Posted on 11/30/2016 9:50:35 AM PST by drewh
Anti-Trump forces are apparently planning an all out legal assault on the Electoral College in a last ditch effort to keep Donald Trump from taking office in the White House. The plan? To file legal action in all 29 states which have laws that prohibit electors from “voting their conscience.” In other words, laws that prevent electors from going against the state’s popular vote.
The inside scoop on what is being planned:
Leaders of the effort, mainly Democrats, have plans to challenge laws in the 29 states that force electors to support their party’s candidate. Those laws have never been tested, leaving some constitutional experts to argue they’re in conflict with the founders’ intention to establish a body that can evaluate the fitness of candidates for office and vote accordingly.
They’d still have to get 37 Republican electors to turn against Trump to have an impact on the election outcome. That’s going to be a tough task especially because there have been few reports that Republican electors are willing to abandon their party to vote against Trump. Sources said they will also have a coalition of lawyers that will be ready to defend (for free) anyone who votes in opposition to their party’s candidate when then the Electoral College meets on December 19.
Last week, Lawrence Lessig, a well-known professor of law at Harvard University and a political activist, penned an opinion piece in The Washington Post encouraging electors to cast their votes for Clinton despite Trump winning more votes in the Electoral College. His theory is that, while it has never been tested like this, the Electoral College is a “safety valve” that is intended “to confirm — or not — the people’s choice.
Other legal scholars believe that if the Electoral College abandons Trump, it may go against the rule of law. “Turning the electors into mighty platonic guardians doesn’t seem to be the right way to go,” UC Irvine Law Professor Rick Hasen wrote in a Friday blog post.
“So yes, I’d love to get rid of the Electoral College,” he wrote. “But not ignore it in an election where everyone agreed it was the set of rules to use.” LawNewz.com will follow this legal effort closely, and update you on this website.
They have no standing to bring any law suit.
They would have to be an elector or a winning candidate.
After Trump is assured of the 270, the rest should vote for someone else and demand that this group pay their legal fees, as they promised.
In 2000, Bob Beckell tried to find one elector who would switch his vote from Bush to Gore. Beckell did not succeed.
the Soro-ist losers
And Illinois isn’t the only such case. We have the same problem in Pennsylvania, as do New York and a number of other states.
the Hillary hangover is drastic, soon to be comatose!!!
// Look for suicide rates and riots to culminate 21 JAN 17.
//
I’m looking forward to it.
Just got 420 more rounds of 5.56x45 and 300 rounds of 40S&W (for the Kel Tec Sub 2000)
Also more mags for everything.
If something happens to Trump, like he commits “suicide” by shooting himself in the back of the head 5 times, I’m going to take it personally.
In CWII, there will be no “safe spaces” for libs.
I’m getting old and have less F’s to give about croaking early.
I’d rather die on my feet, than live on my knees. War is not the opposite of peace, slavery is.
49 states + DC = Trump + 1.7 million votes
California = Clinton + 4.2 million votes
THIS election illustrates exactly why we need the Electoral College.
The advantage of the Great Lakes to Chicago has not been much reduced. There is a reason that the “stranglehold” exists and it did not occur arbitrarily. Cities are where the new is created because of the interplay between dynamic forces which exist only in larger cities.
Generally the commodity cycle is 1)new creation in city, 2)growth in sales within city, 3) growth outside the city 4) movement of production facilities to more rural areas as industries “mature”.
There is also the phenomenon of migration from the rural to the urban areas because of the vastly increased employment opportunities provided. Small towns and farms do not and cannot allow the Division of Labor to proceed far enough to provide sufficient types of jobs to be created to retain young people in their home areas.
In my case, there is no way that the small town in which I was raised could have provided the type of job I was able to get in Chicago. I would have been much less happy, much less productive and much poorer by staying in my home town which I loved.
Believe me though there are hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans who are just as disgusted with Michael Madigan and the Machine. But there is no denial of the ability of the politicians to obtain and grow political power. Unless that is confronted and defeated this problem will not go away.
