Only in U.S.:Winning Popular Vote Does not Necessarily Secure Post

It is only in America that if a candidate wins the majority of the popular vote in a presidential elections, he does not necessarily wins the post.. that is: the legend of the 'Electoral College'..

In 2008, Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state got nearly 3 million more votes than her then Republican rival, Donald Trump.

However, his meager victory in critical and key states crossed the threshold of 270 votes needed from the Electoral College to win the White House, garnering 306 of the votes of the most senior electorate.

Millions of disaffected Americans at the time signed a petition calling on top Republican voters to block the path to him, but the efforts were mostly unsuccessful, because only two Texas members adhered to the invitation, leaving Trump with 304 votes.

Republicans denounced the move as a miserable attempt by activists, refusing to accept defeat.

The exceptional situation in 2016 of losing the popular vote and despite that winning the elections, was not unprecedented, as four former presidents arrived at the White House in this way.

The first was John Quincy Adams in 1824 against Andrew Jackson, where the latter won the majority of the popular vote, but the first snatched victory in the Electoral College, beating his opponent by 32 votes.

This was repeated in the 1876 elections, in which Rutherford Hayes won the presidency despite the superiority of his Democratic rival, Samuel Tilden, in the popular vote.

In 1888, Benjamin Harrison defeated his rival, Grover Cleveland, who was then President of the United States, by winning the majority votes in the Electoral College.

Not long ago, the 2000 elections saw great confusion between George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore.

Gore won by 500 thousand votes over Bush at the national level, but when Bush won the Florida vote, the total number of votes for the electorate rose to 271, which secured him the presidency.

With this year's elections, the question arises about the role of the Electoral College (the Electoral College) in the process of choosing the President of the United States of America.

This electoral system continues to raise controversy in the United States, especially as Trump threatens not to recognize the outcome of the vote if his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, wins.

The presidential election system goes back to the Constitution of 1787, and was defined by the "founding fathers", including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, as a compromise between the election of a president by direct universal suffrage and his election by Congress.

Pursuant to this system, a presidential candidate must obtain the absolute majority of the electorate's votes, or 270 out of 538 votes, to win the White House. Despite several attempts in Congress to make amendments or cancel the electoral college, the matter has not changed in 233 years.

The US Constitution allows major voters to vote for any of the two candidates, regardless of the results of the popular vote. But in 2020 the Supreme Court ruled that states can punish major voters who abstain from voting by making laws that compel them to vote based on the outcome of that state's popular vote.