Posted on 12/06/2016 1:30:33 PM PST by Any Fate But Submission
Recounts in 4 states have been filed at the last possible moment to deprive Trump of the 270 votes needed. The House of Rep. may decide the election. It will be based on one vote per state. Majorities: 15 for Dems, 33 for Rep. and 2 tied. Slam dunk for Trump. But, what if Hillary had won and Republicans filed for recounts in all states? The house would decide for Trump. The Dems believe they will make Trump look like an illegitimate President, BUT the precedent they set is horrendously dangerous for them since Republican states always outnumber Democrat states. Thoughts?
If no candidate receives a majority of Electoral votes, the House of Representatives elects the President from the 3 Presidential candidates who received the most Electoral votes. Each state delegation has one vote. The Senate would elect the Vice President from the 2 Vice Presidential candidates with the most Electoral votes. Each Senator would cast one vote for Vice President. If the House of Representatives fails to elect a President by Inauguration Day, the Vice-President Elect serves as acting President until the deadlock is resolved in the House.
If you read your history we had a number of elections in the 19th. Century that came to these scenarios.
Difference is people were far more educated in how the Constitution worked. And we did not have a 24-hour cable news cycle whipping up frenzy over each little thing.
At the time of the writing of the Constitution, the Founders at least posed the idea of a federal government without political parties.
The institution of electors without parties would seem to make inconclusive Electoral College results far more frequent than they became, indicating the Founders thought Congress would indeed select the president far more frequently than they have. Federalist 39 seems to see it that way.
Sorry, that is not totally accurate. It hinges on what the 12th amendment means when it says elector’s appointed.
...The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed...
What does appointed mean? If a state is SUPPOSED to have 10 electors but the state does not appoint them, what then? It is a small crack but one that is large enough to drive a lawsuit into.
Self, you need to give yourself a time-out. Nobody needs yet another vanity.
The Dems/Marxists are flailing around like a fish out of water. This wasn’t supposed to happen. They have been setting it up for over 100 years. Then they made their big mistake....Hillary.
Clintons+Marxists=Infinetly
“The objective is to tarnish Trump as one who was SELected, not Elected.”
And the voters would give that a big yawn, like they did in 2004 when they re-elected Bush after Florida 2000.
If Trump loses the 270 or better - WAR!
The election of 1864 could have been a test case, but Lincoln won enough EVs that he would have been elected even if the seceding states had cast their EVs against him.
There is a legal case that can be made that that the intent was that all possible electors is meant, but it looks like the text indicates the actual properly appointed and accepted electors. Originalism vs. Textualism. Textualism will win in today’s courts unless there is already precedent for accepting an Originalist view.
Indeed. I learned just the other day that Virginia electors refused to vote for Richard Johnson, Martin Van Buren's vice presidential candidate, because he was living openly with the slave woman who bore him a child. This put Johnson just below the number of electoral votes needed to be elected and the Senate had to decide the race.
Well, I am convinced that there is enough “wiggle” room here for some unscrupulous Dem lawyer to try and convince a court somewhere to see it his way.
It’s really moot, unless one believes that seven or eight GOP controlled state Congressional delegations would fail to support the GOP candidate.
He needs a majority of the electors appointed.
"...if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as president, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state have one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice." (Amendment XII, June 5th, 1804)
There's more discussed in section 3 of Amendment XX. But in each case a "majority" is always needed, not a "plurality".
In that election, New York failed to send electors due to internal disputes. The map at 270toWin shows zero for New York's Electoral College votes.
On the one hand, Washington was essentially unopposed so the matter was moot. On the other hand, at least this website shows New York's electoral college votes to be zero, so one would assume that the majority would have factored in zero for New York, not New York's entitled amount.
-PJ
What if Napoleon had a B52 at Waterloo?
We have had many elections without 538 electoral votes. It’s only been 538 since Alaska and Hawaii.
What you’re asking is what happens if there are electors missing. The answer is in 1864 there were 233 electoral votes in the North (Lincoln won all but 21) but there were nine confederate states, totaling 66 electoral votes that were “missing” (still in rebellion: Louisiana and Tennessee were back in by that time).
So we just went with the majority of 233.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.