I have yet to see a coherent set of rules around which to put the claims of an illegitimate election. Many of them are fine, if the assumed context is political; either some weeks ago as an argument for voting against Trump, or on-going as argument against sending him back to the White House. Anything other than that, and it's all pretty vague and weak.
Are elections illegitimate because of events coordinated by foreign actors to influence the election? Well, who determines this? Newspapers? The CIA? Let's go with the CIA because people seem to like that better than the FBI. At a minimum you need to accept that elections can be deemed illegitimate by the CIA (under any future leadership) judging the intent of foreign actors and likely influence. And be willing to codify that into a set of rules.
I suspect any attempt to do this would be unacceptable to both sides.
The mechanism & body for declaring the illegitimacy would be the EC, not any particular authority. There's no need to codify the rules for that: said rules are already in place.
It strikes me as a terrible idea, but a nullification body is right there & built into the process.
The electoral college is not a body for declaring illegitimacy. It has nothing more than a ceremonial role, and will never have anything more than a ceremonial role. Any plan that involves appealing to the electoral college as an institution that has an independent role is just fantasy.
That's legally and historically false. Its only ceremonial due to political norms, and half Presidential elections has violations of that norm from at least one.
It would be unprecedented in the history of the Republic though. Not something to take lightly. The shoe on the other foot test suggests I'd be mad as hell if the electoral college did something to change the November result even if a bunch of very serious people wrote pieces in the NYT about how legal it was. It would be interesting though. I would expect a big push for a constitutional convention which would be wild.
Having a Russian stooge as President is also unprecedented in the history of the Republic.
I don't think Trump is a stooge. "Stooge" implies intentional collaboration. Trump is just an easily manipulated narcissist, the Useful Idiot.
Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig said Tuesday that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, more than half the number of anti-Trump votes needed to stall the president-elect from being sworn into office.
"Obviously, whether an elector ultimately votes his or her conscience will depend in part upon whether there are enough doing the same. We now believe there are more than half the number needed to change the result seriously considering making that vote," Lessig told Politico.
I almost don't want to read this kind of stuff because I feel it gives me false hope.
Expect armed insurrection if it does happen. You think we were worried about a Hillary win on 11/9 because of all the gun nuts going berserk, just imagine how riled up they'll be if the EC denies them their candidate?
If there's an armed insurrection due to the EC flipping to Hillary, the fault is not on Hillary, the government, or the electors. The fault is on anyone engaging in armed insurrection. While the EC is almost certainly not flipping, of all of the reasons to not flip, "right wing radicals might try to use violence to overthrow the system" should not be one of the reasons.
And I was never worried about an armed insurrection. Republicans are rural, older and richer. They have much too much to lose to take to the streets and fight. Revolutions are rarely fought by the wealthy in society!
If any side should be worried it's the republicans. They are busy oppressing the young, the worker, and the poor. Those three groups are typically the ones that engage in armed insurrection. It doesnt work of course, but that's where the end of the country comes from if it does. Rich people finance wars of independence. Poor people start insurrection.
Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig said Tuesday that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, more than half the number of anti-Trump votes needed to stall the president-elect from being sworn into office.
"Obviously, whether an elector ultimately votes his or her conscience will depend in part upon whether there are enough doing the same. We now believe there are more than half the number needed to change the result seriously considering making that vote," Lessig told Politico.
I almost don't want to read this kind of stuff because I feel it gives me false hope.
Lessig is almost always wrong, as far as I can remember. I'd be shocked if Trump loses a single elector.
I want to add that unless we find Boris Badenov feeding ballots into a paper shredder, the Russian hack ain't gonna change the election.
It's not just the E-mail hacks that should be under consideration for the electors but a combination of his lack of public support, dangerously naieve policy and the fact that he seems to be deeply influenced by forign interests.
Simply put, Trump is the reason why the EC has veto power over the public vote.
Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig said Tuesday that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, more than half the number of anti-Trump votes needed to stall the president-elect from being sworn into office.
"Obviously, whether an elector ultimately votes his or her conscience will depend in part upon whether there are enough doing the same. We now believe there are more than half the number needed to change the result seriously considering making that vote," Lessig told Politico.
I almost don't want to read this kind of stuff because I feel it gives me false hope.
Lessig is almost always wrong, as far as I can remember. I'd be shocked if Trump loses a single elector.
I think he'll lose some. But it'll be in the single digits.
Edit: That said, if by some miracle of God the EC DOES block Trump, then I expect an amendment reforming the EC (or, God willing, remove it outright) to be passed pretty quickly.
The last time there was a faithless elector was 2004, and it was probably an accident (somebody voted Edwards on both ballots).
The last time there was more than one faithless elector was in 1912, and it was on the VP ballot, since Taft's veep died before the vote.
If even a handful of electors bail on Trump, it should be used as a cudgel against every insistence that he's a legitimate president. But we're not going to see full scale revolt unless an actual photo of him going down on Putin surfaces before the vote.
Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig said Tuesday that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, more than half the number of anti-Trump votes needed to stall the president-elect from being sworn into office.
"Obviously, whether an elector ultimately votes his or her conscience will depend in part upon whether there are enough doing the same. We now believe there are more than half the number needed to change the result seriously considering making that vote," Lessig told Politico.
I almost don't want to read this kind of stuff because I feel it gives me false hope.
Lessig is almost always wrong, as far as I can remember. I'd be shocked if Trump loses a single elector.
I think he'll lose some. But it'll be in the single digits.
I have yet to see a coherent set of rules around which to put the claims of an illegitimate election. Many of them are fine, if the assumed context is political; either some weeks ago as an argument for voting against Trump, or on-going as argument against sending him back to the White House. Anything other than that, and it's all pretty vague and weak.
Are elections illegitimate because of events coordinated by foreign actors to influence the election? Well, who determines this? Newspapers? The CIA? Let's go with the CIA because people seem to like that better than the FBI. At a minimum you need to accept that elections can be deemed illegitimate by the CIA (under any future leadership) judging the intent of foreign actors and likely influence. And be willing to codify that into a set of rules.
I suspect any attempt to do this would be unacceptable to both sides.
The mechanism & body for declaring the illegitimacy would be the EC, not any particular authority. There's no need to codify the rules for that: said rules are already in place.
It strikes me as a terrible idea, but a nullification body is right there & built into the process.
The electoral college is not a body for declaring illegitimacy. It has nothing more than a ceremonial role, and will never have anything more than a ceremonial role. Any plan that involves appealing to the electoral college as an institution that has an independent role is just fantasy.
That's legally and historically false. Its only ceremonial due to political norms, and half Presidential elections has violations of that norm from at least one.
It would be unprecedented in the history of the Republic though. Not something to take lightly. The shoe on the other foot test suggests I'd be mad as hell if the electoral college did something to change the November result even if a bunch of very serious people wrote pieces in the NYT about how legal it was. It would be interesting though. I would expect a big push for a constitutional convention which would be wild.
Having a Russian stooge as President is also unprecedented in the history of the Republic.
I don't think Trump is a stooge. "Stooge" implies intentional collaboration. Trump is just an easily manipulated narcissist, the Useful Idiot.
Really? I used 'stooge' to imply the exact opposite. Trump is not actively trying to undermine America's position to favor Russia, but he'd certainly rather help Russia than be remotely antagonistic, and their intelligence community hacked us and passed the emails on to Wikileaks specifically to help him win the election via propaganda.
Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig said Tuesday that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, more than half the number of anti-Trump votes needed to stall the president-elect from being sworn into office.
"Obviously, whether an elector ultimately votes his or her conscience will depend in part upon whether there are enough doing the same. We now believe there are more than half the number needed to change the result seriously considering making that vote," Lessig told Politico.
I almost don't want to read this kind of stuff because I feel it gives me false hope.
Lessig is almost always wrong, as far as I can remember. I'd be shocked if Trump loses a single elector.
I think he'll lose some. But it'll be in the single digits.
