It's so fucking banal to be politics obsessed right now, and yet I can't stop myself. There will be no cure for this until Jan 20 goes as it should, which appears to be the likeliest outcome, although still one among several possibilities. I read today about John Adams's refusal to attend Jefferson's inauguration, and the near civil war that the 1800 election sparked, complete with Federalists calling up militias in Pennsylvania and Virginia to counter the Republicans' attempted subversion of the vote. Although I was already basically familiar with the story, that provided some needed context, because at least it shows there's nothing new under the sun. I keep telling myself that Moscow Mitch hates Trump, too, and that his ruse is nothing more than a really underhanded get-out-the-vote effort in GA, but I don't think he understands the fire he's playing with. Or maybe I don't. Hopefully it's me. Anyway, just ignore this comment if you're sick of politics. I just need a void to spew into. I'm sure a lot of people do, so as always, big ups to mk for providing us one.
January 6th, actually. That's when the Electoral College brings their election results to the Senate for ratification. Yeah. You read that right. The Electoral College - the members of which are NOT required to vote the way their state voted - are going to present their determination of the winner to the Senate... run by Mitch McConnell... who then needs to agree with the Electoral College's choice, before the Presidency is actually "won".
29 states are bound by law to elect that state's winner of the popular vote. The only one that doesn't that matters is Pennsylvania, whose electors are chosen by the leader of the political party that won the popular vote. In other words, Pennsylvania's electors will be fierce party loyalists. Were it to go any other way there would be a whole lot of legal abyss-gazing that nobody wants to engage. Suppose Pennsylvania could somehow screw this up. First thing that happens is every civil rights group on the planet sues Pennsylvania for violating the citizenship of everyone in Pennsylvania. That quickly rockets up to the court where the ACLU (or the equivalent) will argue that the electoral college violates the 5th Amendment - if they can't influence the country's choice of president, they have no due process. Then the Supreme Court either gets to (A) rule that the electoral college is unconstitutional or (B) rule that citizens are not guaranteed the right to choose their president. If (A) then the South has lost the ballgame forever, if (B) then the Supreme Court better gamble that Trump wins this shit and protects an incompetent authoritarian administration forever against all comers when in fact, a 5-million-vote plurality, combined with the majority of the rest of the world, have rejected the legitimacy of Trump's claims. What happens when the Western States Compact rejects the Supreme Court? John Roberts bent over backwards to rule that interstate commerce law made Obamacare legal. He's largely (not entirely) a law-and-order, due-process kinda guy. That court would toss the Electoral College before they'd toss the 5th amendment right to vote. And no thinking Republican wants to give him that choice.
I'll nitpick a little with that, because some electors are bound by law to vote a certain way. It depends on the state. It made it to the Supreme Court recently, who affirmed that, indeed, states can require electors to vote a certain way and can replace them if they turn faithless. That said, I have no idea how many states have such laws. Otherwise, I agree with you. Hopefully the GA Senate races will have clear winners (or one clear GOP winner) on election night so that there's no obvious incentive for Mitch to keep up his antics. I find that a hard to imagine scenario however, given how close GA appears to be. What a clusterfuck.
The officiant at my wedding was a WA State Elector. And yes, while 33 states do have laws around how the Elector votes, most have no penalty and several have no recourse for if an elector fails to do their duty: https://www.fairvote.org/faithless_elector_state_laws Not arguing with you, here. Just making sure we are all clear on the machinations and the inner workings, because you KNOW the shitweasels are working on every angle to fuck this up. (I mean, shit... with $10m you could easily get 10-15 electors to swing with a single cash payment. And the shitweasels have a LOT more money than that to throw at stupid things...)
Just this summer, the Court said that if a state has a law that says that electors have to vote a certain way, then if the vote goes another way, it's null and void (pursuant to state law). https://www.npr.org/2020/07/06/885168480/supreme-court-rules-state-faithless-elector-laws-constitutional It's pretty interesting that it took 240 years to test this. The EC sucks so hard. It shouldn't exist. It's a vestige of the good old slave days, and I really hope that enough states sign onto the popular vote compact, even though that's a bandaid. I learned only yesterday that an amendment to abolish it had the support of the House and Nixon back in 1970, only to be scuttled by a group of southern senators (surprise, surprise):
Link that shit homeyI read today about John Adams's refusal to attend Jefferson's inauguration, and the near civil war that the 1800 election sparked, complete with Federalists calling up militias in Pennsylvania and Virginia to counter the Republicans' attempted subversion of the vote.