To the editor: Electoral vote vs. popular vote

A guest editorial from the New York Daily News advocates that we abandon the electoral college and elect a president by using the popular vote only. The way it would work is that each state would send all their electoral votes to whoever wins the most votes in the United States as a whole. In other words the winner of the national popular vote would receive all 538 electoral votes. I can’t imagine why any Democrat would want it any other way. Let’s look at the last two national elections. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote by 2,868,524 votes. If you back out the California popular vote, Donald Trump wins the popular vote by 1,401,454 votes. In 2020, Joe Biden won the popular vote by 7,060,528 votes. Again back out the California vote. Biden still wins the popular vote by 1,554,781 votes. So we now back out the New York vote. Trump now wins the national popular vote by 438,108 votes.