A political party is not a democracy. It is a private club, where members set their own rules, and these rules can change every year, especially every election year, so that the party leaders can maneuver their preferred choice to nomination for high office.
It has happened before, when GOP rule makers in 2012 modified party procedures to ensure the choice of Mitt Romney for the presidential nomination. It happened in 1968, when Democratic Party mavens pressured delegates into choosing Vice President Hubert Humphrey for the top slot, even though he had not won any primary contest. That was the year when Robert Kennedy was assassinated, and George McGovern had already won four primary contests.
This year, Donald Trump has begun complaining loudly that he leads in many examples of the popular vote, and therefore that should be the ruling factor, not the rules allocating delegates according to arcane formulas imposed by state party leaders.
But leading in the popular vote has never been a guarantee of winning the presidency, even in the general election held in November, much less the private club competitions held during caucuses or primary elections. In fact, Americans do not vote directly for a President at all. Rather, on Election Day, they vote for a group of delegates to what's called the Electoral College, who then meet later and choose a President.
However, those in the Electoral College are under no strict legal obligation to vote for any particular candidate, despite their earlier promise to do so. In the past, they have been allegations of electors being bought off.
The Constitution -- in place since 1789 -- stipulates that each state shall name electors, who then meet to make a final choice for President. Normally, these electors do in fact follow their instructions and vote for the candidate to whom they were committed.
However, winning the popular vote is no guarantee that a candidate will also win the electoral vote. There have been several instances where a candidate has attracted more votes from citizens, but fewer votes in the Electoral College.
In addition, there has been at least one instance where a candidate racked up both a popular plurality and its corresponding Electoral College delegates, and still lost the presidency.
That was in 1876, when Republican Rutherford B. Hayes defeated Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. The Democratic candidate had won the popular vote, as well as 184 uncontested electoral votes, compared to 165 for Hayes. A sure thing? Not really, since a winner needed 185 electoral votes, leaving Tilden one vote short of victory. And there were 20 more electoral votes to be allocated.
In the end, and after much maneuvering and political wheeling and dealing, Hayes was inaugurated.
For a more recent example, consider the election of 2000, when Republican George W. Bush was behind Democrat Al Gore in the popular vote, but still got to the White House by winning more electoral votes. Some say he was aided in this maneuvering by the Supreme Court, which stepped in to stop a recount in Florida, thereby giving Bush a lead in electoral votes, and the presidency.
All in all, it's a messy system, set in place at a time when framers of the Constitution did not fully trust ordinary voters, setting up an intermediary known as the Electoral College, perhaps intending to prevent a demagogue from racking up a tremendous lead in the popular vote and moving the country away from a proper democracy.
While it would seem there have been abuses of the Electoral College system -- only two would qualify as aberrations -- on the whole, it has worked reasonably well, as the allocation of delegates to the Electoral College from the various states helps to balance population preferences and keep out dictators.
So far.
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