Hillary Clinton called to abolish the Electoral College in an interview Wednesday during her What Happened book tour.
The former secretary of state said in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN that it was time for the United States to change the way presidents are elected.
She said: ‘I think it needs to be eliminated,’ Clinton responded to Cooper. ‘I’d like to see us move beyond it, yes.’
Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes, but didn’t cinch the election because Trump won the Electoral College. He earned 304 Electoral College votes and she won 227.
President Trump took to Twitter Wednesday evening, saying: ‘Crooked Hillary Clinton blames everybody (and every thing) but herself for her election loss. She lost the debates and lost her direction!’
‘I think it needs to be eliminated’: Hillary Clinton said it was time for the US to change how it elects presidents on Wednesday
President Trump seemed to notice Hillary Clinton’s interview, saying she blames everyone and everything for her loss
Citing no evidence, Trump has disputed that Clinton won the popular vote and started a voter fraud investigation.
The president has also said is more difficult to win the Electoral College and has shared maps of what states went red versus blue on Twitter.
Clinton is promoting her book What Happened which is about her devastating loss to the president. Her new book, which hit book stores Tuesday, attempts to explain why she lost the election.
Clinton spoke to Anderson Cooper while promoting her new book What Happened which focuses on her devastating election loss
Hillary Clinton beat President Donald Trump by .2 percent of the popular vote during the 2016 general election. Five other presidents have won the popular vote but lost the election
Each state is given a certain amount of electoral votes, depending on their population. So a populous state like California has 55 electoral votes while a small state like North Dakota has just three.
In 48 states, electors must cast a vote for the candidate who wins the state’s popular vote. So even if the votes are split nearly 50-50, as was the case in Florida in 2016, Trump still won all 29 of the states electoral votes because he won the popular vote by a thin margin.
Maine and Nebraska are the exceptions to the rule, giving out electoral votes to each candidate proportionally, based on the results of the popular vote.
There have been complaints in recent years that this system is perhaps unfair, since it causes some votes to be weighted more than others. One of the issues is that voters in solidly-blue or red states are becoming discouraged to vote, if they are members of a rival party, since their vote likely won’t be reflected in the states electoral votes.
| YEAR | WINNER | # OF VOTES | # OF ELECTORAL VOTES | LOWER | # OF VOTES | # OF ELECTORAL VOTES |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Donald Trump (R) | 59,131,310 | 289 | Hillary Clinton (D) | 59,293,071 | 219 |
| 2000 | George W. Bush (R) | 50,456,002 | 271 | Al Gore (D) | 50,999,897 | 266 |
| 1888 | Benjamin Harrison (R) | 5,443,892 | 233 | Grover Cleveland (D) | 5,534,488 | 168 |
| 1876 | Rutherford B. Hayes (R) | 4,0347,311 | 185 | Samuel J. Tilden (D) | 4,288,546 | 184 |
| 1824** | John Q. Adams (D-R) | 113,122 | 84 | Andrew Jackson (D-R) | 151,271 | 99 |
| **The 1824 election was decided by the House of Representatives because no candidate won a plurality of the electoral votes | ||||||