Edit: That said, if by some miracle of God the EC DOES block Trump, then I expect an amendment reforming the EC (or, God willing, remove it outright) to be passed pretty quickly.
good
it would solve our issues with FPTP like we suffered in this election and effectively remove the ability for minority red states to sway elections
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig said Tuesday that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, more than half the number of anti-Trump votes needed to stall the president-elect from being sworn into office.
"Obviously, whether an elector ultimately votes his or her conscience will depend in part upon whether there are enough doing the same. We now believe there are more than half the number needed to change the result seriously considering making that vote," Lessig told Politico.
I almost don't want to read this kind of stuff because I feel it gives me false hope.
Lessig is almost always wrong, as far as I can remember. I'd be shocked if Trump loses a single elector.
I think he'll lose some. But it'll be in the single digits.
Edit: That said, if by some miracle of God the EC DOES block Trump, then I expect an amendment reforming the EC (or, God willing, remove it outright) to be passed pretty quickly.
The most logical choice would be to try and bind the vote of the EC (so that they can have it both ways), but I suspect that trying to do so would be a pandoras box of suck since it means fundamentally removing one of the checks on the federal government set up by the FF.
Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig said Tuesday that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, more than half the number of anti-Trump votes needed to stall the president-elect from being sworn into office.
"Obviously, whether an elector ultimately votes his or her conscience will depend in part upon whether there are enough doing the same. We now believe there are more than half the number needed to change the result seriously considering making that vote," Lessig told Politico.
I almost don't want to read this kind of stuff because I feel it gives me false hope.
Lessig is almost always wrong, as far as I can remember. I'd be shocked if Trump loses a single elector.
I think he'll lose some. But it'll be in the single digits.
Edit: That said, if by some miracle of God the EC DOES block Trump, then I expect an amendment reforming the EC (or, God willing, remove it outright) to be passed pretty quickly.
The most logical choice would be to try and bind the vote of the EC (so that they can have it both ways), but I suspect that trying to do so would be a pandoras box of suck since it means fundamentally removing one of the checks on the federal government set up by the FF.
I'd say that this check is already not working as intended.
Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig said Tuesday that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, more than half the number of anti-Trump votes needed to stall the president-elect from being sworn into office.
"Obviously, whether an elector ultimately votes his or her conscience will depend in part upon whether there are enough doing the same. We now believe there are more than half the number needed to change the result seriously considering making that vote," Lessig told Politico.
I almost don't want to read this kind of stuff because I feel it gives me false hope.
Lessig is almost always wrong, as far as I can remember. I'd be shocked if Trump loses a single elector.
I think he'll lose some. But it'll be in the single digits.
Edit: That said, if by some miracle of God the EC DOES block Trump, then I expect an amendment reforming the EC (or, God willing, remove it outright) to be passed pretty quickly.
The most logical choice would be to try and bind the vote of the EC (so that they can have it both ways), but I suspect that trying to do so would be a pandoras box of suck since it means fundamentally removing one of the checks on the federal government set up by the FF.
I'd say that this check is already not working as intended.
Given that we won't know whether it's working or not until the Electors actually vote, I'd say it's premature to make that declaration.
They'll probably roll over for this because they're terrified of the consequences of going against the conventional wisdom regarding the electoral college system and may not even realize that they have the right to vote for whoever they want because lets face it: that's what would happen under normal circumstances.
But the entrirety of the trump campaign was insane nonsense that flew in the face of all logic and paid off, so why shouldn't the EC and do so themselves?
Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig said Tuesday that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, more than half the number of anti-Trump votes needed to stall the president-elect from being sworn into office.
"Obviously, whether an elector ultimately votes his or her conscience will depend in part upon whether there are enough doing the same. We now believe there are more than half the number needed to change the result seriously considering making that vote," Lessig told Politico.
I almost don't want to read this kind of stuff because I feel it gives me false hope.
Lessig is almost always wrong, as far as I can remember. I'd be shocked if Trump loses a single elector.
I think he'll lose some. But it'll be in the single digits.
Edit: That said, if by some miracle of God the EC DOES block Trump, then I expect an amendment reforming the EC (or, God willing, remove it outright) to be passed pretty quickly.
The most logical choice would be to try and bind the vote of the EC (so that they can have it both ways), but I suspect that trying to do so would be a pandoras box of suck since it means fundamentally removing one of the checks on the federal government set up by the FF.
I'd say that this check is already not working as intended.
Given that we won't know whether it's working or not until the Electors actually vote, I'd say it's premature to make that declaration.
They'll probably roll over for this because they're terrified of the consequences of going against the conventional wisdom regarding the electoral college system and may not even realize that they have the right to vote for whoever they want because lets face it: that's what would happen under normal circumstances.
But the entrirety of the trump campaign was insane nonsense that flew in the face of all logic and paid off, so why shouldn't the EC and do so themselves?
Because it would be 100% unprecedented. No one likes being the first to do a thing. Especially when the thing you would be doing is going against your chosen tribe.
It'll take 37 electirs to drop Trump below 270, which is incredibly unlikely. And even then, it will take the house to be willing to unify enpugh to pick someone besides Trump, and I doubt the Pubs have the spine or desire.
Also, Dems were flipping our shit about that one elector who wasn't going to vote for Hillary. We can't want these things to happen when they're convienant for us, and cry bloody murder when they're inconvienant. That's a textbook Trump move.
Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig said Tuesday that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, more than half the number of anti-Trump votes needed to stall the president-elect from being sworn into office.
"Obviously, whether an elector ultimately votes his or her conscience will depend in part upon whether there are enough doing the same. We now believe there are more than half the number needed to change the result seriously considering making that vote," Lessig told Politico.
I almost don't want to read this kind of stuff because I feel it gives me false hope.
Lessig is almost always wrong, as far as I can remember. I'd be shocked if Trump loses a single elector.
I think he'll lose some. But it'll be in the single digits.
Edit: That said, if by some miracle of God the EC DOES block Trump, then I expect an amendment reforming the EC (or, God willing, remove it outright) to be passed pretty quickly.
The most logical choice would be to try and bind the vote of the EC (so that they can have it both ways), but I suspect that trying to do so would be a pandoras box of suck since it means fundamentally removing one of the checks on the federal government set up by the FF.
I'd say that this check is already not working as intended.
Given that we won't know whether it's working or not until the Electors actually vote, I'd say it's premature to make that declaration.
They'll probably roll over for this because they're terrified of the consequences of going against the conventional wisdom regarding the electoral college system and may not even realize that they have the right to vote for whoever they want because lets face it: that's what would happen under normal circumstances.
But the entrirety of the trump campaign was insane nonsense that flew in the face of all logic and paid off, so why shouldn't the EC and do so themselves?
Because it would be 100% unprecedented. No one likes being the first to do a thing. Especially when the thing you would be doing is going against your chosen tribe.
We've also never had a man as thoroughly unqualified and obviously compromised by foreign interests as trump win the vote because the entire system up to this point has been designed to weed people like him out in the first round of primary votes.
So I'll be a whole lot less shocked by them overturning the vote then I will be when the blue wall fell.
I want to add that unless we find Boris Badenov feeding ballots into a paper shredder, the Russian hack ain't gonna change the election.
It's not just the E-mail hacks that should be under consideration for the electors but a combination of his lack of public support, dangerously naieve policy and the fact that he seems to be deeply influenced by forign interests.
Simply put, Trump is the reason why the EC has veto power over the public vote.
It'll take 37 electirs to drop Trump below 270, which is incredibly unlikely. And even then, it will take the house to be willing to unify enpugh to pick someone besides Trump, and I doubt the Pubs have the spine or desire.
Also, Dems were flipping our shit about that one elector who wasn't going to vote for Hillary. We can't want these things to happen when they're convienant for us, and cry bloody murder when they're inconvienant. That's a textbook Trump move.
This would actually be a dream opportunity for Mitch and Ryan; they would be able to ditch trump and stuff whatever stooge they wanted in the white house.
