Politics

The real kick in the pants about the 2016 World Series is that the Chicago Cubs didn’t win. They tied with the Cleveland Indians.

There’s a lot of angst about Hillary Clinton currently being ahead in the national popular vote, even though Donald Trump won the electoral vote. While there are hundreds of thousands of votes yet to be tallied, she may very well end up with more total votes than Trump. But it doesn’t matter, because the popular vote isn’t how we elect Presidents.

The best explanation of the electoral college that I’ve heard was from former Texas State Representative, attorney, and Constitutional speaker Rick Green. He explains the reasoning for the electoral system by comparing it to America’s favorite pastime. No, not texting, baseball. The guy who invented the World Series (was that Pete Rose or Al Gore? I can never remember…), decided that the World Champions should be the team that played the best over a series of games, in different cities, with different players in and out of the game throughout the series. That’s why the series is determined by the best of seven games with teams playing in both home cities. The champion should be the team that plays the best overall, under different circumstances.

Suppose for a minute that the winner of the World Series was the team that scored the most runs over seven games. That sounds logical, right? Well, actually not. In 1960, the Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series over the New York Yankees four games to three. Strangely enough, the Yankees scored 55 runs during the series, but the Pirates only scored 27. The Yankees should have won, right? Nope, because the Pirates won four games. Matching up against different pitchers, on different nights, in different parks, the Pirates played a better overall series and became the champs. Just because, during a couple of the games, the Yankees lit up a couple of pitchers and ran up the score, should they have won the series? I don’t think so. In fact, this scenario happens in baseball playoff and world series situations about 15 percent of the time.

The electoral college works on exactly the same theory, which is why the Founders created this model in the first place. If the President was determined simply by the raw number of popular votes nationwide, then New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago would determine the winner every four years and at least 46 states would be subservient to four, where over 50% of the population lives. No candidate would ever land in any state other than the four most populous. Fortunately, the Founders believed that a President must appeal to citizens throughout the nation, not just heavily the most heavily populated areas. The more well-rounded the presidential candidate, the better for all. The Founders also recognized that every locale was different, and citizens thereof had different desires, goals, and priorities not to mention accents. That’s one of the reasons that there is such a heavy emphasis on local representation and government at the state level.

Oh, and the Cubs? They scored 27 runs throughout the 2016 World Series. The Indians? Also 27, hence the tie. However, the rules of the game deem the winner as the team who wins the best out of seven games.

And that’s how the Chicago Cubs won the electoral vote.