Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant’s enthusiastic support of Donald Trump for president calls to mind the old adage that “politics makes strange bedfellows.”
They do have a few things in common, the most obvious being an intense dislike and distrust of the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. For Trump that hasn’t always been the case. In the past, before he decided to run for president, he has expressed admiration for the Clintons.
But aside from being a loyal Republican, supporting the party’s nominee, you wouldn’t think Bryant, who grew up in a blue collar family and who espouses Christian conservative moral values, would have much personal affection for an abrasive, rich New Yorker with a reputation as a woman chaser, some of whom now declare they didn’t want to get caught or grabbed as the case might have been.
Bryant didn’t start out supporting Trump. Early on he was for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a conservative whose philosophy more likely mirrors Bryant’s Mississippi values.
But when Cruz’s campaign failed in the primaries, Bryant jumped on the Trump train, and the presidential nominee and the Mississippi governor reportedly have become close personally as well as politically. Bryant is now one of Trump’s surrogates and has raised a lot of money for the campaign.
That’s fine. It should be expected that Mississippi’s Republican governor would support the national Republican ticket for president, but he doesn’t have to echo every outrageous thing Trump says.
Yet Bryant repeated on a talk radio program the other day the Trump mantra that “the election is rigged.”
He went on to point out that liberals in densely populated cities in states like New York and California have more influence in the Electoral College than the “flyover” states in middle America. He’s right, but that doesn’t mean the election is rigged.
The Electoral College works this way: Citizens of the United States do not directly elect the president or the vice president; instead they choose “electors”, who usually pledge to vote for particular candidates. Electors are apportioned to each of the 50 states as well as to the District of Columbia. The number of electors in each state is equal to the number of members of Congress to which the state is entitled. The District of Columbia has the same number of electors as the least populous state, currently three. Therefore, there are currently 538 electors, corresponding to the 435 representatives and 100 senators, plus the three additional electors from the District of Columbia. The candidate who receives a majority of electoral votes (currently 270) for the office of president or of vice president is elected to that office. If no candidate receives a majority for president, then the House of Representatives will select the president, with each state delegation having one vote. If no candidate receives a majority for vice president, then the Senate will select the vice president, with each senator having one vote.
Four times in America’s history, the Electoral College has resulted in the election of president who did not receive the most popular votes. The most recent was in 2000 when Democrat Al Gore lost to Republican George W. Bush. But usually the candidate who receives the most popular votes also gets the majority of the electoral vote.
Is there a better way to elect a president and vice president? We doubt there is. But if Bryant knows a better way he should suggest it instead of saying the system is “rigged”.
