how is it that a presidential candidate can win the popular vote but not win the white house isn’t the whole point of voting so that the people can decide who wins well it’s a little more complicated than that in our democracy our country’s unique system of electing presidents was seen when Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton that’s thanks to the Electoral College the Electoral College was created during the 1787 Constitutional Convention as a compromise between the framers who wanted a direct popular vote and those who preferred to have Congress decide the president that compromised says a group of electors chosen by each state will pick the president the Electoral College is made up of 538 members in order to be elected president you need to get a majority or at least 270 electoral votes this system means that more weight is given to an individual voter in a small state than the vote of someone in a large state which in the past has led to outcomes that are at odds with the popular vote so why are we still using the system to decide who the president should be it would take a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and efforts to do so have never