Trump calls Electoral College ‘genius’ after earlier criticism by Jessie Hellmann

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday morning defended the Electoral College as “genius,” days after criticizing it. …

Trump on Sunday told “60 Minutes” that he still has issues with the Electoral College.

“I’m not going to change my mind just because I won,” the president-elect said. “But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win.”

Trump infamously called the Electoral College a “disaster for democracy” during the night of the 2012 election, when it appeared President Obama would lose the popular vote but still win the presidency. Obama ended up winning the popular vote as well when all votes were tallied.

Clinton’s lead in the popular vote passes 1 million

By Madeline Conway

11/15/16 03:31 PM EST

Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote over President-elect Donald Trump has surpassed 1 million, according to Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

As the final vote counts continue to trickle in a week after Election Day, Wasserman’s tally found that Clinton had 61,963,234 votes to Trump’s 60,961,185 as of Tuesday afternoon.

Now that the Republicans control the Federal Government, they can move on their one true agenda:

The Republican Agenda

[ ] Undo Roosevelt
[ ] Undo Johnson
[ ] Undo Clinton
[ ] Undo Obama

It won’t take as long as you think.

700,588 more voted for Clinton than Trump, but 7.7 million more voted against Trump. 7.7 million votes don’t count; the majority is disenfranchised.

68,300,046 53% Clinton and others
60,589,309 47% Trump
7,710,737 6%

From <http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php>

One of the reasons Trump expected to lose the popular vote was fierce opposition within the Republican party. Many Republicans found Trump unacceptable and said so publicly. An entire movement (#nevertrump) and even a candidate (McMullen) were part of the Republican effort to stop Donald Trump.

How, then, did Trump receive as many or more votes than DUHbya, McCain, or Romney? The explanation from the people who were wrong every step of the campaign is that Republicans “came home.” Do you believe Romney “came home”? How about Colin Powell?

I’m not saying #nevertrump Republicans voted for Clinton, though some surely did. I can believe some voted for Johnson (especially in NM) and some didn’t vote. How did Trump get as many votes as he did without the usual united Republican support, especially in crucial states that were in doubt?

Prior to the election, Trump claimed there would be vote tampering. Even on Election Day, he repeated lies about vote switching from Trump to Clinton. Clearly, he was laying groundwork for a refusal to accept the results he expected. However, everyone rushed to assure the electorate that a hack is impossible. Did those people fall into a trap?

Imagine a voting precinct with 10 voters. Six are registered Republicans; the others are independents or Democrats. In a normal year, the Republican candidate gets 6 votes. This year, he gets 5 votes.

Ballots in this hypothetical precinct are scanned and correctly tallied. However, before results are reported, a subroutine compares totals to registrations. It counts 6 votes for Trump. Who would know? How would you know? By comparing the ballots to the totals.

The example is designed for simplicity. The larger the number, the easier to hide the hack. Is this hack more than theoretical? Americans are paranoid but naïve about technology. Remember that massive Internet slowdown a month before the election? (A denial of service, DNS, attack.) Many thought it was a test or a precursor. What if it was an actual assault? Who would notice?

What can we do about this? Pick strategic precincts where the vote affected the electoral outcome. Throw in a few random precincts. Audit the voting software — compare the software in-use with a gold archival copy. Quick and easy.

Next, do a hand count and compare the results to those reported. Isn’t it worth the time and effort to certify the results, to reassure the electorate that the results are valid, despite even the “winner’s” disbelief?

Millions more people voted for a woman than for a man in the 2016 presidential election. That incontrovertible truth must be repeated each time we discuss the outcome.

Those millions of voters have been disenfranchised by the electoral college, a function perfect for man-splaining. You see, dear, the founders, in their infinite wisdom, foresaw a day when the majority would be wrong and have to be stopped. The founders? You mean those slave-owning white males. Perhaps their wisdom wasn’t infinite.

I’m intrigued and dismayed by how deeply gender-fied this process has become. There are more women in America than men. Our culture teaches girls to accept and compromise, while boys are taught to fight. Now, the Republicans — the boys — want the Democrats — the girls — to behave. Be quiet, darling, you lost fair and square. But we didn’t lose. Millions more people voted for a woman than a man in 2016.

This election was the next step in a progressive, female-led agenda. A minority opposed that agenda. Progressives won. Rarely do losers lecture winners. Now, we are expected to sit in the corner and review where we went wrong. Perhaps we went wrong in believing the system was just. Perhaps we continue to go wrong in accepting the way it worked. You know “the boys” would not (did not).

Hillary Clinton Likely Received More Votes Than Any Presidential Candidate Beside Obama By Leon Neyfakh

Now that more votes have been counted, it’s becoming increasingly clear that support for Clinton wasn’t particularly low by recent standards.

Nate Cohn of the New York Times estimates that when every vote is tallied, some 63.4 million Americans will have voted for Clinton and 61.2 million for Trump. That means Clinton will have turned out more supporters than any presidential candidate in history except for Obama in 2008 and 2012. And as David Wasserman of Cook Political Report notes, the total vote count—including third-party votes—has already crossed 127 million, and will “easily beat” the 129 million total from 2012. The idea that voters stayed home in 2016 because they hated Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is a myth. …

[W]hen assessing Clinton’s candidacy, it does seem worth noting that she got more votes than George W. Bush did in 2004, than John McCain did in 2008, than Mitt Romney did in 2012, and than Donald Trump did in 2016.