Everyone needs to cool down. The 2016 presidential campaign may have reached dispiriting new lows, but voter registration in America has soared to new heights, as 200,081,377 people now are registered to vote-the highest number in U.S. history.
Of those, Trump received about 62.9 million votes, while Hillary received 65.5 million, meaning she won the popular vote. But a greater majority-71.7 million registered voters-did not vote for either candidate.
And although Hillary won the popular vote, Trump won the electoral vote, which makes him president. But he should remember he still needs to win the confidence of the 68.75 percent of registered voters who did not vote for him.
If you think about that total of just over 200 million registered voters, you'll see that the votes break down this way: Neither candidate got an actual, more-than-50-percent majority of that number. Instead, Clinton got 32.75 percent of the number of registered voters, Trump got 31.35 percent, and 35.9 percent of registered voters either did not vote or voted for someone other than Clinton or Trump.
The Electoral College is for situations like this, in that each pledged elector casts his or her vote for the candidate whom the elector's state voted for. This is the system that has been handed down to us from almost 240 years ago.
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If we had only a popular election, none of the candidates would have had a real majority. Plus, there would have been a greater likelihood of violence, given the passions of both the right and left.
Dwight Messner
Grand Forks
