If Democracts hold majority at next Pres election, what prevents them from rejecting Electors vote and winning rejection based on majority in both houses?

Great Debates
#42

Things like the 3/5 compromise can be defended on the grounds that it was necessary to get it ratified (I personally think the free States should have just gone it alone rather than compromise with slaveholders, but it’s defensible).

Other stuff like the “let’s just assume that by sheer force of will, we can overcome the tendency to form into political parties, unlike any other representative assembly in history” was just goofy. I don’t actually know, but I doubt that any State was prepared to stay out of the Union unless the runner-up of the Presidential election got to be Vice-President.

#43

IMHO a “centre-left” party will likely hold out the principles of democracy whereas the MAGA type republicans hold out more fascist principles.

#44

Part of the whole misapprehension of some factions that seem to follow the Constitution-as-Scripture model is a failure to understand that if the Constitutions sets the general case, and a law defines the specifics, then that does not mean the law is ignorable as long as you invoke the Constitution but rather the law is the way you enforce the Constitution. For instance the whole bit about “as the State legislatures may provide” that applies to selecting electors or qualifying voters or drawing district boundaries. “As the State legislature may provide” includes that the legislature may provide, via a LAW, that it will be bound by popular vote (including a referendum where the people approve a redistricting commission). It does not mean that it is entirely at the moment-by-moment whim of the legislature forever.

The way it looks to me, they sort of assumed that the people doing the deciding and competing for the positions would be upstanding Gentlemen of Quality like themselves, and the rabble would be kept in their place. That is to this day brought to bear in the “republic vs. democracy” trope.

Shows how much they knew.

#45

“If Democracts hold majority at next Pres election, what prevents them from rejecting Electors vote and winning rejection based on majority in both houses?”

Their consciences, their respect for the will of the people, and their respect for their vows to uphold and defend the constitution.

#46

But that’s not in the Constitution. The electoral vote objection process is in a statute. The Constitution makes no mention of it at all.

If a state’s electoral votes were so rejected, it’s 100% likely they would challenge the constitutionality of the law, and 99.5% likely they’d win.

#47

Yeah, that’s what I think too. The constitution limits congress to counting the electoral votes. Of course the constitution does not anticipate the possibility of a state’s sending in two sets of EVs and that law fills the gap. But (I don’t recall its exact wording) I don’t think it anticipates the possibility of rejecting outright the EVs a state submits. That is just a fantasy dreamt up by Trump and his enablers.

#48

I can’t help but think you should have Federal oversight of elections to offices at least at State Congress level and above, in the UK we have the Electoral Commission which has wide ranging powers and can bring evidence to criminal prosecutions.

Such prosecutions are handled by the Crown Prosection Service, and obviously there are various sanctions available.

The critical question is who controls the CPS and the Electoral Commission - neither are partisan political appointees although they are formally apporved by the House of Commons - but it is a bi-partisan process and seems to be far more a final seal of approval following an open competition application process, it would be highly unusual for anyone to be rejected following successful application.

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/who-we-are

This would also need to have an independent Boundary Commission - again these are not partisan appointments.

The UK electoral Commission not only deals with political elections for national and local government but also for matters where national organisations have elections such as trade unions and internal political party elections, and those organisations must pay for this involvement. They also become involved in supervising the running of those elections, ensuring that the various requirements are being met, although they do not do the count itself of run the polling stations or the other physical parts of the election.

I understand the scale of operation in UK elections is a much different one to that in the US, however you do have pan-national law enforcement by various agencies, I cannot see how taking oversight away from states and Electoral Boundaries taken into a Federal Agency

#49

More than that, once you declare that you can use power in any manner you see fit, to the point of overturning free and fair elections, it’s essentially saying that power through elections is unimportant; power by any means and using power in whatever way one sees fit, is instead what matters more. That’s not the kind of power that’s accepted very readily.

#50

Isn’t “rejecting outright the EVs a state submits” something the Republicans actually attempted? It’s my understanding that most of the EV challenges they made were over a single slate of electors, not a pair. Sure you could say they were just trying to slow down the process, but I’ve heard it proposed that that was illegal interference with the election process, and that there’s a statute that says all of those senators have potentially earned prison time.

#51

This is correct. There were no alternative ballots presented. So by statute they had no basis for challenging those other than to claim they were not “regularly given” or “lawfully ascertained”. But they still did so.

If somehow a party had a majority in both houses that were willing to vote that the EV from a state were not “regularly given” or “lawfully ascertained” then I assume it would end up in SCOTUS as to whether the Electoral Count Act’s language regarding Congress challenging Electoral College ballots is Constitutional.

And also to define what “regularly given” and “lawfully ascertained” actually mean. It seems to just mean “not given under duress” and “signed by the governor/SoS as prescribed by state law”.

IANAL, but it seems to me that SCOTUS would likely rule that any Congressional role is extremely limited. The ability to appoint electors is rather explicitly given to the various states.