The Electoral College

The+Electoral+College

Noah Ayon, Photo Editor

On November 8th, Donald Trump won the election with 290 electoral college votes, and will most likely win Michigan which will bring him up to 306 electoral college votes, and Hillary Clinton got 232 electoral college votes.
But what exactly is the Electoral College? On Election Day you’re not voting for the presidential candidate, you’re voting for the electoral college. So for Texas voters, they voted for the 38 republican electoral college members. The electoral college votes for the president on December 19th.
Why didn’t our founders just make it easy and do just a popular vote? Hillary Clinton has the popular vote, while votes are still coming in she has a million votes over Donald Trump, almost at 62 million votes and Trump is almost at 61 million. Our founders did a lot of studying of history and realized in a pure democracy, bare majorities can easily tyrannize the rest of the country so they didn’t want to take that risk and decided to put the electoral college in.
For now Donald Trump is projected to be the 45th president of the United States, but could the Electoral College vote in Hillary Clinton? USA Today says “Yes, it may be constitutionally possible; but no, it will not happen, according to election experts.” There is debate on if the electoral college is a bad thing, all in spark of Trumps win on the 8th, along with protest and in some cases riots, we will officially know the president on December 19th and he or she will be in office January 20th, 2017 at noon.