[Political Junkie Too]

As used in the Twentieth amendment "shall have failed to qualify" means not yet elected, e.g., didn't get enough votes in the contingent election in the House.

The 20th amendment was passed in 1933. Prior to 1933, the closest elections were:

• 1916: Wilson received 52.17% of the EV (277/531).
• 1876: Hayes received 50.14% (185/369).
• 1824: Adams received 32.18% (84/261).

Between the passage of the 12th and 20th amendments, the average EV vote percent of the winner was 69.3%. I don't think they were overly concerned about the House election to resolve ties. "Failure to qualify" must have meant something else. Likely, it meant defective Electoral College votes, but it could have meant a deadlocked Congress trying to resolve a tie. It could even mean that the winner lied about his age or duration of residency. If Congress is deadlocked, then how would the rest of the 20th be resolved (naming an acting President) while Congress is still sitting to break the initial tie?

I suspect that SCOTUS would weigh in favor of the Biden regime, if states start decertifying Biden's electors, but don't flip them to Trump due to the fraud. That would require more states to decertify electors to get to the point that it delegitimatizes the current Biden regime. It's the whole issue of requiring a majority of possible EV vs. a majority of EV counted, and I expect Roberts and SCOTUS to go with the latter if it becomes an issue.

The plain text of the 12th amendment says:

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;

The word "appoint" is used many times in the Constitution:

• Article I Section 6: No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created...
• Article I Section 8: To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers...
• Article II Section 1: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
• Article II Section 2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
• Amendment 17: When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.
• Amendment 23: The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct: A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.

It is clear throughout the Constitution that the use of the word "appoint" and its derivatives mean the filling of a seat with a person, not the creation of the seat. Roberts would have to twist the language to such an extreme to interpret the 12th amendment in way that does NOT mean that the majority of Electors who voted is what determines the President, not the person who gets at least 270 votes.

If a number of states revoke their certifications due to systemic fraud that puts their state's results into doubt, they do not have to name a winning candidate. They just have to claim that a winner is undeterminable and withdraw their Electors entirely. This reduces the majority threshold to those Electors who remain, and the President is the person who received a majority of those votes.

-PJ

[Dr. Franklin]

The plain text of the 12th amendment says:
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;

Again, the lacuna is that the Constitution calls for presidential electors to be appointed by the legislatures, but the legislatures no longer appoint the electors. Thus, we have the whole debate about governor's certifying a particular slate of electors, and the need to decertify them. I believe that all of this points to the need to amend the constitution to fit the modern practice, and improve the result. Hopefully, this all leads to a round of needed reforms.