I’m not sure if I would actually consider “elector” to be an office, unless statutes (and of course the specific provision of the Constitution) specifically designate it as an office.
To me, it’s like when I served as a juror. Did I hold the office of a juror for that amount of time? On general principle, I say no. And I think on the face of it, serving as an elector is awfully similar to serving as a juror.
I would agree, it’s a very short specific gig but it is considered an office. From my quote above:
“if a person elected as elector holds another elective office at the time of taking the oath of office as elector, that other office is vacated upon taking the oath of office.”
If the Democrats take up this plan then it becomes a Democratic Party plan. If I wrote a letter to Donald Trump asking him to give me a nuclear weapon that doesn’t mean there’s a Trump plan to make me a nuclear power.
But that doesn’t disqualify the person from being an Elector or from casting a valid vote in the Electoral College. The text says the “other office” is vacated. At most, this just means that some public officials resigned from their jobs without realizing they were doing so. Unfortunate for those involved but it has no effect on the election.
I’m guessing the North Carolina legislature will slap a quick fix on this and pass a law that says the jobs were only vacated while they were acting as Electors and everyone automatically resumes their other offices afterwards.
And I explained why that doesn’t necessarily have any effect on the election.
There are still, to this day, Republicans who complain that JFK “stole” the election of 1960 by buying votes. There are still, to this day, Republicans who complain that LBJ “stole” the election of 1964, by registering deceased voters.
Trump is going to be President, but we have the right to bitch about it. If an electoral irregularity occurred, nothing will be changed, but it is something we have an equal right to complain about.
When the Republicans cease to whine about 1960 and 1964, be sure to let us know. (Hint: never gonna happen.)
Yeah, that’s also why I underlined that bit the first time. I also quoted the bit that pointed out that they allow an elector to still maintain appointive offices. However, the article said only one of the NC electors was “illegitmate” for this reason but seven were because of not residing in the proper district - can’t find any backing for that supposed rule.
The group making the claims is not asserting that the “invalid” electors are unqualified by any provision of the United States Constitution. So the post by Saint Cad is irrelevant.
The group is claiming that several electors were not validly chosen due to two main state law issues:
a) Some states require (they say) that electors be residents of the congressional districts that they are chosen to “represent” when slates of electors are nominated by the candidates. North Carolina is an example. It’s clear to me from the state law in question that North Carolina does require that each congressional district be represented by an elector; it’s not clear to me that the law requires the elector to be resident in that district. But, perhaps it does.
b) Some states bar people from holding “dual” offices. The group has aggressively interpreted these laws. Some of those aggressive interpretations may be invalid.
As to these two claims, the point can be made quite simply: since it is up to the states to police this, it’s not a valid reason to dispute the votes from a given state when Congress convenes to count the electoral votes. I don’t expect this to get very far. The last time Congress actually had to deal with an objection to an electoral vote report (2004 from Ohio, IIRC), they dealt with it pretty quickly, and it didn’t get anywhere.
As for the claim that some states aren’t following the technical rules of the 12th Amendment, as I understand it, that, too, is based upon a very aggressive interpretation of what exactly “distinct lists” means. I, personally, see no reason to believe that this means two separate pieces of paper, as appears to be asserted.
**Bone : **Thx for merging. I did look around and did not notice the other thread. And I do really appreciate the insight(s) from everyone re: this question. Learn new things every day…
What would “Democrats take up the plan” look like? A DNC resolution? A congressional vote? Something else? Is it your position that whatever mechanism you describe in response to this question represents the minimum threshold necessary to attribute a plan / policy / position to a major political party?
How about almost anything other than 15 law students working on a “stop Trump” project? For fucks sake, man. There is nothing connecting this to Democrats of even the lowest authority.
Colin Powell received three Electoral Votes … This changes EVERYTHING … go for it I say, what could go wrong?
How about “have some connection to the Democrats”?
So…are all these 50-100 electors casting electoral college votes for the first time, or have we already had invalid presidential election results due to their presence sullying them? Or have we had other invalid electors in the past and they just successfully pulled the wool over our eyes then? Oh, the scandal!
I think it’s the latter. Just looking at the 31 Trump voting states, they found 23 didn’t make separate lists for P and VP so assuming a few Clinton states made the same mistake and that this isn’t some new procedure they all brought on this year, we could be looking at decades if not a century of illegal elections.
I have no idea, hence my asking.
Are you aware of any yourself? If so, please cite them 
Direst from the OP’s link
Or from the Alternet site directly
So maybe not as irrelevant as you think.
This sort of bullshit drives me crazy. It’s like a valve for people’s anger, releasing it uselessly while protecting the Trump mechanism from any real effect.
Seriously, fuck that. If you’re angry about Trump–and you should be–channel that anger effectively.
Do they ever quote the relevant sections of the U.S. Constitution in either place? Because these quotes say things like state not federal requirements, and states have constitutions too.
The Alternet summary says that, but the actual quotes from the report do not. So, perhaps I’m much more correct about it than you think.