It'll take 37 electirs to drop Trump below 270, which is incredibly unlikely. And even then, it will take the house to be willing to unify enpugh to pick someone besides Trump, and I doubt the Pubs have the spine or desire.
Also, Dems were flipping our shit about that one elector who wasn't going to vote for Hillary. We can't want these things to happen when they're convienant for us, and cry bloody murder when they're inconvienant. That's a textbook Trump move.
Democracy is the popular vote. The EC is intended to work as a temporary over-ride of that, to help overide regional strongmen with no national appeal, to allow 'smart people' to get into the presidency and the persuade the public by their smart actions and clever arguments that the smart people were right all along, and the popular vote will then follow them. This is the ONLY reasonable reason for overriding the public vote in a democracy. There is no other. Arguments for ignoring the electoral college and respecting the popular vote have merit. Arguments that both systems should be ignored (Trump should be winner even if he lost the popular vote and the college, as we were protesting against) have no merit. When we say "The popular vote should be supreme, the entire purpose of the EC is to prevent Trump, and the electors should respect that" it is not the same as when Republicans say "We should be president regardless of what happens!" even though we are both asking for the same thing.
It'll take 37 electirs to drop Trump below 270, which is incredibly unlikely. And even then, it will take the house to be willing to unify enpugh to pick someone besides Trump, and I doubt the Pubs have the spine or desire.
Also, Dems were flipping our shit about that one elector who wasn't going to vote for Hillary. We can't want these things to happen when they're convienant for us, and cry bloody murder when they're inconvienant. That's a textbook Trump move.
It's not about convenience. One is being an idiot, the other is saving the nation from a 4 year nightmare.
Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig said Tuesday that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, more than half the number of anti-Trump votes needed to stall the president-elect from being sworn into office.
"Obviously, whether an elector ultimately votes his or her conscience will depend in part upon whether there are enough doing the same. We now believe there are more than half the number needed to change the result seriously considering making that vote," Lessig told Politico.
I almost don't want to read this kind of stuff because I feel it gives me false hope.
Lessig is almost always wrong, as far as I can remember. I'd be shocked if Trump loses a single elector.
I think he'll lose some. But it'll be in the single digits.
Edit: That said, if by some miracle of God the EC DOES block Trump, then I expect an amendment reforming the EC (or, God willing, remove it outright) to be passed pretty quickly.
The most logical choice would be to try and bind the vote of the EC (so that they can have it both ways), but I suspect that trying to do so would be a pandoras box of suck since it means fundamentally removing one of the checks on the federal government set up by the FF.
I'd say that this check is already not working as intended.
Given that we won't know whether it's working or not until the Electors actually vote, I'd say it's premature to make that declaration.
They'll probably roll over for this because they're terrified of the consequences of going against the conventional wisdom regarding the electoral college system and may not even realize that they have the right to vote for whoever they want because lets face it: that's what would happen under normal circumstances.
But the entrirety of the trump campaign was insane nonsense that flew in the face of all logic and paid off, so why shouldn't the EC and do so themselves?
Because it would be 100% unprecedented. No one likes being the first to do a thing. Especially when the thing you would be doing is going against your chosen tribe.
If Trump was on the EC, he'd vote for himself or some shit. The only folks who would break convention are like Trump.
To keep this thread from being locked, let's turn it back to the Russian hack. An angle I haven't seen mentioned is that logistics of the hack itself are not as important as the fact that a foreign power was able to use propaganda in our own country to influence the election. The Russians are apparently very adept at this sort of thing and will continue to pursue it. The hacking, while important, is just a technicality.
Are there any examples of foreign propaganda influencing America? Has America What are the examples of America doing this to other countries?
Let's not forget that Stalin knew about the bomb before we dropped it. The Russians were very adept at spying post WW2. At that time they would hook people on ideology (true believers and useful idiots) but they also used money (Ames). I'm pretty sure the Russians have kept up the spying given Putin's roots and the fact that Russia has very little leverage. Take sanctions. They don't have a real economic way to fight back (like China would) so dirty pool is probably their only way to get back at us.
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
I have yet to see a coherent set of rules around which to put the claims of an illegitimate election. Many of them are fine, if the assumed context is political; either some weeks ago as an argument for voting against Trump, or on-going as argument against sending him back to the White House. Anything other than that, and it's all pretty vague and weak.
Are elections illegitimate because of events coordinated by foreign actors to influence the election? Well, who determines this? Newspapers? The CIA? Let's go with the CIA because people seem to like that better than the FBI. At a minimum you need to accept that elections can be deemed illegitimate by the CIA (under any future leadership) judging the intent of foreign actors and likely influence. And be willing to codify that into a set of rules.
I suspect any attempt to do this would be unacceptable to both sides.
The mechanism & body for declaring the illegitimacy would be the EC, not any particular authority. There's no need to codify the rules for that: said rules are already in place.
It strikes me as a terrible idea, but a nullification body is right there & built into the process.
The electoral college is not a body for declaring illegitimacy. It has nothing more than a ceremonial role, and will never have anything more than a ceremonial role. Any plan that involves appealing to the electoral college as an institution that has an independent role is just fantasy.
That's legally and historically false. Its only ceremonial due to political norms, and half Presidential elections has violations of that norm from at least one.
It would be unprecedented in the history of the Republic though. Not something to take lightly. The shoe on the other foot test suggests I'd be mad as hell if the electoral college did something to change the November result even if a bunch of very serious people wrote pieces in the NYT about how legal it was. It would be interesting though. I would expect a big push for a constitutional convention which would be wild.
Having a Russian stooge as President is also unprecedented in the history of the Republic.
I don't think Trump is a stooge. "Stooge" implies intentional collaboration. Trump is just an easily manipulated narcissist, the Useful Idiot.
I have yet to see a coherent set of rules around which to put the claims of an illegitimate election. Many of them are fine, if the assumed context is political; either some weeks ago as an argument for voting against Trump, or on-going as argument against sending him back to the White House. Anything other than that, and it's all pretty vague and weak.
Are elections illegitimate because of events coordinated by foreign actors to influence the election? Well, who determines this? Newspapers? The CIA? Let's go with the CIA because people seem to like that better than the FBI. At a minimum you need to accept that elections can be deemed illegitimate by the CIA (under any future leadership) judging the intent of foreign actors and likely influence. And be willing to codify that into a set of rules.
I suspect any attempt to do this would be unacceptable to both sides.
The mechanism & body for declaring the illegitimacy would be the EC, not any particular authority. There's no need to codify the rules for that: said rules are already in place.
It strikes me as a terrible idea, but a nullification body is right there & built into the process.
The electoral college is not a body for declaring illegitimacy. It has nothing more than a ceremonial role, and will never have anything more than a ceremonial role. Any plan that involves appealing to the electoral college as an institution that has an independent role is just fantasy.
That's legally and historically false. Its only ceremonial due to political norms, and half Presidential elections has violations of that norm from at least one.
It would be unprecedented in the history of the Republic though. Not something to take lightly. The shoe on the other foot test suggests I'd be mad as hell if the electoral college did something to change the November result even if a bunch of very serious people wrote pieces in the NYT about how legal it was. It would be interesting though. I would expect a big push for a constitutional convention which would be wild.
Having a Russian stooge as President is also unprecedented in the history of the Republic.
I don't think Trump is a stooge. "Stooge" implies intentional collaboration. Trump is just an easily manipulated narcissist, the Useful Idiot.
I dont care if its a false hope. The media is eating it up. I want the EC to feel six million American's eyes and hatred for the rest of their shitty lives. And when Trump wreaks havoc on the world, for them to know its their "fault."
Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig said Tuesday that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, more than half the number of anti-Trump votes needed to stall the president-elect from being sworn into office.
"Obviously, whether an elector ultimately votes his or her conscience will depend in part upon whether there are enough doing the same. We now believe there are more than half the number needed to change the result seriously considering making that vote," Lessig told Politico.
