By Steven R. Maher

Hillary Clinton may have been defeated in the electoral college, but she apparently has won the majority of votes in the 2016 presidential election.

This happened to candidate Al Gore as well in 2000. Filmmaker Michael Moore has called for the abolition of the electoral college. Given that George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump were not the choice of the majority of American voters, that might not be a bad idea.

During a class in public speaking I took at Nichols College, the professor illustrated the way language can be used to mask a falsehood without telling an outright lie. (This would be something along the line of saying, “It all depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”)

During the Cold War, there was a contest to see who built a better car: the United States or the Soviet Union. The American automobile won. Pravda, the Soviet newspaper (ironically, given all the lies it told, Pravda is Russian for “Truth”), reported the results as follows: “In an international competition of automobiles, the Soviet vehicle came in second, while the American vehicle came in next to last.”

The Pravda statement was true. It was a clever way of disguising the truth, which is that Americans made a better car than Russians. Reading it, one would think there were many nations participating in the competition. This wasn’t so, but the Russians were denying the truth without lying.

Another example of this would be: “Donald Trump was elected President in a landslide, with Hillary Clinton coming in second.”

That would be true if you looked at the electoral college only. It would disguise the fact that a majority of the American electorate voted for Clinton for President and rejected Donald Trump.

There is no mandate in this election for Trump.

Michael Moore is right. We should abolish the electoral college.

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For Donald Trump. Joan and Bob sing Woody: