As of 4:00 PM PT, Hillary Clinton’s lead over Trump in the popular vote is around 615,000 votes and counting (with a fairly substantial number of votes from California still to come in).
That compares to Al Gore’s final vote lead of 543,000 over George Bush in 2000.
Not that it means anything in this crazy, mixed-up system we have in this country for electing our presidents, but it does serve as a bit of a balm for still-tender wounds.
Still, it’s amazing that the way in which a population is arranged and dispersed is more important in deciding who wins a race than the actual number of votes cast for the candidates. I used to never be that bothered by the electoral college, mostly because it almost always correlates with the popular vote anyway and, quite frankly, watching the states being called one-by-one is a lot more fun than watching a slow moving ticker all night. I also just figured that 2000 was a once-in-a-lifetime fluke that was unlikely to be replicated any time soon.
Now, I’m seriously re-thinking this whole electoral college thing and believe it should be relegated to the junk heap of history as a now-obsolete relic of a distant time.