I have seen no statistics on intra-state tax flows and would appreciate any help you could give me on that. On the face of it it is difficult to believe notwithstanding the Chicago teachers pension problems.
Taxes from urban areas don’t just come from businesses though but from all who work and pay them.
I had forgotten about the Jackson/Clay/Adams election.
“Taxes from urban areas don’t just come from businesses though but from all who work and pay them.”
That’s true and here’s where the “positive” Federal taxes vs federal received benefits issue affects blue states. It has to do with higher property taxes and local and state taxes that Blue area employees get charged. Employees of private businesses as well as governmental offices, (not counting the large and small businesses) have to be paid more money to keep them interested in the job as well as being able afford the higher costs of living in these blue states and regions. So their salaries are made higher to keep them “competitive” with other regions so that qualified people will want to live and work in these areas....the higher the salaries, the higher the Federal tax payments (not to mention the aforementioned state and local higher taxes, high rents and property taxes) from each person. All that means less net income to improve...say inner city Chicago as well as improve the lot of downstate Illinois communities. Hence the so called “positive: Federal outgos vs more negative fed returns as compared to red areas. The red areas tend to have balanced budgets but yet jobs of more modest incomes, hence less federal taxes are collected vs benefits recieved On the other hand living expenses are also lower and so are state and local taxes, hence a tendency to have nicer communities and a little better infrastructure as the net amount of money available for spending in the local economy( in terms of percentages) of the red states is actually higher in some cases than more uppity blue areas(hence rich people fleeing blue areas). It’s a perverse situation to be sure and I’ve only given a simple opinion and view...Forbes I am not!
Typically the cities have such an overwhelming pull from rural areas that there is no need for a higher wage scale. I think a lot of what produces higher wages in them is because the Division of Labor becomes so extensive that many more high paying jobs are created. And those jobs are generally such that there are few who can do them and they, therefore, must create the educational and experiential systems to train them. In the city of Chicago, for example, there are probably ten universities for people to attend.
The cultural appeal is also overwhelming. It generally draws the best talents from the rest of the state. There is no market to support an opera singer in an isolated county of 50,000 (about the size of a Chicago ward.) Here opera singers find plenty of audience. Same things apply wrt blues singers or rock and roll bands.
Like one of Ray Charles’ tunes “The same thing that makes you laugh will make you cry” cities will amaze and drive you nuts. There must be large numbers of people, required to drive the Division of Labor. But the very fact is these numbers produce many of the problems which face cities particularly criminal activities and dependent classes.
Criminal prosecution doesn’t create an avenue to stop the inauguration of a winning candidate. The only thing Congress could do without the electors changing their vote is impeach him after inauguration.
I wasn’t critiquing the electoral college. I was saying the electors should not be bound by their state’s law to vote for any particular candidate. Giving the electors the freedom to vote for who they want is in the spirit of the founders giving us a representative democracy. Not to mention there are enough processes in place for a candidate to make sure he selects loyal electors that we don’t need a law on top of that punishing them for exercising their freedom to vote how they wish.
Keep the Electoral College, but scrap the electors.
Vote by congressional district. One electoral vote per congressional district. Plus two extra for carrying the majority of the districts, or, in the event of a tie, the state's popular vote.
Under that system, Trump would probably have received 15 of California's 55 electoral votes (based on how California's House races turned out).
An additional benefit of going by congressional districts: Fraud in any one district could at most steal the district, because surplus votes in a district would not matter. The impact of the unfortunate fact that certain states (also having lots of EVs) have congressional districts encompassing urban Democrat cesspools would be limited to the CDs involved, and could at most also steal the state's two extra EVs.
It's not sufficient to sanction electors for breaking state law. Fines, jail time, mean nothing.
What is required is to substitute the correct vote for the faithless elector's vote, unless his vote was cast responsibly (e.g., Trump 1 crashes with Mike on board, who should be President? Ryan? or who?).
Actually, what is needed is to abolish the electors and move to a mechanical electoral college, as I outline in #218. And, obviously, succession rules during the period between election and inauguration should be defined.
What we have is fifty state elections.
In other words, federalism.
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