I almost don't want to read this kind of stuff because I feel it gives me false hope.
Lessig is almost always wrong, as far as I can remember. I'd be shocked if Trump loses a single elector.
Lessig's giving free legal advice for potentially faithless electors. He has some personal idea of what the electors are thinking, although I'm sure he's exaggerating things. Like, if someone says "Hey, I'm an Alaskan elector, and I was talking with the other electors and we were wondering blah blah" I wouldn't be surprised if Lessig marked that down as three maybes. He's not dumb or uninformed, I doubt he's wrong exactly, but he's definitely fine with spin.
I wouldn't be surprised if Trump loses an elector, because at least one has explicitly said he's not going to vote Trump (and, unlike the Cruz guy from Texas, this guy hasn't given up the spot). And I wouldn't be surprised if others are staying silent. I doubt it's going to be a significant number of them, but I think we're more likely than not to see at least one faithless Trump elector.
I want to add that unless we find Boris Badenov feeding ballots into a paper shredder, the Russian hack ain't gonna change the election.
It's not just the E-mail hacks that should be under consideration for the electors but a combination of his lack of public support, dangerously naieve policy and the fact that he seems to be deeply influenced by forign interests.
Simply put, Trump is the reason why the EC has veto power over the public vote.
The Electoral College is a figure head and anyone putting hopes on them not confirming Trump is living in a dream.
I have yet to see a coherent set of rules around which to put the claims of an illegitimate election. Many of them are fine, if the assumed context is political; either some weeks ago as an argument for voting against Trump, or on-going as argument against sending him back to the White House. Anything other than that, and it's all pretty vague and weak.
Are elections illegitimate because of events coordinated by foreign actors to influence the election? Well, who determines this? Newspapers? The CIA? Let's go with the CIA because people seem to like that better than the FBI. At a minimum you need to accept that elections can be deemed illegitimate by the CIA (under any future leadership) judging the intent of foreign actors and likely influence. And be willing to codify that into a set of rules.
I suspect any attempt to do this would be unacceptable to both sides.
The mechanism & body for declaring the illegitimacy would be the EC, not any particular authority. There's no need to codify the rules for that: said rules are already in place.
It strikes me as a terrible idea, but a nullification body is right there & built into the process.
The electoral college is not a body for declaring illegitimacy. It has nothing more than a ceremonial role, and will never have anything more than a ceremonial role. Any plan that involves appealing to the electoral college as an institution that has an independent role is just fantasy.
That's legally and historically false. Its only ceremonial due to political norms, and half Presidential elections has violations of that norm from at least one.
In practical terms, what does mean for the Russian hacks and leaks? It's going to be solved by a theoretically nullifying body that never nullifies? The EC is a one-size fits all solution for those still grappling with a loss that's all but certified. It never works out and 4 years in the future it'll come up again, and after that, and the result will remain the same.
The last time we had a faithless elector in a presidential campaign was more than a decade ago -- in 2004 -- and it might have been a mistake. In that case, an anonymous Minnesota elector voted for John F. Kerry's running mate, then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), rather than Kerry. It was widely thought to be an error rather than a protest vote.
Before that, D.C. elector Barbara Lett-Simmons in 2000 abstained from voting for Al Gore, citing the District's lack of voting representation in Congress. In 1988, a West Virginia Democratic elector did what the Minnesota elector did and cast a ballot for vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen rather than Michael Dukakis for president. In 1976, an impatient Washington state Republican voted for Gerald R. Ford's primary opponent, Ronald Reagan, instead of Ford. Richard Nixon lost one elector each in the presidential elections of 1960, 1968 and 1972; all of them went not for the Democratic nominees but for other options.
The 'norm' looks quite stable. You cite the one faithless elector per election to -I suppose- show it could be done, but I don't see it. Literally not one elector in the modern era has voted for the other candidate. In 2004 someone accidentally voted for John Edwards instead of Kerry, which means that if a Russian hack happened then... nothing. Nothing will happen. Prayer would probably work better, as a plan.
Right your argument is "it just isn't done". That's argument from a norm. The actual law and theory behind the EC doesn't require following that norm.
But norms are being violated all over the place, such as Trump gaining foreign assistance in his campaign. That was the explicit example used in justifying the creation of the electoral college in the first place. And mostly its been a huge inconvenience. Now is the time to justify its existence.
Will it mean the Electoral college will do the job its designed to do? No almost certainly not. Electors are largely party hacks. But that doesn't mean it should not.
In terms of the law the electors are legally obligated to vote only for the candidate that their party chooses for them to vote for. Through both state laws that actively require that, and through the legally binding contracts that they sign with their party in order to stop them from voting for someone else. There's too many of them, there's too much on the line for them personally if they don't do what they're legally obligated to do, and they're too disorganized for them to be able to make any meaningful group effort to change the results.
This argument that the EC could change anything about the election is getting more ridiculous by the day, and all it's doing it setting people up for more disappointment when they should be trying to find something that they actually can do about the future rather than trying to wish away the past.
Unfortunately there's little that can actually be done to save the future.
Like we can't stop the supreme court from getting stacked.
We can't prevent both houses of Congress from going through with their terrible fuckin ideas.
And we can't stop Trump from going through with his stupid fuckin ideas.
And both Trump and the houses of Congress are going to let each other get away with those stupid terrible ideas because they will not feel the pain those ideas cause and they are not offensive to the doctrine of either.
There's nothing we can do here as far as I can tell. We don't have enough representation in Congress to stop them there, executive's theirs, and that combo is going to give them the judicial too.
With all three branches chugging along for them they will do their best to disenfranchised voters, and gerrymander districts so as to ensure they maintain control, and there will be little to nothing we can do to stop them.
About the only means we could use to stop them, informing the public to cause a backlash within the groups they care about the support of, is a fruitless endeavor because those groups have been conditioned to not believe a word we say.
The reason we keep coming back to this whole EC thing is because it's the last glimmer of hope that we don't have to descend into flames.
It's a wholly ridiculous hope, but it's the last one that many have.
Please feel free to inform me if I'm being too bleak here but this is, as I understand it, the situation. We're fucked, and there's little to nothing to be done about it moving forward, but to watch the flames grow higher. Seriously if there's a better action plan for a way forward I'd really love to hear it because at the moment it seems like we really don't have a means by which to actually prevent every terrible thing these people want to do.
Step 1: Stop giving into self-destructive memes.
"The EC can overturn it", "We can impeach him", and all this stuff that relies on tricks of procedure that we have no control over, or in many cases simply don't exist anymore, only serve to get people excited about something that has almost no chance of coming through. It's clinging to some idea that this will be overturned. It won't. Right now we have to actually dig in and figure out our options for the future. The longer we put our heads in the sand and say "If only this had been different", or "X could still stop it from happening" the less coordinated we are and the less credible we are.
Step 2: Our options.
We can't stop them from filling the Supreme Court chair or being in control of all three branches of the federal government for the next 2-4 years. Fine, we can deal with that. What we can do is make it harder for them. Protests, political action groups, local charities for those most likely to be hurt by the Trump Administration, we can focus on that stuff until the elections. What we need to be doing is focusing on the future elections and making it harder for local governments to put in place restrictions. So, again, protests and political action groups.
All this bullshit about the EC stopping it isn't going to pan out, and not only do we need to not fall to pieces about this we need to be more united, active, and informed than we are now if we're going to stop the current administration and if we're going to stop the next one down the line. This bullshit "end of the world" crap only serves to make everyone who is actually doing something about it look bad. No one's going to take protests against their policies seriously if their supposed allies are characterizing it as a protest against the end of the world.
You have to look at what's coming, accept that it's coming, and then find out what's available to move around it. Yeah, a significant portion of the population is going to have it significantly worse than the rest of us, and we can work to help them, but only so long as we don't have our heads in the sand!
I want to add that unless we find Boris Badenov feeding ballots into a paper shredder, the Russian hack ain't gonna change the election.
