All it would take is for enough people-of-conscience (instead of people of maintaining-the-status-quo) to get elected to enough state legislatures.
It’s not impossible. Not likely, perhaps, but not impossible.
Could Hillary Clinton withdraw, and direct her electors to vote for a more competent and sane Republican ? Someone more palatable to Republican electors than Trump ?
If enough electors abstain, or vote third party that it is not a majority, and it goes to the house to pick, does that make us a parliamentary democracy? Especially if they pick Ryan, Mcconnel, or Portman or something. (A legislator who was not on the presidential ticket.)
She only has 232 electors. It doesn’t matter what her electors do unless they are joined by a not-insignificant number of Trump electors.
ETA: it’s also worth noting that electors are 538 unique people. And Clinton doesn’t have any more iron-fisted control over them than the various states do (and some CO, WA, and TX electors have all declared their intention to go rogue). I doubt she could convince all 232 electors to do something so personally-distasteful to them as vote for a Republican. She might be able to get 100+ if she pushed hard, but, they’ve all got their own (in some cases, very wacky) ideas and preferences, and aren’t required to do as she tells them. Some won’t.
Well, the alternative is a Trump presidency. Could concentrate the minds wonderfully.
And needing to get a significant number of Trump electors onboard was the reason for specifying that it would need to be someone palatable. Very palatable. It doesn’t seem likly, but it seems less impossible than getting that many electors to switch from Republican to putting in a Democrat.
I am not sure that would be an improvement though. Trump ran on a platform of cleaning up Washington as an outsider. Seeing him cheated out of the presidency in a trasparent and obvious move will do significant damage to American democracy, even if he did lose the public vote.
The question is if a Trump presidency would do more short-term damage than the long-term damage of an electoral revolt.
Pretty sure the house is only allowed to pick from the top three candidates from the electoral college vote.
What if you got an elector (or group of electors) to cast a vote for “John Smith” or some other common name? Could the House have a casting call for everyone named John Smith and just pick their favorite John Smith?
What it would do is make governance even less transparent and representatives less personally accountable. It is hard enough to keep track of the policy positions, bill and amendment proposals, and voting records of 435 representatives on 21 committees and the various subcommittees they spawn. There is no realistic expectation of any agency keeping tabs on more than twenty times that number, and any of a profusion of ways to hide legislative agendas in the various activities of a literal stadium crowd of legislators, not to mention the gridlock from likely never being able to get any kind of majority consensus on bills that are penned by a tiny minority of legislators that some how manage to get their individual bill through thousands submitted to each subcommittee under such a scheme. We also struggle in holding legislators accountable to have at least a minimal understanding of the bills they vote for even though they all maintain a paid staff of researchers and the support of the Congressional Research Service. Having to support twenty times that number is the literally definition of unwiedly bureaucracy in action.
Stranger
If you’re doing that, just get enough electors to vote for a dead person. The 20th Amendment allows it to be blown wide open if one of the House’s three candidates is dead. (The only kink is that it has to be done “by law,” and evidently Congress has neglected to enact any standing provisions for such an eventuality. So the Senate and president would be dragged into the mix.)
It’s not regional representation. It’s the fact that states are political entities that make up the so-called United States.
And people of the same race, queerness, profession, etc are not homogeneous hive-minds.
True, but he did admit that reserving representation by demographic “segments” would not work because of the issue of how to judge who/what IS such a “segment”.
ISTM the alternatives are popular vote or a proportionally-alloted (NOT district-based!) Electoral College, and/or elimination of “wins” by mere plurality at the state level. All requiring constitutional mandate to be enforced nationwide.
Those hoping for an end to the legal fiction of all the States being preexisting “sovereigns”, rather than most of them being mere territorial subdivisions created by the Congress that were later promoted in status, are actually thinking of a Second Republic. Not happening w/o a Constitutional Convention.
Electoral College Members Request Intelligence Briefing On Russia, Trump
OK, if a substantial number of electors come to believe that the results were hacked… ?
Much as I despise Trump, I’m almost as uncomfortable about the CIA being allowed to influence the election as I am about the Russians influencing it.
Or if a substantial number of electors come to believe the moon is made of green cheese? One wonders where the desperation of Democrats will turn for help when Trump is finally inaugurated.
But it’s just fine if the FBI comes out for him. Which they did, in a very well-timed manner.
Are there intelligence briefings to address the dairy composition of the lunar body? They want information, and that seems like a good thing.
That poor fool is DESPERATE. I guess he’s struggling to cope with the guilt that his falling for a phishing scheme may have cost HRC the election.
What “phishing scheme”? You offer a citation for your quote, are we to assume that you are the authoritative source for this last bit?
See? Not so hard, is it? Keep up the good work! Remember, we are here to help!