Since the President is still talking about the size of his electoral college victory, I figure this topic isn’t too stale.

Among the enraging sentiments I see from Trump supporters on social media is this (paraphrasing): “Complaining about the popular vote margin is like complaining about a baseball game where your team loses even though they got more hits”.

Let’s leave the sports metaphor aside for a minute. The point of this argument seems to be that the popular vote is irrelevant in light of the electoral college victory. However, every president, Republican and Democrat alike, will try to claim a “mandate” based on the size of their popular vote win. It clearly has weight when a newly elected president argues that the American people are behind his (or her :-( ) agenda. In fact, this matters so much that Trump tried to manufacture a popular vote win out of make-believe fraudulent votes. So, it’s more than a little hypocritical to tell those opposing Trump that the popular vote is irrelevant.

As far as the sports analogy goes, here’s a news flash: The rules of baseball – like those of our country – are not immutable (see: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/rulechng.shtml). Baseball rules are changed for many reasons, but here the most relevant one is to make the game fairer. And while in baseball “fair” means balanced between offense and defense so that play of the game is more interesting, the analogy works for our country as well, where “fair” means democratic, just, and balanced between the national and regional popular will.

So, if the outcome of our elections is repeatedly out of balance or unfair, it’s important to make it an issue because it may mean it’s time to change the rules.

Sorry if these were obvious points. Apparently obvious points (and indisputable facts) bear a lot of repeating these days.