The 2016 election was a close and controversial race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Tuesday, November 8th, citizens all over the nation stayed up all night glued to the TV screen to see who would become the next president of The United States of America. Tensions were high between parties once Trump was revealed as the winner, with a total of 306 electoral votes. Clinton followed along with a total of 232 electoral votes.

The United States of America decides on the winner of the election based on the amount of electoral votes. Although, there is another measure of votes which is called popular vote. Popular vote allows the nation and the presidential candidates to see how many votes they received out of all the eligible voters. If America were to decide the winner of the election off of the popular vote, the winner would have been Hillary Clinton. Clinton finished the election with 48% of the popular vote which was a total of 60,122,876 votes. On the other hand, Donald Trump finished the election with a total of 47% of the popular vote which would account for 59,821,874 votes. These numbers are changing for even more of a popular vote to Clinton as the states report their final counts.

There have been four times that the presidential candidate lost the popular vote but was elected based off of the electoral college. The election 2000 is a perfect example. George Bush won the electoral vote but Al Gore won the popular vote.

Many believe the Electoral College is an outdated the system of voting. If you think back to the time of our founding fathers and the creation of the electoral college and you compare it to the twenty first century you can see that there are drastic differences in how votes are counted. Back in the time of our founding fathers, votes would have been counted by hand, thus, making the electoral system a very useful and accommodating way to avoid popular vote. Now, in the twenty first century, all votes that are cast will be counted electronically, which makes a popular vote simple and accurate.

According to Timothy Noah from Politico, on November 4, 2012 “As the Bush-Gore debacle showed, sometimes the Electoral College does more than just exaggerate the margin of victory; sometimes it changes who the victor is. In our focus-group-and-computer-driven modern democracy, in which fierce competition between the two dominant parties efficiently divides the electorate into near-perfect halves, it seems likely that splits between the popular vote and the electoral vote will be more frequent than they’ve been in the past.”   

Since the Electoral College was created, the candidates of the election have been working their way around the electoral college to try and better the potential outcome of the race. They have done this by campaigning in specific states that have a higher numerical amount of votes. During this past election, and several elections before 2016, many of the candidates would go to certain states to raise money, campaign and would never go back. When candidates do this they are cheating the system, making the average voter feel like they have been abandoned.