Every time a presidential election results in more popular votes for the losing candidate there is an outcry for a constitutional change in the electoral system to “one person, one vote.”
The framers saw the pitfalls in such. The U.S. Senate is comprised of two persons from each state, and the U.S. House is dependent on the total number of people living there whether legal or not, and whether temporary or not. Thus, small states rate one person in Congress irrespective of their size. This is to provide a balance of power between large states with large urban populations from running the country with little or no input from smaller states with more rural populations.
Hillary won by nearly 400,000 popular votes. Discounting the votes of tiny Manhattan, she would have lost by a similar number. Trump won two out of every three states and thus won nearly three-fourths of the Electoral College. He also won an even larger percentage of American counties.
Our forefathers were wise to deliberately provide all states a certain measure of input into the makeup of Congress (and to not let elections and governmental control reside solely in the hands of large urban populations). If Congress and the Electoral College were numerically based on the number of Alaskan residents, we would have essentially no voice in national government.
I believed in the wisdom of this system for the 20 years I was a Democrat, believed in it later as an Independent, and still now as a Republican believe in it. I consider it not a political issue, but one of providing voice to all citizens, irrespective of party or where they live.
Jack Cadigan,
Juneau