[WashingtonPost] Here's a fun little thought experiment demonstrating the fundamental arbitrariness of the electoral college: Had two state borders been drawn just a little bit differently, shifting a total of four counties from one state to another, Hillary Clinton would have won the election.
And if you shifted LA to Illinois, Trump would've won California. So what?
Take a look at the imaginary map above, which comes from an nifty online tool called Redraw the States. It was created by a mathematician and data scientist.This map moves Lake County, Ill. to Wisconsin, turning that state blue. It moves Escambia, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa counties from the Florida panhandle to neighboring Alabama. That's enough to turn Florida blue. With victories in Wisconsin and Florida, Clinton squeaks to victory in the electoral college, 270 to 268.
Exact same votes, slightly different borders, radically different outcome: the capriciousness of the electoral college laid bare.
It also shows the fundamental wisdom of the system - populous areas can't overwhelm flyover country, taxing 51% of the people to fund the lifestyles of the other 49%.
Recall that the electoral college system is mostly winner-take-all (Maine and Nebraska are the exceptions, assigning most of their electors by congressional district). In Illinois, for instance, it does not matter whether Clinton won by 859,000 votes (her actual margin) or just 5,000 votes - in either scenario, all of the state's electoral votes go to her.
Here's another thought experiment, and you don't need a map. What if a million dead and illegals in Chicago didn't vote of Clinton? Then the state of Illinois goes to Trump.
That 859,000-vote margin means Clinton could lose hundreds of thousands of votes and still win Illinois handily. In Lake County, just north of Chicago, Clinton beat Trump by about 70,000 votes. That's greater than Trump's winning margin (about 20,000 votes) in the entire state of Wisconsin.
So, if you let Wisconsin annex Lake County, that state's margin shifts from 20,000 votes in favor of Trump, to 50,000 votes in favor of Clinton. And Clinton still wins Illinois, just by a slightly smaller margin. The net electoral result is that she wins both states.
Another thought experiment - if frogs had wings, would they be pigeons?
