System means some states ignored
We don’t elect presidents by the popular vote. If we did, campaigning would be entirely different. Trump spent no time or money campaigning in California, for example, knowing he’d lose there, and Hillary, knowing she was a shoo-in, “Clinton has made California her personal ATM during her 2016 campaign. Her fundraisers, taken together, have raised more than $90 million for the campaign” as reported by CNN, who then reported, “before Clinton spends more time exclusively focused on battleground states.” And the fact that the race for Senate in California was between two Democrats and there wasn’t even a Republican running meant a lot of Republicans stayed home.
California, Washington, Oregon and Hawaii were not battleground states, and both Trump and Hillary figured these electoral votes were in Hillary’s pocket. Trump didn’t spend any money there, and evidently Hillary didn’t either, just taking her $90 million to fund the battles in the states that mattered.
So Mr. Will’s comments on the electoral college method of protecting state’s rights under our Constitution are well noted. It’s a system, however, that mandates a specific type of campaigning as both Hillary and Trump knew, and used, which does not seek a majority of the popular vote.
Douglas Drake
Kailua-Kona