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primary

Welp.

Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images.

Ughhhh.

Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images.

So we ... ugh. Hold on.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

I just need a second.

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images.

OK. Donald Trump is actually the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

For reals.

Lets face it: This is a scary time.

A guy with a real, honest-to-god shot at being the president of the United States is the same guy who once told a lawyer who requested a break to pump breast milk during a 2011 deposition in court that she was "disgusting."

Photo by Isaac Brekken/Getty Images.

It's a wild time to be alive. I'm scared. You're scared.

You know who's the most scared? Children.

Yep. Poor, sweet, innocent children. It's true.

Trump is scaring kids. As his campaign has picked up upsetting amounts of support across the country, parents have taken to Twitter to express their grief at the fact that the former steak salesman and reality star is giving their kids the straight-up heebie-jeebies.

Parents like these:

And these:

People who don't have children themselves have also noticed the fear Trump instills in our country's youth:

Trump even made one young "Star Wars" fan suspicious of her own Trump-supporter grandparents.

And he's certainly scaring kids from other countries, and those who have friends from immigrant families.

Which is something really worth thinking about.

We adults know that Trump can't really deport the millions of people that he says he wants to because we know how impossible enacting that plan would be. But kids don't know that.

Imagine being a kid, seeing an adult on TV talking about kicking families that look like yours out of the country. Of course you'd be terrified.

This is just a small handful of tweets. The truth is, Trump's rhetoric has been scaring America's youth for a while now.

There's been an uptick in violence associated with the Trump campaign, and many of the incidents have involved young voters — from the young woman who was repeatedly assaulted and called names at a Trump rally to the 26-year-old who was sucker-punched in the face ... also at a Trump rally.

Photo by Ty Wright/Getty Images.

Last month, The Huffington Post made a video highlighting instances of young people being negatively affected by the Trump campaign, and NPR's Cokie Roberts recently blasted Trump for creating an environment wherein kids can be hateful toward each other.

How do you make a child feel safe in a world like this?

In December, Melissa Yassini, a Muslim-American wrote on Facebook that she found her 8-year-old daughter Sofia distraught and packing a bag, terrified that Trump would kick all Muslims out of America.

The Facebook post caught the attention of Kerri Peek, a U.S. Army veteran, who rallied other vets around the country to respond using the hashtag #IWillProtectYou and let Sofia know that they would stand up to anyone who tried to hurt her family and other families like them.

Now that Trump is one of the two final contenders for next resident of the White House, there's a lot of questions we need to answer.

Some of them are big questions like, "WTF, America?" and "Is that really how a contested convention works?"

The most important questions, however, are often the ones asked by the smallest and most scared amongst us. Questions asked by children who don't want to be separated from their friends and family, who don't understand why a man who acts like a bully is so close to being president, and who don't get to vote but have to live in the world our votes create.

At the end of the day, what we really need to ask ourselves is this: Do we reallywant a president who scares our children?

Photo by Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images.

GAAHHH!

Sorry.

OK, so. This ... looks bad.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

Donald Trump's resounding victory in Indiana last night — and Ted Cruz and John Kasich's departures from the race — means that, barring a last-minute catastrophe, he's all but wrapped up the Republican nomination for president.

While it's more than a little discouraging to think that Trump, a man who's made so many bigoted comments about Mexicans, Muslims, women, black people, and Jews (and that's not even a full list of groups he's offended) is still so beloved by so many people, the truth is that though the 11 million total votes cast in Trump's favor this far have been good enough to best his rivals and let him walk away with a commanding victory in the Republican primary, it doesn't actually make him all that popular in the grand scheme of things.

11 million votes might sound like a lot, but there are 318 million Americans, meaning that, currently, only 3.5% of the population has cast a ballot for Trump. That's peanuts. Even if we grant that a lot of those are children and others who can't vote, that's still peanuts. Not even peanuts. It's just peas. Or just nuts.

But I digress.

