Repeated controversy over U.S. winner-takes-all system

The U.S presidential election ended as Hillary Clinton conceded to Donald Trump. However, the public continues to raise its voice against the state-based winner-takes-all system. Trump won the presidency by winning 290 electoral votes, more than half of the total electoral votes of 528, to 228 electoral votes of Clinton. On the contrary, when it comes to the popular votes, Clinton earned 330,000 more votes by earning 47.7 percent (60.27 million votes) against Trump’s 47.4 percent (59.94 million votes).

Early this month, the U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) commented about the loophole of the state-based winner-takes-all system according to election analysts. NPR pointed out, “In a winner-takes-all state basis, a candidate gets the entire electoral votes of a state by leading only one vote. In an extreme case, a candidate can win the election by winning only 23 percent of popular votes nationwide.” In other words, if you assume that a candidate wins its contender by leading only one vote in every state and election vote count starts from a state where the least number of electoral votes is assigned, in the end, the candidate wins the presidency after getting the 40th state with only 23 percent of popular votes.

Clinton supporters went to social media, including Twitter and Facebook, for anti-Trump movement, and they are flooding online with scathing slogans, such as “Trump is not my president,” “Clinton won more popular votes” and “Clinton is our president.” Liberal filmmaker Michael Moor tweeted, “We need to remember that Clinton won the popular vote.”

Even some Clinton supporters started online petition calling on the electors of the electoral college to ignore the election results and vote for Clinton when they meet and cast their votes on Dec. 19. Clinton supporters are saying that the electors are not necessarily have to vote with their party and can change their positions by paying some penalties in some states.

Hyong-gwon Pu bookum90@donga.com