It's not just the E-mail hacks that should be under consideration for the electors but a combination of his lack of public support, dangerously naieve policy and the fact that he seems to be deeply influenced by forign interests.
Simply put, Trump is the reason why the EC has veto power over the public vote.
The Electoral College is a figure head and anyone putting hopes on them not confirming Trump is living in a dream.
I don't see why Democrats are so deep in denial about this. Trump won fair & square (with the fortunately clandestine aid of a bunch of Russian hackers.) His voters will be pissed if their vote is taken away like that.
I have yet to see a coherent set of rules around which to put the claims of an illegitimate election. Many of them are fine, if the assumed context is political; either some weeks ago as an argument for voting against Trump, or on-going as argument against sending him back to the White House. Anything other than that, and it's all pretty vague and weak.
Are elections illegitimate because of events coordinated by foreign actors to influence the election? Well, who determines this? Newspapers? The CIA? Let's go with the CIA because people seem to like that better than the FBI. At a minimum you need to accept that elections can be deemed illegitimate by the CIA (under any future leadership) judging the intent of foreign actors and likely influence. And be willing to codify that into a set of rules.
I suspect any attempt to do this would be unacceptable to both sides.
The mechanism & body for declaring the illegitimacy would be the EC, not any particular authority. There's no need to codify the rules for that: said rules are already in place.
It strikes me as a terrible idea, but a nullification body is right there & built into the process.
The electoral college is not a body for declaring illegitimacy. It has nothing more than a ceremonial role, and will never have anything more than a ceremonial role. Any plan that involves appealing to the electoral college as an institution that has an independent role is just fantasy.
That's legally and historically false. Its only ceremonial due to political norms, and half Presidential elections has violations of that norm from at least one.
In practical terms, what does mean for the Russian hacks and leaks? It's going to be solved by a theoretically nullifying body that never nullifies? The EC is a one-size fits all solution for those still grappling with a loss that's all but certified. It never works out and 4 years in the future it'll come up again, and after that, and the result will remain the same.
The last time we had a faithless elector in a presidential campaign was more than a decade ago -- in 2004 -- and it might have been a mistake. In that case, an anonymous Minnesota elector voted for John F. Kerry's running mate, then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), rather than Kerry. It was widely thought to be an error rather than a protest vote.
Before that, D.C. elector Barbara Lett-Simmons in 2000 abstained from voting for Al Gore, citing the District's lack of voting representation in Congress. In 1988, a West Virginia Democratic elector did what the Minnesota elector did and cast a ballot for vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen rather than Michael Dukakis for president. In 1976, an impatient Washington state Republican voted for Gerald R. Ford's primary opponent, Ronald Reagan, instead of Ford. Richard Nixon lost one elector each in the presidential elections of 1960, 1968 and 1972; all of them went not for the Democratic nominees but for other options.
The 'norm' looks quite stable. You cite the one faithless elector per election to -I suppose- show it could be done, but I don't see it. Literally not one elector in the modern era has voted for the other candidate. In 2004 someone accidentally voted for John Edwards instead of Kerry, which means that if a Russian hack happened then... nothing. Nothing will happen. Prayer would probably work better, as a plan.
Right your argument is "it just isn't done". That's argument from a norm. The actual law and theory behind the EC doesn't require following that norm.
But norms are being violated all over the place, such as Trump gaining foreign assistance in his campaign. That was the explicit example used in justifying the creation of the electoral college in the first place. And mostly its been a huge inconvenience. Now is the time to justify its existence.
Will it mean the Electoral college will do the job its designed to do? No almost certainly not. Electors are largely party hacks. But that doesn't mean it should not.
In terms of the law the electors are legally obligated to vote only for the candidate that their party chooses for them to vote for. Through both state laws that actively require that, and through the legally binding contracts that they sign with their party in order to stop them from voting for someone else. There's too many of them, there's too much on the line for them personally if they don't do what they're legally obligated to do, and they're too disorganized for them to be able to make any meaningful group effort to change the results.
This argument that the EC could change anything about the election is getting more ridiculous by the day, and all it's doing it setting people up for more disappointment when they should be trying to find something that they actually can do about the future rather than trying to wish away the past.
Unfortunately there's little that can actually be done to save the future.
Like we can't stop the supreme court from getting stacked.
We can't prevent both houses of Congress from going through with their terrible fuckin ideas.
And we can't stop Trump from going through with his stupid fuckin ideas.
And both Trump and the houses of Congress are going to let each other get away with those stupid terrible ideas because they will not feel the pain those ideas cause and they are not offensive to the doctrine of either.
There's nothing we can do here as far as I can tell. We don't have enough representation in Congress to stop them there, executive's theirs, and that combo is going to give them the judicial too.
With all three branches chugging along for them they will do their best to disenfranchised voters, and gerrymander districts so as to ensure they maintain control, and there will be little to nothing we can do to stop them.
About the only means we could use to stop them, informing the public to cause a backlash within the groups they care about the support of, is a fruitless endeavor because those groups have been conditioned to not believe a word we say.
The reason we keep coming back to this whole EC thing is because it's the last glimmer of hope that we don't have to descend into flames.
It's a wholly ridiculous hope, but it's the last one that many have.
Please feel free to inform me if I'm being too bleak here but this is, as I understand it, the situation. We're fucked, and there's little to nothing to be done about it moving forward, but to watch the flames grow higher. Seriously if there's a better action plan for a way forward I'd really love to hear it because at the moment it seems like we really don't have a means by which to actually prevent every terrible thing these people want to do.
Step 1: Stop giving into self-destructive memes.
"The EC can overturn it", "We can impeach him", and all this stuff that relies on tricks of procedure that we have no control over, or in many cases simply don't exist anymore, only serve to get people excited about something that has almost no chance of coming through. It's clinging to some idea that this will be overturned. It won't. Right now we have to actually dig in and figure out our options for the future. The longer we put our heads in the sand and say "If only this had been different", or "X could still stop it from happening" the less coordinated we are and the less credible we are.
Step 2: Our options.
We can't stop them from filling the Supreme Court chair or being in control of all three branches of the federal government for the next 2-4 years. Fine, we can deal with that. What we can do is make it harder for them. Protests, political action groups, local charities for those most likely to be hurt by the Trump Administration, we can focus on that stuff until the elections. What we need to be doing is focusing on the future elections and making it harder for local governments to put in place restrictions. So, again, protests and political action groups.
All this bullshit about the EC stopping it isn't going to pan out, and not only do we need to not fall to pieces about this we need to be more united, active, and informed than we are now if we're going to stop the current administration and if we're going to stop the next one down the line. This bullshit "end of the world" crap only serves to make everyone who is actually doing something about it look bad. No one's going to take protests against their policies seriously if their supposed allies are characterizing it as a protest against the end of the world.
You have to look at what's coming, accept that it's coming, and then find out what's available to move around it. Yeah, a significant portion of the population is going to have it significantly worse than the rest of us, and we can work to help them, but only so long as we don't have our heads in the sand!
Well, we can filibuster left and right and grind Congress to a halt actually, but that's unlikely to help much past 2018...
I want to add that unless we find Boris Badenov feeding ballots into a paper shredder, the Russian hack ain't gonna change the election.
It's not just the E-mail hacks that should be under consideration for the electors but a combination of his lack of public support, dangerously naieve policy and the fact that he seems to be deeply influenced by forign interests.
Simply put, Trump is the reason why the EC has veto power over the public vote.
The Electoral College is a figure head and anyone putting hopes on them not confirming Trump is living in a dream.
Funny, because 12 months ago I'd have said the same thing about trump winning the presidency.
I want to add that unless we find Boris Badenov feeding ballots into a paper shredder, the Russian hack ain't gonna change the election.
It's not just the E-mail hacks that should be under consideration for the electors but a combination of his lack of public support, dangerously naieve policy and the fact that he seems to be deeply influenced by forign interests.
Simply put, Trump is the reason why the EC has veto power over the public vote.