To put that 11 million number in perspective, here's a look at how many more millions of Americans do noble, inspiring, or just generally kind of cool things each year than have voted for Trump's brand of hater-ade this year.

1. Volunteering (62.6 million people)

62.6 million Americans volunteered in 2013. That's 51.6 million more people than have voted for Trump so far.

Photo by Randy Shropshire/Getty Images.

Statistically speaking, at this point, you're about five times more likely to find Americans who recently made brownies for a church bake sale or escorted a 90-year-old nursing home resident to the bathroom than you are to encounter Americans who bought hard enough into Trump's BS about Mexicans being rapists and Muslims being terrifying death-splosion monsters to cast a vote for him.

Unless of course, you're on the internet, in which case, they'll find you.

2. Going to a baseball game to watch a last-place team play (which people did 14.1 million times)

Always next year, Papi. Photo by Adam Glanzman/Getty Images.

Attendance at the stadiums of the six worst MLB teams in their division last year totaled 14.1 million. That means 3.1 million people thought it was a better use of their time and money to watch the completely hopeless Boston Red Sox, Oakland Athletics, Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies, Detroit Tigers, and Colorado Rockies flail helplessly at a series of 90-mile-per-hour fastballs for three-plus hours than to cast a vote for Donald Trump.

Sure, some of them probably went to games more than once, but these attendance figures don't count the millions of fans who, even more bafflingly, went to watch those teams lose on the road. When you factor that in, it's clear that more Americans spent the summer of 2015 clinging to an inspiringly cockeyed and delusional but ultimately charming hope that it still just might be Joey Votto's year than who voted for the host of "Celebrity Apprentice" to become the Republican nominee for president of the United States.

3. Being Latino (55 million people)

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images.

Among the 55 million Americans who identify as Latino, Trump currently boasts an impressive 77% unfavorable rating.

That means there are almost four times more Latino-Americans who hate Trump's guts (42 million) then there are total people who have voted for him so far.

4. Using wind to power their homes (approx. 45 million people)

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images.

Wind turbines provide power to an estimated 18 million American homes. Given that the average American household contains 2.5 people, that's about 45 million people helping save planet Earth by doing nothing more than living high off that sweet breezy crude — 34 million more people than have pulled the lever (or filled in the dot or dimpled the chad) for the former CEO of Trump Steaks.

5. Donating to charity (265 million people)

Photo by Albert Herring/Wikimedia Commons.

Americans not only gave $358 billion in 2014, but a Gallup poll taken the previous year found that 83% made some sort of charitable donation, which works out to about 265 million people.

That's not only a staggering amount of humans; it's real money! Definitely more real than the donations Donald Trump promised to make to veterans organizations and then only sort of did.

6. Supporting the right to affordable, reproductive health care (175 million people)

Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images.

55% of Americans — about 175 million people — favor federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Even if you extrapolate out Trump's percentage of the Republican primary vote (40%) to half or all of the electorate, Planned Parenthood still comes out ahead.

Not getting ovarian cancer and being able to choose when or if you're ready to start a family: still more popular than giving the doofus behind Trump Airlines the nuclear codes.

7. Visiting America's national parks (which people did 307.2 million times)

Meh. Photo by Karen Bleier/Getty Images.

America's national parks recorded a whopping 307.2 million visits in 2015.

That's like if 11 million people each voted for 28 Donald Trumps...

Ahhhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

...perhaps the most terrifying "28 of something" that it is possible to have — narrowly edging out bees, undetonated land mines, and phone calls from your mom where she didn't leave a voicemail.

8. Watching "Let It Go" on YouTube (526 million views)

Photo by Matt Stroshane/Disney Parks via Getty Images

As of May 4, 2016, the official video for "Disney's 'Frozen' 'Let it Go' Sequence Performed by Idina Menzel" had been watched an ungodly 526 million times! If there was a way to put it to a vote, a 3-year-old theater-pop anthem of self-empowerment from a children's movie would pile-drive Donald Trump into the mat in the biggest landslide in history.

