[quote=livinincali][quote=zk]
I’m not sure what you mean by massively (nor am I sure why you seem to imply that it’s not important what happens when a candidate wins by a solid but not massive margin), but it would be very easy to win the popular vote in a 3-candidate race by a solid margin and fail to get 50% of the electoral college.
To have congressmen choose a president is really bad. To have them choose a president in a way that a Wyomingan’s vote essentially counts 65 times as much as a Californian’s is a travesty of democracy.[/quote]
It’s happened once in the country’s history so it’s not common. Jackson won the popular vote by a significant margin but congress elected Quincy Adams. I wouldn’t call it a travesty though. It split the one party system of the Democratic-Republican party into 2 parties. Jackson won the 1828 election by a landslide. In some respects it woke the voters up. Maybe that’s exactly what we need in our current political process.
Whether it’s common or not is completely irrelevant.
How it changed the political parties in that particular instance is also irrelevant.
Jackson got 41% of the popular vote to Adams’s 31% (and won the electoral vote 99-84), and Adams was “elected” president.
How is that not a travesty of democracy?
How would it not again be a travesty of democracy if Bloomberg or Sanders won a solid plurality of both popular and electoral votes, but republican nominee and third-place finisher in the general election Ted Cruz was elected president?