The Electoral College is a figure head and anyone putting hopes on them not confirming Trump is living in a dream.
I don't see why Democrats are so deep in denial about this. Trump won fair & square (with the fortunately clandestine aid of a bunch of Russian hackers.) His voters will be pissed if their vote is taken away like that.
His voters will be pissed either way, no losing side is happy in elections.
I have yet to see a coherent set of rules around which to put the claims of an illegitimate election. Many of them are fine, if the assumed context is political; either some weeks ago as an argument for voting against Trump, or on-going as argument against sending him back to the White House. Anything other than that, and it's all pretty vague and weak.
Are elections illegitimate because of events coordinated by foreign actors to influence the election? Well, who determines this? Newspapers? The CIA? Let's go with the CIA because people seem to like that better than the FBI. At a minimum you need to accept that elections can be deemed illegitimate by the CIA (under any future leadership) judging the intent of foreign actors and likely influence. And be willing to codify that into a set of rules.
I suspect any attempt to do this would be unacceptable to both sides.
The mechanism & body for declaring the illegitimacy would be the EC, not any particular authority. There's no need to codify the rules for that: said rules are already in place.
It strikes me as a terrible idea, but a nullification body is right there & built into the process.
The electoral college is not a body for declaring illegitimacy. It has nothing more than a ceremonial role, and will never have anything more than a ceremonial role. Any plan that involves appealing to the electoral college as an institution that has an independent role is just fantasy.
That's legally and historically false. Its only ceremonial due to political norms, and half Presidential elections has violations of that norm from at least one.
In practical terms, what does mean for the Russian hacks and leaks? It's going to be solved by a theoretically nullifying body that never nullifies? The EC is a one-size fits all solution for those still grappling with a loss that's all but certified. It never works out and 4 years in the future it'll come up again, and after that, and the result will remain the same.
The last time we had a faithless elector in a presidential campaign was more than a decade ago -- in 2004 -- and it might have been a mistake. In that case, an anonymous Minnesota elector voted for John F. Kerry's running mate, then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), rather than Kerry. It was widely thought to be an error rather than a protest vote.
Before that, D.C. elector Barbara Lett-Simmons in 2000 abstained from voting for Al Gore, citing the District's lack of voting representation in Congress. In 1988, a West Virginia Democratic elector did what the Minnesota elector did and cast a ballot for vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen rather than Michael Dukakis for president. In 1976, an impatient Washington state Republican voted for Gerald R. Ford's primary opponent, Ronald Reagan, instead of Ford. Richard Nixon lost one elector each in the presidential elections of 1960, 1968 and 1972; all of them went not for the Democratic nominees but for other options.
The 'norm' looks quite stable. You cite the one faithless elector per election to -I suppose- show it could be done, but I don't see it. Literally not one elector in the modern era has voted for the other candidate. In 2004 someone accidentally voted for John Edwards instead of Kerry, which means that if a Russian hack happened then... nothing. Nothing will happen. Prayer would probably work better, as a plan.
Right your argument is "it just isn't done". That's argument from a norm. The actual law and theory behind the EC doesn't require following that norm.
But norms are being violated all over the place, such as Trump gaining foreign assistance in his campaign. That was the explicit example used in justifying the creation of the electoral college in the first place. And mostly its been a huge inconvenience. Now is the time to justify its existence.
Will it mean the Electoral college will do the job its designed to do? No almost certainly not. Electors are largely party hacks. But that doesn't mean it should not.
In terms of the law the electors are legally obligated to vote only for the candidate that their party chooses for them to vote for. Through both state laws that actively require that, and through the legally binding contracts that they sign with their party in order to stop them from voting for someone else. There's too many of them, there's too much on the line for them personally if they don't do what they're legally obligated to do, and they're too disorganized for them to be able to make any meaningful group effort to change the results.
This argument that the EC could change anything about the election is getting more ridiculous by the day, and all it's doing it setting people up for more disappointment when they should be trying to find something that they actually can do about the future rather than trying to wish away the past.
Unfortunately there's little that can actually be done to save the future.
Like we can't stop the supreme court from getting stacked.
We can't prevent both houses of Congress from going through with their terrible fuckin ideas.
And we can't stop Trump from going through with his stupid fuckin ideas.
And both Trump and the houses of Congress are going to let each other get away with those stupid terrible ideas because they will not feel the pain those ideas cause and they are not offensive to the doctrine of either.
There's nothing we can do here as far as I can tell. We don't have enough representation in Congress to stop them there, executive's theirs, and that combo is going to give them the judicial too.
With all three branches chugging along for them they will do their best to disenfranchised voters, and gerrymander districts so as to ensure they maintain control, and there will be little to nothing we can do to stop them.
About the only means we could use to stop them, informing the public to cause a backlash within the groups they care about the support of, is a fruitless endeavor because those groups have been conditioned to not believe a word we say.
The reason we keep coming back to this whole EC thing is because it's the last glimmer of hope that we don't have to descend into flames.
It's a wholly ridiculous hope, but it's the last one that many have.
Please feel free to inform me if I'm being too bleak here but this is, as I understand it, the situation. We're fucked, and there's little to nothing to be done about it moving forward, but to watch the flames grow higher. Seriously if there's a better action plan for a way forward I'd really love to hear it because at the moment it seems like we really don't have a means by which to actually prevent every terrible thing these people want to do.
Step 1: Stop giving into self-destructive memes.
"The EC can overturn it", "We can impeach him", and all this stuff that relies on tricks of procedure that we have no control over, or in many cases simply don't exist anymore, only serve to get people excited about something that has almost no chance of coming through. It's clinging to some idea that this will be overturned. It won't. Right now we have to actually dig in and figure out our options for the future. The longer we put our heads in the sand and say "If only this had been different", or "X could still stop it from happening" the less coordinated we are and the less credible we are.
Step 2: Our options.
We can't stop them from filling the Supreme Court chair or being in control of all three branches of the federal government for the next 2-4 years. Fine, we can deal with that. What we can do is make it harder for them. Protests, political action groups, local charities for those most likely to be hurt by the Trump Administration, we can focus on that stuff until the elections. What we need to be doing is focusing on the future elections and making it harder for local governments to put in place restrictions. So, again, protests and political action groups.
All this bullshit about the EC stopping it isn't going to pan out, and not only do we need to not fall to pieces about this we need to be more united, active, and informed than we are now if we're going to stop the current administration and if we're going to stop the next one down the line. This bullshit "end of the world" crap only serves to make everyone who is actually doing something about it look bad. No one's going to take protests against their policies seriously if their supposed allies are characterizing it as a protest against the end of the world.
You have to look at what's coming, accept that it's coming, and then find out what's available to move around it. Yeah, a significant portion of the population is going to have it significantly worse than the rest of us, and we can work to help them, but only so long as we don't have our heads in the sand!
We don't know with any certainty what's coming with Trump's administration. If it's regular old GOP governance yeah you're right we can do that. If it's a worst case scenario and we get Dictator Trump this is the last legitimate stand against him, then politics becomes useless as a whole to fight against him.
+1
Options
HakkekageSpace Whore Academysumma cum laudeRegistered Userregular
To keep this thread from being locked, let's turn it back to the Russian hack. An angle I haven't seen mentioned is that logistics of the hack itself are not as important as the fact that a foreign power was able to use propaganda in our own country to influence the election. The Russians are apparently very adept at this sort of thing and will continue to pursue it. The hacking, while important, is just a technicality.
Are there any examples of foreign propaganda influencing America? Has America What are the examples of America doing this to other countries?
March 1953
• The C.I.A. begins drafting a plan to bring to power, through covert action, a government in Iran that would be preferred by the United States.
April 16, 1953
• A C.I.A. study entitled "Factors Involved in the Overthrow of Mossadegh" is completed. The study concludes that a coup in Iran is possible.
May 13, 1953
• C.I.A. and British intelligence officers meet in Nicosia, Cyprus, to draft plans for the coup. Meanwhile, the C.I.A.'s Tehran station is granted approval to launch a "grey propaganda" campaign to discredit the Mossadegh government.
