I am not one to normally talk about politics nor do I want to bring up a large discussion of right or wrong regarding the outcome of who won.  I feel strongly that each person has a right to vote as well as vote for a candidate they feel strongly about.  However, after seeing the final results Wednesday morning, my very curious 7 1/2-year-old son had a lot of questions about the Electoral College.  Not to mention how could someone win overall without winning the popular vote.

Now maybe everyone else is more versed in politics than me but I feel every election I try to remember why we use the Electoral College and what is a good way to explain when asked about it.  Yesterday, I was reminded of this great CP Grey video about the Electoral College and thought I would share it, as it really does a good job in showing why it was established as well as the potential flaws in using it today.  In fact, if you watch it till the end you will see why specific states were targeted on election night as they are every election.  Also, as a bonus, CP Grey updated parts where he gave percentages to give context after this election.

via The Trouble with the Electoral College - YouTube

 

Do you feel the Electoral College is working as intended or should we just change to a popular vote where each vote is equal?  

Ok after writing everything so far I have to put one political plug.  We can’t change the results of the election and need to find a way to work together as a country.  The popular votes were still pretty close and that means a lot of us are not in agreement on some of the issues discussed during the election.  I hope in the upcoming months/year we work together as a society and address some of these key issues that seem to be bothering both sides. Finally, as the election cycle is now over I have seen lots of hate shared in my Facebook and Twitter feeds.  This is not going to help us unite as a country so I am going to try hard not to share those in an effort of not continuing to spread the hate.  I fully understand it is happening and I am not pretending it doesn’t exist but because I want to be more focused on positives going forward as we do need to find a way to make peace so #OnlyShareLove (this idea was taken from my wife and you can find her little project about it here).