There’s a petition circulation, which begun on Facebook, petitioning the electoral college to vote for Clinton. I have little faith in Facebook petitions, but I signed this one anyway-- kind of a “Hail Mary,” if I understand the term correctly.
Please investigate if you wish. I’d create a link if I knew how.
I’d prefer that we not try to rules-lawyer the election because we don’t like the result the system gave us.
Yeah, I agree. Change the EC for future elections, but leave the results of this one alone. The people have spoken, for better or worse. I, somewhat reluctantly, accept Donald Trump as the next president. Nothing will be gained by overthrowing this one.
Actually, creating a link would have been against the rules in the Registration Agreement.
Discuss the idea, but do not provide links or suggest that others do so to promote the idea.
[ /Moderating ]
Yeah, let’s show the dangerous fringe of Trump supporters that the system is indeed rigged. That will lead somewhere good.
Instead of telling GOP electors to switch to HRC, the should petition both Dem and Gop voters to pick a moderate Repub, like Romney. Admit the gop won but pick a better individual.
“the people have spoken” is not a valid counterargument. The Constitution puts the choice of the president in the Electoral College, not the people. Besides Hillary got more people.
Yes, the Constitution does place that power on the Electoral College. However, in the 225 years between when the Constitution was ratified and now, we’ve developed a political tradition, far more important than the letter of the law, that the role of the EC is simply to ratify the elections of the respective states, not to act of its own accord.
As I mentioned in another thread, the British monarch legally has the power to do a lot of things, such as dismiss Parliament and appoint ministers, which over time it has come to be informally decided that they may not do of their own free will, but only instead on the advice of the government, and were the monarch to dispense with that tradition and attempt to rule by fiat it would provoke a constitutional crisis.
The same is true here - if the Electoral College attempted to deny the vote of the people and decree that it alone had the power to decide who becomes president, it would throw the entire system out of whack in ways we can’t predict. If the EC were to decree Clinton, or Bernie Sanders, or Romney (who doesn’t even want the job anymore) to be president, that person would have no legitimacy in the eyes of most of the people, it would haunt their entire term, and it would forever change the way we elect presidents. Perhaps the states start passing laws declaring that the legislature votes in the electors irrespective of the will of the people. Perhaps the majority legislators make themselves electors. Perhaps people start publicly campaigning for elector. Maybe the Constitution gets amended to fix the mess somehow, if there’s enough common political will to get it done. Maybe we end up with a clusterfuck where some people’s votes count, some people’s don’t, and in the end the election gets decided by the whim of some guy who was voted elector of the 7th district of Missouri by a margin of 258 votes.
It’s a Pandora’s box that we oughtn’t open.