(Is it too late for the Democrats to nominate "Disney's 'Frozen 'Let It Go' Sequence Performed by Idina Menzel?" Asking for a friend).

9. Commuting on public transit (16 million people)

Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images.

The bad news? A mere 5% of all Americans use mass transit to get to work. The good news? That works out to 16 million people, which is five million more than have voted for a trust-fund baby who bankrupted his gross casinos.

10. Calling to tell their moms how much they love her (??? million people)

Admittedly, I've got no statistics on this, but I think it's a safe bet to assume more than 11 million Americans do this each year.

I hope more than 11 million Americans do this each year.

You're the best, Mom. Photo via iStock.

And most importantly...

11. Not voting for Trump (14.5 million voters)

11 million people in the Republican primary voted for Donald Trump.

14.5 million Republican primary voters haven't. That's about 3.5 million more, according to math.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Meanwhile, the ranks of Republicans who not only didn't vote for Trump's brand of callous bigotry, but say they still won't vote for Trump include an editor of a prominent conservative blog...

...a former John McCain adviser...

...and the managing editor of the Washington Examiner, a conservative publication.

Meanwhile, 12 million Democratic primary voters have voted for the Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and 9 million have voted for Bernie Sanders. Math says that's a total of 21 million people — 10 million more than have voted for Trump thus far. If you combine the Republican and Democratic not-Trump votes, you get almost 45 million.

Trump will almost certainly get more than 11 million votes in a general election, especially now that the other 17 Republican candidates have dropped out of the race. But while Trump might seem unstoppable now, only 3.5% of Americans have actually cast a vote for him thus far.

Far more Americans are standing up to Trump's brand of bigotry, mysogyny, xenophobia, and general cluelessness than are casting a ballot for it.

And that's just as important a story.

From now until November, let's make sure we keep it that way, so that Trump can go back to doing what he does best:

Photo by Chad Buchanan/Getty Images.

Selling terrible vodka.

Here's two things you might not know: One, there's a primary in Puerto Rico. Two, Marco Rubio won it. By a lot.

Yep, that's right. Last night, Marco Rubio won Puerto Rico's GOP primary in a landslide.

It's Rubio's first major victory and his second outright victory in the race so far. It earned him 23 delegates and put him marginally closer to potentially someday maybe posing some sort of actual threat to GOP powerhouse Donald Trump and hot-on-his-heels Ted Cruz.

Marco Rubio campaigning in South Carolina. Photo by Richard Ellis/Getty Images.

Why such a huge win for Rubio in Puerto Rico?

Rubio is the only GOP candidate to visit Puerto Rico so far, as well as the only one to openly support statehood for the U.S. territory.

For Puerto Ricans, this is a significant position to take. The island is over $70 billion in debt and has defaulted on debt payments twice. As Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro García Padilla told CNN, "We're out of cash."

People protest outside Wall Street in New York against cutbacks and austerity measures forced on severely indebted Puerto Rico. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

The tanking economy is causing a mass population exodus from the island to the mainland. Fewer Puerto Rican residents to pay taxes means more debt, and the whole crisis has been ominously referred to as a "death spiral."

If Puerto Rico gains statehood, it will be able to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy with federal protection, meaning the island could restructure its debts, negotiate in court with bondholders, and cover about a third of its debt.

If not, Puerto Rico and its citizens will remain in the economic crisis indefinitely.

Primaries are the only chance citizens of Puerto Rico get to make their voices heard — they aren't allowed to vote in the general election.

A 115-year-old Supreme Court decision (blasted by John Oliver last year) ensures that no U.S. territories are allowed to vote in the general election.

While Republicans in Puerto Rico voted clearly in favor of Rubio, assigning their delegates last night (as they will for the Democrats in June), this is really the only chance Puerto Rican citizens have to let politicians running for president know what's important to them.

A vacant building in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Photo by Christopher Gregory/Getty Images.

