Tag Archives: Electoral College

Today’s Screwed Up America Roundup, With a Glimmer of Hope at the End

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New York Magazine says they’re going to provide a weekly inventory of T—p’s “affronts to liberal democracy”. Their first batch includes nine items, the worst of which was his announcement that he’s appointing: an anti-semitic propagandist as his chief strategist; a Southerner so racist that Republicans (!) refused to make him a Federal judge as Attorney General; and a dangerous nut job who was fired from his last government job as his National Security Advisor.

But what did we expect? The heads of organized crime families value loyalty above all else, and these three individuals were among T—p’s most fervid supporters. On the other hand, the Tea Party Congressman he wants as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency wasn’t initially a T—p supporter. He does, however, want to cancel the Iran nuclear arms deal and bring back waterboarding.

Next, two articles from The Washington Post. Ronald Klain, who was Chief of Staff for Vice Presidents Gore and Biden, warns that T—p’s so-called “infrastructure” plan is a trap. It isn’t a plan to fix what’s known as our “crumbling” infrastructure or create lots of jobs. It’s a way to raid the Treasury on behalf of selected investors. There will be no requirement that any particular work will be done or any jobs will be created. Nevertheless, the recipients of the tax breaks will be guaranteed a profit.

Again, what would we expect from a shady real estate developer whose fortune heavily relied on a billion dollars in tax breaks from New York City?

To understand how T—p plans to profit from being President, read “Welcome to the T—p Kleptocracy”. The T—p family business will keep going but with inside information and influence peddling as profit enhancers:

The irony is that so many of Trump’s supporters believed his preposterous claim that he would be the one to banish corruption from Washington, that he’d “drain the swamp” and send that crooked establishment packing. He’ll do nothing of the sort, of course; his transition team is drowning in corporate lobbyists, and among his first priorities are cutting taxes for the wealthy and removing oversight from Wall Street… what’s different and probably unprecedented is the way Trump will increase his fortune by hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars while he’s president.

Finally, there’s an article at the Time magazine site called “The Electoral College Was Created to Stop Demagogues Like Trump”. Actually, one of the reasons the Electoral College was created was to protect the institution of slavery in the South. But protecting us from demagogues and the obviously unfit was another big part of its appeal. Today, the Electoral College serves two purposes:

One of them is to give small states power as well as big states and the cities. The other is to provide a mechanism where intelligent, thoughtful and statesmanlike leaders could deliberate on the winner of the popular vote and, if necessary, choose another candidate who would not put Constitutional values and practices at risk.

The Electoral College was designed to avoid Presidents “with talents for low intrigue” and to interfere with “the desire in foreign powers [you know, like Russia!] to gain an improper ascendant in our councils”!

Can you therefore imagine Alexander Hamilton jumping up and down somewhere in the great beyond, desperately trying to get our attention? “See, see, this brightly-colored personage of low character and little understanding is precisely the type who must never become President of our fair nation. We gave you the Electoral College, fools! Now employ it!”

(And after that glimmer of hope: Will the con man break one of his biggest campaign promises and allow the Republicans to privatize Medicare and Social Security? I mean, Jesus H. Christ!)

The Electoral College Can and Must Deliver Us From Evil

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It’s reported that our Mussolini in waiting wants top secret security clearance for three of his children and his son-in-law, none of whom will be government employees as federal law requires. Instead, they will conduct the family business while their father conducts our business. How long will it be before T—p creates a palace guard so he can more easily ignore the rulings of judges trying to rein him in? 

Here’s a modest proposal:

Whatever you’re doing that isn’t required by the necessities of life, stop doing it and start publicizing the idea that the Electoral College can and must stop T—p from becoming President. The Electoral College got us into this mess (Hillary is winning by almost 700,000 votes at last count) and the Electoral College can get us out! That’s what the U.S. Constitution says.

If 40 or so Republican electors vote for a different Republican, the election goes to the House of Representatives and they can dump this monster. Will they? I hope so, because it’s the only realistic chance we have avoid imminent disaster.

