Posted on 05/13/2020 4:33:08 AM PDT by EBH
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court is set on Wednesday to consider a dispute involving whether “electors” in the complex Electoral College system that decides the winner of U.S. presidential elections are free to disregard laws directing them to back the candidate who prevails in their state’s popular vote.
If enough electors do so, it could upend an election.
The nine justices will hear two closely watched cases - one from Colorado and one from Washington state - less than six months before the Nov. 3 election in which presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden challenges Republican President Donald Trump.
The litigation involves the presidential election system set out in the U.S. Constitution in which the winner is determined not by amassing a majority in the national popular vote but by securing a majority of electoral votes allotted to the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
The cases involve so-called faithless electors who did not vote for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Electoral College even though she won the popular vote in their states.
While that number of so-called faithless electors did not change the election’s outcome, it would have in five of the 58 previous U.S. presidential elections.
State officials have said faithless electors threaten the integrity of American democracy by subverting the will of the electorate and opening the door to corruption. The plaintiffs said the Constitution requires them to exercise independent judgment to prevent unfit candidates from taking office.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Ok I misread your post.
Let me preface this with the fact that the Democrat party-minus a few deluded people who still imagine the dems are like JFK and for the little man and labor...they are NOT, most are MARXIST totalitarians.
Extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary responses.
If by hook and crook a dem wins the WH in NOV by obviously illegal means...IMO Trump will not accept the results.
All will look to the SCOTUS for resolution, BUT RBG may still be clinging to life, AND mysteriously a conservative justice may have passed on due to some unusual circumstances.
Look where that places us.
Trump could either accept the illegitimate results (which would result in the ruination and possible death of his family members and business empire) Not to mention the general population being placed under the hobnailed boot of oppression.
OR, he could appeal to his followers to separate from the few blu states and form a new union to safeguard our freedoms.
He could seize the gold reserves, secure the military assets, renounce all debt of the new rump nation and begin with a clean slate backed by a new dollar convertible to gold. Bankruptcy Trump style.
A great migration of blu staters would soon follow as the welfare state of the new union would be wholly inadequate to satisfy the blue-state leeches. Blu states would quickly pass legislation to strip assets from red staters seeking to leave blue states...but Trump has a quiver full of arrows in his bow to halt that nonsense.
The new Republic’s constitution would have an extremely clean and precise wording, leaving behind all ambiguity in the original founding document..thank GOD almighty, I believe he would look with pleasure upon such an undertaking and would long for the fallen in blu states to see the light and petition to migrate to the new Republic! (The Parable of the Lost Lamb)
Over the years unfortunates stuck in blu areas would petition for admission the New republic....eventually the nation would reconstitute under the new plain-language constitution.
There would ensure a short-lived civil-war of sorts but with the New republic having secured the armed forces and supplies to their service it would by quickly over.
Do not discount such a scenario, it seems strange...but is not what is occurring now very nearly as insane!?
One more thing, no one from a blue state should be allowed to work in a Republic state, no foreigner should be allowed to do the same unless their skill set is so vital an exception has to be made..and by law they should be paid more so as not to steal jobs from locals.
For the many who will say this is too preposterous and strange to ever happen consider this.
This Nation once went to war with the worlds greatest Military and humiliated them, then later became friends.
The hapless and helpless people in blue states would fall upon very desperate times in short order...they would petition us for food, water and necessary goods of all types. What else could they possibly do!?
They would be disallowed firearms anywhere within 50 miles of a republic border under penalty of summary execution.
Within 50yrs I could see a destitute Canada and Mexico begging to enter the union and abide by all its rules...Both Canadians and Mexicans are good people and I love them both. Living under a just government they would within a 100 years became an asset so valuable we would wonder how we ever got along without them!
China would simply fade away into a broken up tribal nation unable to rise again for a millennium.
Don’t get me wrong, millions would die in this endeavor, but IMO it would be a small number compared to the precious babies lost daily as sacrifices to Moloch...I will risk my hide for these innocents! Who among you is with me?
