Replies

This from a friend.

The Electoral College is meeting, on Monday.

As you've probably heard, there's a group calling themselves the "Hamilton Electors" who are trying to sway at least 37 electors into voting against the popular vote, in their respective states, in order to deny Donald Trump the presidency.

At first they had hoped to sway enough votes to get Hillary Clinton elected but now they're just hoping that they can deny Donald his needed 270 electoral votes so that the group of electors can then consider "more palatable" Republicans for the position. John Kasich's name has been frequently mentioned.

While there's nothing in the Constitution that requires the electors to vote in accordance with the wishes of the voters who selected them, many states have such laws on the books. The penalty for failing to do so, however, is typically very small and is not likely to act as a deterrent.

I've been watching this pretty carefully and, even though I voted for Trump, I'm hoping that the Hamilton Electors succeed in getting 37 members to flip. Why? Because it will be fun to watch and because it won't make any difference.

Here's why:

If the Hamilton Electors succeed in denying Trump the election (regardless of whether they choose Kasich or Clinton) there will be celebrating in the streets by my liberal friends. The news media will go crazy. Doomsday will be predicted by many. Facebook will explode.

Then the Secretary of State for each state will have to certify the results before they're sent to Congress. Since Secretaries of State like to be reelected by the same people who chose the electors, it's unlikely that they'd certify the results.

But let's say they did...

It would then go to Congress, for certification on January 6, 2017.

Members of Congress like to be reelected, too, and it's highly unlikely that they would be a party to such shenanigans. If any members of Congress object to the election results then the election gets decided by them, instead.

The House of Representatives gets to choose the president and the Senate gets to choose the Vice President. Since both houses of Congress are controlled by the Republicans it is likely that they would choose Trump and Pence.

And the Democrats would have to start the grieving process, all over again, after thinking that they had succeeded for almost 3 weeks.

So I'm kind of excited about the whole spectacle-- especially since there's virtually no chance that any of it will make a difference in the outcome of the election.