The more we publicize the Electoral College option, the more people talk about it, post about it, contact Republican politicians about it, convince everyone they know about it, the more likely it will be that the Electoral College will deliver us from evil on December 19th.

The Republicans have released a monster on the world. Now they have to shut him down. 

The Electoral College Needs To Save Us From T—p

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More than 4 million people have signed a petition at Change.org urging members of the Electoral College to elect Hillary Clinton as President on December 19th. I signed it myself. 

If roughly 40 Republican electors join with the 230 or so Democratic electors in voting for Clinton, she will become our next President.

Unfortunately, since most of the electors who vote next month are Republicans, it is highly doubtful that even 40 of them would agree to give the Presidency to a Democrat, especially a Democrat they hate as much as they (foolishly) hate Hillary Clinton.

Yet most of America understands that T—p is dangerously unqualified to be President. Amazingly, that includes millions of Republicans who voted for him last week.

On December 19th, the members of the Electoral College that we chose last week (when many of us believed we were directly voting for the candidates) will cast their ballots in their respective state capitals and in the District of Columbia.

If the electors vote the way their respective states voted, Mr. Trump will become President on January 21st. However, the electors can vote for someone else if they choose. Even in states where that is not allowed, their vote would still be counted – they would pay a small fine – which concerned Americans and citizens of the world would be glad to pay for them!

There are two realistic options. The first is that enough Republican electors will vote for someone other than T—p to throw the election into the House of Representatives. The House has decided three Presidential elections before (in 1801, 1825 and 1877). Since the Republicans control the House, they would undoubtedly select a Republican as President. Would they choose someone other than T—p? I sure hope so.

Of course, there is at least one petition at Change.org demanding that the electors choose a Republican other than T—p. (I’ve signed that one too.) So far, at least two electors are endorsing this idea, as described here.

Another possibility (although certainly less likely) is that at least 40 or so Republican electors will join with the 230 or so Democratic electors to elect a compromise or unity ticket. For example, another petition urges the Electoral College to elect the Republican Governor of Ohio, John Kasich, as President and the Democratic Senator from Virginia, Tim Kaine, as Vice President.

Governor Kasich sought the Republican nomination for President and Senator Kaine was chosen as the Democratic candidate for Vice President. Both have a long record of public service and are qualified to lead the Executive Branch of our government. Neither of them are extreme ideologues (although Kasich is sufficiently “conservative” to make Democrats frequently unhappy). 

Electing Kasich as President would acknowledge the fact that T—p won more states. Electing Kaine as Vice President would acknowledge the fact that Clinton got many more votes. As a Democrat, I’d prefer President Clinton or President Kaine, but any qualified Republican would be better than T—p.

If the Electoral College rejected T—p, millions of Americans would protest that the election was being stolen. But you can’t steal an election by obeying the Constitution. The men who wrote the Constitution feared the election of a dangerous or unqualified candidate. They trusted the electors from the various states to save the day if America faced an electoral crisis. That’s exactly what we face today.

Taking Advantage of the Electoral College: Two Possibilities

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I don’t know about you, but I’m still avoiding the news. 

I do know, however, as votes are still being counted, Hillary Clinton is leading her opponent. She has 60.5 million; he has 60.1 million. (And roughly 6.2 million fools voted for candidates who had no chance to win.) In fact, her margin will continue to grow, since California is still counting votes and California voters strongly support Clinton. 

In a better world, these results would mean Clinton won the election. But in this world, we didn’t hold just one election. We held 51 separate elections, one for each state and one for the District of Columbia. The winner of each of those 51 elections thereby received a certain number of “electoral votes”. 

For example, Clinton beat her opponent by more than 2.5 million votes in California. That means she will get all of California’s 55 electoral votes. But if she’d won the state by 1,000 votes instead, she’d still get all 55. With some very minor exceptions, it’s winner-take-all. This is the system our founding fathers came up with more than 200 years ago. 