Something similar is coming our way, I can see no way out of it...can you...if so please explain. It might give me a little hope
I thought you were saying there were more of these incidents involving Hellary
“..(Hawaii) Hillary Clinton received 3 electoral votes. One elector voted for Bernie Sanders for president and Elizabeth Warren for vice president. …”
then there were. I had forgotten about this incident.
Actually I am surprised about that one. Rats usually have far better party discipline then the GOP. It seems like there’s always a few GOP’ers looking for either impossible purity or historical immortality - by being a faithless elector.
That isn’t the question. The question is AFTER a state names electors that already have been chosen-—by whatever means-—must vote as they were originally chosen to vote.
If the state went for Trump and electors were chosen to vote for Trump in the EC, but change their mind, can they change their vote in the EC.
The Constitution is quite vague about this. Indeed, a good case based on how much the Founders viewed independence at all levels was that they might have viewed an elector who (in his view) upheld a “higher loyalty” to the Constitution vs. the will of the state might be free to change his vote. I don’t think this is a slam dunk, either way.
Their web site
Here is the state by state count. Scroll down. As you might expect nearly all of the states that have enacted this into law are blue states.
You misread my post #47.
See #60.
“The Constitution (not that it matters anymore) says the states decide how to award their EVs. A state could award its electors based on which league wins the World Series.”
Not according to section 2 of the 14th amendment. The people vote and choose their electors, the electors then meet and vote for President. Forcing electors to vote a certain way would force a disconnect between the voters and the electors they choose, by forcing the electors to vote against the will of the people who voted for them.
Is it the states popular vote or is it the result in the Congressional election district?
They are free to vote for who they want, and have been since the adoption of the Constitution. In the days of the Founders, electors were most commonly chosen by state legislatures, not the voters, though a couple states used popular vote from the beginning. This is really a state issue, if a state requires a vote for the candidate winning the popular vote, either of their state or Congressional district as Maine and Nebraska do with 2 elected statewide, that should be respected. This is a minor issue and no threat to the electoral system.
That’s what it’s about. There are laws in some states requiring electors to vote for their state’s popular vote winner. Those laws are what is in question. Very few people understand our Presidential election process. We do NOT vote for the POTUS in November, nor is there any Constitutional guarantee of a right to vote for the POTUS. We vote in November for electors. The real election happens in December when the electors vote for POTUS.
The original intent was for knowledgeable, wise men (yes not PC, but that was historically accurate) to be tasked with the job of selecting the POTUS, eliminating the pressures of politics and factionalism and ensuring selection of a quality candidate. That lasted pretty much two elections, when Washington was chosen and devolved into a purely political process with the 1796 election. The clear intent was for electors to have independence from any external factors in their decision.
Given that intent it’s hard to see how these laws pass muster. Even if they do, they may allow punishment of a faithless elector after the fact, but I can’t see any mechanism by which that faithless vote would be nullified. As you say, it is mostly a moot point since the electors in each state are entirely loyal party members with no real desire to vote against their party’s candidate.
Yes, what happens in the non-almost always cases. Really a state issue
I didn’t say it was realistic nor that I was afraid of it ;)
Whether someone is loyal to Hillary (or someone else) won’t matter if their children are being threatened or something similarly awful. I again assert that enabling the extortion +/-25 “loyal” electors is the goal.
On it's face, no. But the real issue is whether the states, who control the process, can penalize a "faithless" elector through monetary fines, execution if a Dem elector switches, or "replace" the "faithless elector" with a compliant elector before the state officially reports their vote. That would seem to be an issue for the SC.
” ...The plaintiffs said the Constitution requires them to exercise independent judgment to prevent unfit candidates from taking office... “
Thereby elevating the Electors above all of the voters? I don’t think so. What a totally stupid argument...
Is this about the thing where states want their electors to vote for the winner of the national popular vote?
I think that the "national popular vote" thing is a different issue...a *direct* attack on the Electoral College.
That's not at issue in this case.
This case isn't about getting rid of anything.
This isn't an end around. Either way, the electoral college remains.
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