Friday, November 11, 2016

Trump was right, the election was rigged

But the rigging was not done by his opponents.

Let’s assume there are three states, East Coast, West Coast, and Flyover.  East Coast and West Coast each have a population of a million people.  Flyover has a population of two million.  Each of the three states has two Senators.  East Coast and West Coast each have one Representative in Congress; Flyover has two Representatives.

Therefore, East Coast and West Coast each have three electoral votes and Flyover has four electoral votes.  That is, East Coast and West Coast together have six electoral votes for a combined half of the nation’s population.  Flyover has four electoral votes for the other half of the population.

Now assume we have three candidates, Marsy, Dosy, and Lammsy.  Marsy and Dosy have large followings and Dosy has a couple of thousand.  The eligible voters in each state are 80% of the population, but turnout is only 50%.  That means that eight hundred thousand vote in East Coast and West Coast combined and eight hundred thousand vote in Flyover.

In East Coast and West Coast, Marsy got 49 percent of the vote, Dosy got 48, and Lammsy got three percent.  In Flyover Marsy got 40 percent, Dosy got 52 percent, and Lammsy got eight percent.  In numbers of votes, in the East Coast and West Coast, Marsy got 392,000 votes, Dosy got 384,000, and Lammsy got 24,000.  In Flyover, Marsy got 320 thousand, Dosy got 416 thousand, and Lammsy got 64 thousand.

Clearly, Dosy is the winner with 800 thousand votes against Marsy’s 712 thousand and Lammsy’s 90 thousand.  Wrong!  Marsy is the winner with six electoral votes as opposed to Dosy’s four electoral votes.

This “rigging” wasn’t done by anybody involved in this hypothetical election.  It was done in the Eighteenth Century with the approval of the Constitution.

Ironically, this “rigging” benefited the candidate who complained throughout his campaign that the election was “rigged”.

See also “The election was stolen, really!