Furthermore, the number of electoral votes each state receives isn’t based purely on population. California, for example, has about 38.5 million residents. Montana has 1 million. One might think that California would get 38 times as many electoral votes as Montana, but that’s not how it works. Each state (and D.C.) gets at least 3 electoral votes. So empty Montana gets 3, while not-empty California gets 55, or 18 times what Montana gets, not 38 times.

Another way of saying this is that because we elect a President in this strangely indirect way, individual votes cast in Montana are worth more than ones cast in California. 

Our founding fathers weren’t idiots, of course. The complicated system they devised was partly a way to give smaller states more representation than bigger states, because small states like Rhode Island were afraid they’d be bullied by big states like Virginia. That’s why the small states were given extra weight in choosing a President. (Why the big states weren’t equally concerned about being cheated is an interesting question.)

So, officially speaking, we won’t know who the next President will be until December 19th. That is when the various “electors” submit their ballots. 

But wait! The founding fathers didn’t completely trust the wisdom of the voters. They had more trust in the electors, who were presumed to be pillars of the community. The voters might prefer an orange-haired demagogue or TV personality as President. The electors would presumably know better. They might have the good sense to choose a former Senator and Secretary of State. They might even choose whichever candidate won the nationwide vote. The point is that there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that requires an elector to vote for the candidate who won that elector’s state.

Now, it’s true that some states would levy a small fine on an elector who applied his or her judgment and voted for someone who didn’t win the state’s presidential election. But other states don’t even levy a fine. Electors from those states can vote for anyone with no penalty at all (except a lot of criticism from disgruntled voters back in their home state).

The ability of the presidential electors to vote for whomever they want has given rise to a petition at Change.org. It calls for the Electoral College to choose Hillary Clinton on December 19th. If she ends up with, say, 230 electors pledged to her after all the statewide ballots are counted, she would only need 40 electors to switch to her. Whoever receives 270 electoral votes become President. That’s how the system was designed to work.

I don’t expect 40 or so Republican electors to do what’s best for their country and the world, so I’m not expecting much from the petition. But I signed it anyway, as have more than a million other people. As they say, any port in a storm, especially a  world-class (pardon my French) shit storm! 

Fortunately, there is another way to eventually use the Electoral College to make America a better place. Several states have already adopted legislation that would award their electoral votes to whoever wins the nationwide “popular” vote. The legislation will take effect in those states as soon as states with a combined total of 270 electoral votes pass the legislation. After that, whichever candidate got the most votes nationwide in the next Presidential election would automatically receive at least 270 electoral votes and become President. It wouldn’t matter how states that haven’t adopted the legislation allocated their electoral votes.

The great thing about this plan, which is called the National Interstate Popular Vote Compact, is that it wouldn’t require changing the U.S. Constitution. The anti-democratic effect of the Electoral College would be eliminated without eliminating the Electoral College itself.  It’s very difficult to amend our Constitution. It’s only been done fifteen times in the last 200 years. So a plan that uses the Electoral College instead of trying to get rid of it has much to recommend it. (Of course, as long as the Electoral College exists, some electors might still go their own way.)

As of 2016, ten states and the District of Columbia have joined the Compact. Their 165 electoral votes are 61% of the 270 votes needed for it to have legal force. In addition, the necessary  legislation is pending in Michigan and Pennsylvania. If those states adopt it, we’ll have 74% of the necessary 270 votes.

As you might expect, states controlled by Republicans are less likely to join the Compact. Republicans love the fact that they’ve won two of the last five Presidential elections while losing the popular vote (The man who became President lost to his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, by 550,000 votes in 2000).  That doesn’t mean, however, that the Compact will never come into play. It just means Democrats need to take control of more state governments.

It might even be possible to get the necessary legislation passed in Republican-controlled states using public referendums or ballot questions. Most people, if asked, would probably agree that the candidate who gets the most votes should win the election. Well-financed campaigns to get the issue on the ballot in several more states might hasten the day when the person who gets the most votes will always win the election.

Of course, many Americans already believe that’s how our system of government works. Whoever gets the most votes wins. Knowledge of the Constitution isn’t our strong point. After the election we just had, I don’t know what is.Â