And then, of course, it escalates from there.
If anyone (*coughnewtgingrich*) tries to tell you Iran hates America because they loathe and despise American culture and not because of the chaos it stoked in order to install a puppet despot, tell them to go fuck themselves
additionally, note that the US is no stranger to this kind of thing, and that holy shit, it feels QUITE TERRIBLE to be on the other side being meddled with, doesn't it?
I want to add that unless we find Boris Badenov feeding ballots into a paper shredder, the Russian hack ain't gonna change the election.
It's not just the E-mail hacks that should be under consideration for the electors but a combination of his lack of public support, dangerously naieve policy and the fact that he seems to be deeply influenced by forign interests.
Simply put, Trump is the reason why the EC has veto power over the public vote.
The Electoral College is a figure head and anyone putting hopes on them not confirming Trump is living in a dream.
I don't see why Democrats are so deep in denial about this. Trump won fair & square (with the fortunately clandestine aid of a bunch of Russian hackers.) His voters will be pissed if their vote is taken away like that.
His voters will be pissed either way, no losing side is happy in elections.
I have yet to see a coherent set of rules around which to put the claims of an illegitimate election. Many of them are fine, if the assumed context is political; either some weeks ago as an argument for voting against Trump, or on-going as argument against sending him back to the White House. Anything other than that, and it's all pretty vague and weak.
Are elections illegitimate because of events coordinated by foreign actors to influence the election? Well, who determines this? Newspapers? The CIA? Let's go with the CIA because people seem to like that better than the FBI. At a minimum you need to accept that elections can be deemed illegitimate by the CIA (under any future leadership) judging the intent of foreign actors and likely influence. And be willing to codify that into a set of rules.
I suspect any attempt to do this would be unacceptable to both sides.
The mechanism & body for declaring the illegitimacy would be the EC, not any particular authority. There's no need to codify the rules for that: said rules are already in place.
It strikes me as a terrible idea, but a nullification body is right there & built into the process.
The electoral college is not a body for declaring illegitimacy. It has nothing more than a ceremonial role, and will never have anything more than a ceremonial role. Any plan that involves appealing to the electoral college as an institution that has an independent role is just fantasy.
That's legally and historically false. Its only ceremonial due to political norms, and half Presidential elections has violations of that norm from at least one.
In practical terms, what does mean for the Russian hacks and leaks? It's going to be solved by a theoretically nullifying body that never nullifies? The EC is a one-size fits all solution for those still grappling with a loss that's all but certified. It never works out and 4 years in the future it'll come up again, and after that, and the result will remain the same.
The last time we had a faithless elector in a presidential campaign was more than a decade ago -- in 2004 -- and it might have been a mistake. In that case, an anonymous Minnesota elector voted for John F. Kerry's running mate, then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), rather than Kerry. It was widely thought to be an error rather than a protest vote.
Before that, D.C. elector Barbara Lett-Simmons in 2000 abstained from voting for Al Gore, citing the District's lack of voting representation in Congress. In 1988, a West Virginia Democratic elector did what the Minnesota elector did and cast a ballot for vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen rather than Michael Dukakis for president. In 1976, an impatient Washington state Republican voted for Gerald R. Ford's primary opponent, Ronald Reagan, instead of Ford. Richard Nixon lost one elector each in the presidential elections of 1960, 1968 and 1972; all of them went not for the Democratic nominees but for other options.
The 'norm' looks quite stable. You cite the one faithless elector per election to -I suppose- show it could be done, but I don't see it. Literally not one elector in the modern era has voted for the other candidate. In 2004 someone accidentally voted for John Edwards instead of Kerry, which means that if a Russian hack happened then... nothing. Nothing will happen. Prayer would probably work better, as a plan.
Right your argument is "it just isn't done". That's argument from a norm. The actual law and theory behind the EC doesn't require following that norm.
But norms are being violated all over the place, such as Trump gaining foreign assistance in his campaign. That was the explicit example used in justifying the creation of the electoral college in the first place. And mostly its been a huge inconvenience. Now is the time to justify its existence.
Will it mean the Electoral college will do the job its designed to do? No almost certainly not. Electors are largely party hacks. But that doesn't mean it should not.
In terms of the law the electors are legally obligated to vote only for the candidate that their party chooses for them to vote for. Through both state laws that actively require that, and through the legally binding contracts that they sign with their party in order to stop them from voting for someone else. There's too many of them, there's too much on the line for them personally if they don't do what they're legally obligated to do, and they're too disorganized for them to be able to make any meaningful group effort to change the results.
This argument that the EC could change anything about the election is getting more ridiculous by the day, and all it's doing it setting people up for more disappointment when they should be trying to find something that they actually can do about the future rather than trying to wish away the past.
Unfortunately there's little that can actually be done to save the future.
Like we can't stop the supreme court from getting stacked.
We can't prevent both houses of Congress from going through with their terrible fuckin ideas.
And we can't stop Trump from going through with his stupid fuckin ideas.
And both Trump and the houses of Congress are going to let each other get away with those stupid terrible ideas because they will not feel the pain those ideas cause and they are not offensive to the doctrine of either.
There's nothing we can do here as far as I can tell. We don't have enough representation in Congress to stop them there, executive's theirs, and that combo is going to give them the judicial too.
With all three branches chugging along for them they will do their best to disenfranchised voters, and gerrymander districts so as to ensure they maintain control, and there will be little to nothing we can do to stop them.
About the only means we could use to stop them, informing the public to cause a backlash within the groups they care about the support of, is a fruitless endeavor because those groups have been conditioned to not believe a word we say.
The reason we keep coming back to this whole EC thing is because it's the last glimmer of hope that we don't have to descend into flames.
It's a wholly ridiculous hope, but it's the last one that many have.
Please feel free to inform me if I'm being too bleak here but this is, as I understand it, the situation. We're fucked, and there's little to nothing to be done about it moving forward, but to watch the flames grow higher. Seriously if there's a better action plan for a way forward I'd really love to hear it because at the moment it seems like we really don't have a means by which to actually prevent every terrible thing these people want to do.
Step 1: Stop giving into self-destructive memes.
"The EC can overturn it", "We can impeach him", and all this stuff that relies on tricks of procedure that we have no control over, or in many cases simply don't exist anymore, only serve to get people excited about something that has almost no chance of coming through. It's clinging to some idea that this will be overturned. It won't. Right now we have to actually dig in and figure out our options for the future. The longer we put our heads in the sand and say "If only this had been different", or "X could still stop it from happening" the less coordinated we are and the less credible we are.
Step 2: Our options.
We can't stop them from filling the Supreme Court chair or being in control of all three branches of the federal government for the next 2-4 years. Fine, we can deal with that. What we can do is make it harder for them. Protests, political action groups, local charities for those most likely to be hurt by the Trump Administration, we can focus on that stuff until the elections. What we need to be doing is focusing on the future elections and making it harder for local governments to put in place restrictions. So, again, protests and political action groups.
All this bullshit about the EC stopping it isn't going to pan out, and not only do we need to not fall to pieces about this we need to be more united, active, and informed than we are now if we're going to stop the current administration and if we're going to stop the next one down the line. This bullshit "end of the world" crap only serves to make everyone who is actually doing something about it look bad. No one's going to take protests against their policies seriously if their supposed allies are characterizing it as a protest against the end of the world.
You have to look at what's coming, accept that it's coming, and then find out what's available to move around it. Yeah, a significant portion of the population is going to have it significantly worse than the rest of us, and we can work to help them, but only so long as we don't have our heads in the sand!
We don't know with any certainty what's coming with Trump's administration. If it's regular old GOP governance yeah you're right we can do that. If it's a worst case scenario and we get Dictator Trump this is the last legitimate stand against him, then politics becomes useless as a whole to fight against him.
The Democratic candidate can also run on abolishing the Electoral College (even if its not true) in 2020.
