs at least 270 electoral votes to win. Usually, electors do vote how they pledged to, but they don't always. Some absain or vote differently, so it can result in a candidate winning the electoral college, but not the popular vote. Some states also just do a winner takes all system, and get all the electoral votes in a state if they win the popular vote in that state, so it doesn't matter if they lost the popular vote at large. This is the 4th time someone has won the electoral vote despite losing the popular vote. As for why we have it, the founders of the nation didn't think the average citizen was knowledgeable enough to directly vote for a presidential candidate, so they created the electoral college as a compromise for the issue. Today, it causes a lot of controversy, and this election is bound to exacerbate it.