Why would Rubio care about Puerto Rico if it can't help him win the general election?

Well, Florida has a population of over 1 million Puerto Ricans. Courting Puerto Rico helps Rubio secure the swing state's 99 delegates.

But frankly, Rubio doesn't have to worry too much about Florida. It's his home state, and pending another meltdown of epic proportions at the GOP debate on Wednesday, his win in Florida is all but clinched.

Rubio campaigning in Florida in 2010. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

It's pretty easy to make campaign promises to a population that doesn't vote in the general election.

Hillary Clinton promised Puerto Rico voting rights in 2008 and got 68% of the Democratic primary vote there. Mitt Romney promised statehood in 2012 and got 83% of the GOP primary vote that year.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney shakes hands with Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuño at Isla Grande Airport in San Juan in 2012 ahead of the Republican primary. Photo by Christopher Gregory/Getty Images.

We never got to see whether either of their promises would come true, but Puerto Rico has consistently and overwhelmingly supported candidates who promise more representation, regardless of their political affiliation.

In this election cycle, candidates including Hillary Clinton have supported giving Puerto Rico bankruptcy protection, but only Rubio (and, formerly, Jeb! Bush) have campaigned in favor of full representation for Puerto Rico with a 51st star on the flag.

Will the next president be the one who finally recognizes Puerto Rico's primary votes for what they truly mean?

Or will the territory remain a stepping stone for politicians to use on their journey to more "important" political contests? Will 2016 be the year that Puerto Rico is rescued by the U.S. government? Or will our collective memory once again forget about the territory and its citizens until another candidate needs delegates in the next election cycle?

Last night, Puerto Rico was granted five minutes in a room with a nation that has a thousand other things on its to-do list. Its citizens spoke clearly once again — whether they're heard remains to be seen.

Nebraska has made voting a lot better for everybody. It's a model for the country.

True

The primary system we use to choose candidates in the United States is broken, but there's a proven way to make it better.

A tiny fraction of possible voters get to choose who is actually running for office. It's what happens in most state and federal elections across the country; if you're a registered Republican, you get to vote in the primaries for that party. Democrat? Same.

But what if you're among the more than 40% of voters (and half of all millennials) who are independent?

In many states, you have to actually register as a member of a party in order to vote in the primary.

If registering as a member of a party you don't necessarily agree with on many issues rubs you the wrong way, join the club.

Image of the George W. Norris chamber via Nebraska Legislature.

Are there any solutions to this problem?

Some states, like Nebraska, have taken a different approach — and it's working much better.

John Opdycke, the president of Open Primaries, explained in a recent Atlantic interview, how this alternative system truly breaks the mold.

"[The primaries] don't just determine party nominees," he said. "They determine the shape and the tenor and tone of the campaign, the issues that are on the table, the coalitions that are on the table."

How so? Let's explore 3 ways they do that.

1. Open primaries, where anyone can vote for any candidate regardless of party registration

It means that candidates have to appeal to all voters, not simply the ones in their party, to end up on the final ballot.

This leads to...

2. A general election ballot without party affiliation where voters choose between the top two candidates.

It also means that the people get things they want accomplished by their lawmakers — despite political affiliations of the parties. In the case of Nebraska, a legislature comprised of 35 Republicans, 13 Democrats, and 1 independent accomplished a raise in the minimum wage, immigration reform, abolishing the death penalty, and raising the gas tax, among other things.

Imagine that happening in a state where the primaries are like they are for most of the country?

3. A non-partisan unicameral legislature where politicians work together

A unicameral legislature is something that rather flips the traditional voting narrative on its head, and it's opening some eyes. Definitively, unicameral legislature means one chamber of house, rather than two divided ones.

With no formal party alignments or caucuses, it allows coalitions to form issue by issue. This way, every bill gets an open and public committee hearing regardless of the member's party status.

GIF from Open Primaries/Why America Needs Nonpartisan Elections.