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I don't think Trump is a stooge. "Stooge" implies intentional collaboration. Trump is just an easily manipulated narcissist, the Useful Idiot.
I almost don't want to read this kind of stuff because I feel it gives me false hope.
And I was never worried about an armed insurrection. Republicans are rural, older and richer. They have much too much to lose to take to the streets and fight. Revolutions are rarely fought by the wealthy in society!
If any side should be worried it's the republicans. They are busy oppressing the young, the worker, and the poor. Those three groups are typically the ones that engage in armed insurrection. It doesnt work of course, but that's where the end of the country comes from if it does. Rich people finance wars of independence. Poor people start insurrection.
Lessig is almost always wrong, as far as I can remember. I'd be shocked if Trump loses a single elector.
It's not just the E-mail hacks that should be under consideration for the electors but a combination of his lack of public support, dangerously naieve policy and the fact that he seems to be deeply influenced by forign interests.
Simply put, Trump is the reason why the EC has veto power over the public vote.
I think he'll lose some. But it'll be in the single digits.
Edit: That said, if by some miracle of God the EC DOES block Trump, then I expect an amendment reforming the EC (or, God willing, remove it outright) to be passed pretty quickly.
Steam: pazython
The last time there was more than one faithless elector was in 1912, and it was on the VP ballot, since Taft's veep died before the vote.
If even a handful of electors bail on Trump, it should be used as a cudgel against every insistence that he's a legitimate president. But we're not going to see full scale revolt unless an actual photo of him going down on Putin surfaces before the vote.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
None, none at all
Really? I used 'stooge' to imply the exact opposite. Trump is not actively trying to undermine America's position to favor Russia, but he'd certainly rather help Russia than be remotely antagonistic, and their intelligence community hacked us and passed the emails on to Wikileaks specifically to help him win the election via propaganda.
good
it would solve our issues with FPTP like we suffered in this election and effectively remove the ability for minority red states to sway elections
The most logical choice would be to try and bind the vote of the EC (so that they can have it both ways), but I suspect that trying to do so would be a pandoras box of suck since it means fundamentally removing one of the checks on the federal government set up by the FF.
I'd say that this check is already not working as intended.
Given that we won't know whether it's working or not until the Electors actually vote, I'd say it's premature to make that declaration.
They'll probably roll over for this because they're terrified of the consequences of going against the conventional wisdom regarding the electoral college system and may not even realize that they have the right to vote for whoever they want because lets face it: that's what would happen under normal circumstances.
But the entrirety of the trump campaign was insane nonsense that flew in the face of all logic and paid off, so why shouldn't the EC and do so themselves?
Because it would be 100% unprecedented. No one likes being the first to do a thing. Especially when the thing you would be doing is going against your chosen tribe.
Also, Dems were flipping our shit about that one elector who wasn't going to vote for Hillary. We can't want these things to happen when they're convienant for us, and cry bloody murder when they're inconvienant. That's a textbook Trump move.
We've also never had a man as thoroughly unqualified and obviously compromised by foreign interests as trump win the vote because the entire system up to this point has been designed to weed people like him out in the first round of primary votes.
So I'll be a whole lot less shocked by them overturning the vote then I will be when the blue wall fell.
Oh it all should. But it won't.
And now I have a ulcer.
This would actually be a dream opportunity for Mitch and Ryan; they would be able to ditch trump and stuff whatever stooge they wanted in the white house.
Democracy is the popular vote. The EC is intended to work as a temporary over-ride of that, to help overide regional strongmen with no national appeal, to allow 'smart people' to get into the presidency and the persuade the public by their smart actions and clever arguments that the smart people were right all along, and the popular vote will then follow them. This is the ONLY reasonable reason for overriding the public vote in a democracy. There is no other. Arguments for ignoring the electoral college and respecting the popular vote have merit. Arguments that both systems should be ignored (Trump should be winner even if he lost the popular vote and the college, as we were protesting against) have no merit. When we say "The popular vote should be supreme, the entire purpose of the EC is to prevent Trump, and the electors should respect that" it is not the same as when Republicans say "We should be president regardless of what happens!" even though we are both asking for the same thing.
It's not about convenience. One is being an idiot, the other is saving the nation from a 4 year nightmare.
If Trump was on the EC, he'd vote for himself or some shit. The only folks who would break convention are like Trump.
Are there any examples of foreign propaganda influencing America? Has America What are the examples of America doing this to other countries?
The weakest part of security is always the human element.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
No U.
Lessig's giving free legal advice for potentially faithless electors. He has some personal idea of what the electors are thinking, although I'm sure he's exaggerating things. Like, if someone says "Hey, I'm an Alaskan elector, and I was talking with the other electors and we were wondering blah blah" I wouldn't be surprised if Lessig marked that down as three maybes. He's not dumb or uninformed, I doubt he's wrong exactly, but he's definitely fine with spin.
I wouldn't be surprised if Trump loses an elector, because at least one has explicitly said he's not going to vote Trump (and, unlike the Cruz guy from Texas, this guy hasn't given up the spot). And I wouldn't be surprised if others are staying silent. I doubt it's going to be a significant number of them, but I think we're more likely than not to see at least one faithless Trump elector.
The Electoral College is a figure head and anyone putting hopes on them not confirming Trump is living in a dream.
Step 1: Stop giving into self-destructive memes.
"The EC can overturn it", "We can impeach him", and all this stuff that relies on tricks of procedure that we have no control over, or in many cases simply don't exist anymore, only serve to get people excited about something that has almost no chance of coming through. It's clinging to some idea that this will be overturned. It won't. Right now we have to actually dig in and figure out our options for the future. The longer we put our heads in the sand and say "If only this had been different", or "X could still stop it from happening" the less coordinated we are and the less credible we are.
Step 2: Our options.
We can't stop them from filling the Supreme Court chair or being in control of all three branches of the federal government for the next 2-4 years. Fine, we can deal with that. What we can do is make it harder for them. Protests, political action groups, local charities for those most likely to be hurt by the Trump Administration, we can focus on that stuff until the elections. What we need to be doing is focusing on the future elections and making it harder for local governments to put in place restrictions. So, again, protests and political action groups.
All this bullshit about the EC stopping it isn't going to pan out, and not only do we need to not fall to pieces about this we need to be more united, active, and informed than we are now if we're going to stop the current administration and if we're going to stop the next one down the line. This bullshit "end of the world" crap only serves to make everyone who is actually doing something about it look bad. No one's going to take protests against their policies seriously if their supposed allies are characterizing it as a protest against the end of the world.
You have to look at what's coming, accept that it's coming, and then find out what's available to move around it. Yeah, a significant portion of the population is going to have it significantly worse than the rest of us, and we can work to help them, but only so long as we don't have our heads in the sand!
I don't see why Democrats are so deep in denial about this. Trump won fair & square (with the fortunately clandestine aid of a bunch of Russian hackers.) His voters will be pissed if their vote is taken away like that.
Well, we can filibuster left and right and grind Congress to a halt actually, but that's unlikely to help much past 2018...
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Funny, because 12 months ago I'd have said the same thing about trump winning the presidency.
His voters will be pissed either way, no losing side is happy in elections.
We don't know with any certainty what's coming with Trump's administration. If it's regular old GOP governance yeah you're right we can do that. If it's a worst case scenario and we get Dictator Trump this is the last legitimate stand against him, then politics becomes useless as a whole to fight against him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'état
https://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-coup-timeline.html
And then, of course, it escalates from there.
If anyone (*coughnewtgingrich*) tries to tell you Iran hates America because they loathe and despise American culture and not because of the chaos it stoked in order to install a puppet despot, tell them to go fuck themselves
additionally, note that the US is no stranger to this kind of thing, and that holy shit, it feels QUITE TERRIBLE to be on the other side being meddled with, doesn't it?
NNID: Hakkekage
The Democratic candidate can also run on abolishing the Electoral College (even if its not true) in 2020.