President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday morning defended the Electoral College as “genius,” days after criticizing it.
“The Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the smaller ones, into play. Campaigning is much different!” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning.
He also refuted arguments that he should have lost the presidential race because Hillary Clinton defeated him in the popular vote, tweeting, “If the election were based on total popular vote I would have campaigned in N.Y. Florida and California and won even bigger and more easily.”
{mosads}Trump on Sunday told “60 Minutes” that he still has issues with the Electoral College.
“I’m not going to change my mind just because I won,” the president-elect said. “But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win.”
Trump infamously called the Electoral College a “disaster for democracy” during the night of the 2012 election, when it appeared President Obama would lose the popular vote but still win the presidency. Obama ended up winning the popular vote as well when all votes were tallied.
Clinton currently leads Trump in the popular vote by about 800,000 votes, but Trump won the presidency by winning 290 electoral votes.
Including 2016, a presidential candidate has won the popular vote but lost the presidency five times in American history, most recently Al Gore in 2000.
Millions of supporters have signed a petition calling on members of the Electoral College to vote for Clinton when they meet in December, arguing she should become president because she won popular vote.
And some Democratic stalwarts have called for a reexamination of the Electoral College.
“We may want to take a look at the whole Electoral College, which is seating a man for president who didn’t get the most votes. This is something we need a serious discussion on,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said.