Sir: I did not support the candidature of Donald Trump as he appears not to have the gravitas to be the president of any country, talk less of the United States of America. Nevertheless, the reaction of the supporters of Hillary Clinton is baffling. Their protests reveal a gross misunderstanding of the electoral process and constitutional history of their country. The name United States of America was not glibly chosen as a country’s name, it literally means that several independent states and territories of disparate population sizes and levels of development came together as a Federation to propagate their mutual interests.

According to the Federalist Papers, these states had to negotiate how a president for the Union would be choosen by ALL the States. Small and less developed states did not want a situation where states with large populations would solely decide the winner of an election. Thus each state was allocated electoral college votes based on their population and corresponding to the number of senators and house of representatives members they had in Congress.

Basically, the states and not necessarily the population in those states decide who will be the president of the USA. Otherwise, Hillary Clinton would have won simply by winning in large states like California and New York while ignoring small states. In fact, according to the polls, Trump won more states than his opponent which is what the authors of the USA constitution wanted, that is that a majority of the states are involved in the selection of a president.

In the elections, the Republican party won a majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate, a result which largely corresponds with the electoral college votes. What Hillary supporters are saying is that persons who voted Republican at the congressional elections would turn around and vote Democrat in the presidential elections that held at the same time. If the Democrats could not muster enough votes to take Congress, how could they expect to take the Presidency especially with a candidate that wounded national pride when the U.S. ambassador to Libya died under her watch.
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The protesters are not alleging ballot box snatching or electoral malpractice but are rather protesting against the US Constitution because its provisions relating to the Electoral College did not align with their expectations. After all they accepted Barack Obama’s election under the same constitution’s electoral college.

Please, the protesters should not join the African club of protesting the result of an election if the result does not go their way.

Obiechina John, FCT, Abuja