This is what caught my attention when I first read about this. If Congress were to invalidate the electors (they won’t, but for the sake of discussion) they would then have to choose between the three highest electoral votes getters; Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Colin Powell.
Three Democratic electors in Washington state voted for Powell, so apparently he would be a valid consideration.
One aspect that hasn’t been brought up here: if you look at the (supposed) legal findings, they also list what they consider to be invalid Democratic electors.
I don’t think that the people behind this are trying to get Clinton in the White House. I don’t doubt that that would be their preference, but they must recognize the futility of that. I think that they’re trying to give the Republicans an arguable reason to install someone less controversial and troublesome; Colin Powell.
It won’t happen, of course, but I think that’s the plan.
The Congress today accepted the results of the states’ electoral voting.
304 electoral votes for Trump.
227 for Clinton.
7 for other candidates (four taken from Clinton’s Washington State electors and one from her Hawaii electors; two from Trump’s Texas electors)
Several Democratic House members tendered objections to the votes but no senator joined them; by rule, any objection that would trigger debate must come from both a senator and a representative.
For a seemingly simple reason that some Democrats have lost sight of:
It’s important to treat the process with respect, even if you don’t like the result.
Objecting to the electoral vote return of any one of the Trump states would have been a waste of time; the Congress is firmly Republican, and all issues would have been resolved in favor of Mr. Trump (see 1876). Therefore, objecting to the vote, in the absence of something seriously wrong with the reported result of a state would be doing nothing more than looking like the spoiled child incapable of dealing with not getting his way. Senators generally understand the need to behave respectably far better than Representatives do, and that proved to be the case again today.
It’s been interesting how the story of Trump’s win has been magnified and extended by the actions of his opponents. First there were futile recounts, and then there were attempts to persuade electors to go faithless which backfired, and then there was this effort to challenge the certification. It’s like the losers are dragging out their defeat for as long as possible. I would’ve thought they’d want to quit talking about it, forget about it, and move on, but it seems that it’s been quite the opposite.
Seeing as this is the second election Republicans have stolen in my lifetime, let’s not pretend for one nanosecond if the election turned out the other way, Republicans wouldn’t be trying everything they could, legally or illegally, to change the result. It’s hilarious how Republicans pretend they’ve always played nice once they finally successfully steal another election.
Sure – but as absurd as it was, and as alarming as the fact that one of its more vocal proponents is now President-Elect, no Republican representative or senator objected to counting Obama’s electoral college votes based on his supposed Kenyan birth.
Indeed, if we look to recent examples, the only attempts to challenge electoral college vote tallies from a state have been made by Democrats (2005, 1969). In 2000, there were multiple attempts (as in this year) to “object” to the vote tallies of certain states, said attempts being made by Democrats, and all (as this year) were ruled out of order because they were not properly made (by law, they have to be made in writing, with one Representative and one Senator signing).
So, while it IS the case that Congresscritters have been pressured before to reject lawfully given electoral votes prior to the counting session (see Republicans tried to flip Electoral College voters too), once that session has started, it appears it is only Democrats who act out their unhappiness in full public eye on the floor of the Congress. :rolleyes:
It should be noted, of course, that the current statute that governs counting the votes was passed at least in part as a result of the Republican Party’s shenanigans in 1876. For a comprehensive look at how it works now, see: CRS Report on Counting Electoral Votes
The next move to stop Trump will be to try and convince all the judges in the US not to swear him in. If that doesn’t work, they can try to hide all the Bibles so that he can’t put his hand on one.
Nah, that’s too labor intensive. The smarter thing to do would be to carefully remove all the real pages from a Bible that is the exact duplicate to the one that’ll be used in the cermony and insert some other text into the cover. Then they hire a ninja to swap them during the night. Trump puts his hand on this supposed Bible and someone planted in the crowd shouts that it’s not a real Bible he’s just sworn in on, and then we find out it’s a text for Nazism or maybe child porn. Obviously this would stop Trump from taking power.
I know it is moot now, but the argument could be something along the lines of the federal constitution provides this:
[QUOTE=Constitution]
Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.
[/QUOTE]
(emphasis added). So if North Carolina law provides that electors are to be from each Congressional district and that wasn’t done, then those electors were not appointed in the manner so directed by the North Carolina Legislature, and are therefore, invalid electors under the U.S. Constitution.
