ONE POLICE PLAZA — Hillary Clinton's growing lead in the popular vote is proof the Electoral College should be abolished, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.
Clinton currently has 2.3 million more votes than President-elect Donald Trump, who secured the presidency by getting more than the required 270 Electoral College votes.
"It's inconceivable to me that the will of 2.3 million people has been ignored in this result," de Blasio said. "It just doesn't make sense. And it's supposed to be in our Constitution one person, one vote. That's not what happened here."
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De Blasio said efforts to secure a recount by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein in the key battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania was understandable but would not likely change the results of the election.
Stein has raised $6 million online to fund the recounts, more than double her goal, and is suing for a recount in Wisconsin to begin. Clinton supports the effort.
"We've never seen such a disconnect between the popular vote and the Electoral College vote in the history of this entire country," the mayor said.
"I think it creates a huge question for our democracy. How is the president-elect going to proceed knowing he had 2.3 million more people vote for his opponent?" he added.
De Blasio formerly worked as Clinton's campaign manager during her first successful run for U.S. Senator representing New York, and served as a Clinton surrogate during this year's campaign. Since Trump's victory, de Blasio has been highly critical of Trump and his potentially divisive and discriminatory policies.
The mayor says he told Trump during a meeting at Trump Tower that New Yorkers were fearful of his potential policies.
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When Trump appointed his campaign CEO Steve Bannon as senior adviser, de Blasio said that white supremacists now had a link to the White House because of Bannon's connections to the so-called "alt-right," a movement that rejects mainstream conservatism and promotes racist views.
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In a policy speech at Cooper Union, de Blasio assured New Yorkers that the city would not cooperate with possible Trump policies such as deporting undocumented immigrants, requiring Muslim immigrants to join a registry or reinstituting the unconstitutional use of stop-and-frisk.
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The mayor said the city would reject federal aid if it was tied to discriminatory policies. But de Blasio stopped short of saying that the electors of the Electoral College should cast their votes for Clinton as the Constitution allows, but which most experts say is highly unlikely.
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Even Trump has questioned the Electoral College.
De Blasio said the country missed an opportunity in the 2000 presidential election, the last time a candidate won the popular vote but lost the election due to the Electoral College, to change the process and shouldn't let that happen again.
Trump's victory is the fourth time in U.S. history that the winner of the popular vote will not become president.
"Now anyone who believes the Electoral College has created an imbalance in our country needs to get to work either on abolishing it or creating rules at the state level to say that the winner of the popular vote by law deserves that state's electoral votes," de Blasio said.
