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I have been around these boards WAY too long. I actually read this thread title as “The thread for far-felched election questions.” What is wrong with me?
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Nothing’s wrong with you, Beadalin. The problem is with everyone who didn’t read the topic that way, as that’s a sure sign that those people don’t spend enough time here 
What if there was a presidential election that was so close, both parties were only a few votes off the required 270 electoral votes to take the presidency? What if there were one or two states, the deciding states mind you, that, out of the millions of votes cast, put the candidates within a few hundred to a few thousand votes of each other? What steps would we take to ensure that the president is elected in a fair and lawful manner?
And don’t tell me that this situation could *never[i/] occur because there’s always a chance!
What if a crazed sheriff in West Palm Beach had walked into a voting precinct or three, guns blazing, and burned several ballot boxes?
Obviously the crazed sheriff would be imprisoned if Gore won and serve as national security advisor if Bush won, but what would happen to the votes? Tough nuggets? Would anyone from the precinct(s) be allowed to revote?
(I’m assuming that the votes were burned after they were cast but before any initial tallying.)
I’m bumping this because of a new rash of election questions. I’m not closing the others, since this had sunk pretty low in the forum listing.
But in the future, out of consideration for your fellow members, please please please put your election questions in this thread.
Thank you.
This isn’t a question, it’s more of an excuse to help manhattan keep this thread at the top.
Bush Lieberman 2000!
Assuming Flordia does eventually go to Bush, and assuming Florida does not have a law requiring electors to vote for the (Vice) Presidential candidate to whom they’re pledged*, two (just 2!) Florida electors should defect - from Bush & Cheney to Bush & Lieberman.
Consider it for a second. It solves several problems:
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Disputed popular returns in Florida (and possibly other states).
In these situations, it is often most acceptable to reach some sort of political compromise. Obviously only one party can win the Presidency, but two offices are being selected here. The whole Florida electoral slate would still be loyal to Bush, and the vast majority would be loyal to the whole ticket, but two of them would respond to the concerns of Florida Democrats over vote-counting by giving the nod to the Lieberman. -
Cheney’s health problems.
“Minor” is obviously a relative term when followed “heart attack”. Cheney has had several. Sure, having a VP of a different party than the Presidency is going to create some unease, but having a VP have heart attacks occasionally will create its own unease. -
Disputes over Cheney’s true residency.
If he’s really from Texas, well, that would be a big Constitutional problem.
Okay, now to answer the possible problems with this whacky proposal:
A. Coalition government! Stalemates over policy!
No, there wouldn’t be any. The Vice Presidency has no power to veto Presidential decisions or pick cabinet members, although there’d be nothing to prevent Bush from consulting him (Republicans got along with L. pretty well in the Senate.) The Vice President hass three substantive roles, as I see it:
Casting the tie-breaking vote in the Senate
Serving on the governing board of the Smithsonian Institution
Serving on the National Security Council
Clinton has head a Republican on his National Security Council (Defense Secretary Cohen; I’m talking about statutory members of the council, not staff to the council); Franklin Roosevelt had a Republican Secretary of War for some time. So there is precedent for it.
B. Republicans wouldn’t want to give up a vote in the Senate.
Lieberman would (if he accepted higher office) vacate his Senate seat, his successor being chosen by Connecticut’s Republican governor. By making Lieberman VP, the Republicans would be gaining a normal vote at the cost of a casting vote. So in purely strategic terms, it would be an increase in Republican power in the Senate.
C. There’s no historical precedent for it.
Sure there is. Jefferson was Adams’ VP, for different reasons, and that worked okay. I don’t think either of them liked it though.
D. Lieberman would be forced to support policies he’s totally against.
He wouldn’t be forced to do anything. He could keep his mouth shut if he wanted to. Besides, Gore’s pretty moderate as Democrats go, and Lieberman is to the right of Gore, and Bush isn’t super-conservative anyway.
E. You can’t vote for a President of one party and a VP of another!
Says who? If there’s some law against it, I don’t know it. Just because voters can’t do it, doesn’t mean electors can’t.
F. It’s a bad idea to have members of different parties in the line of succession.
Maybe, but the number two person in the line of succession is the Speaker of the House, who is not guaranteed to be of the same party as the President (usually the opposite, in recent years). Only when you get back to the cabinet, starting with the number four in the line, does it become likely again that the successor will be of the same party as the President. (Bit of trivia: three out of the top five people in the current line of succession are Republicans (Hastert, Thurmond, and Cohen; only Gore and Summer belong to the President’s party).
I call this a whacky proposal because I know it’s not going to happen. I mean, I think lots of people would hate it, and four years is a long time to live with an experiment. And of course there is no reason why a couple of Florida Republicans picked for absolute party loyalty would want to please Democrats at the cost of the second-highest office in the land. I thought this proposal up mainly as a joke, but I’m starting to see real merits in it as time goes. Which shows you that I’m a good propagandist and/or very gullible.
*Actual question: does Florida have such a law? Some states do, some don’t.
Forget my reference to Roosevelt’s Secretary of War. I just got carried away. At least it is a precedent for bipartisanship in defense matters in general.
I think the best the Democrats could hope for from Bush would be a token Cabinet appointment like Hayes gave out in 1876. He appointed a Democrat Postmaster General.
His bigger concession was ending the Federal occupation of the South which propped up the Republican state governments in the old Confederacy.
Florida electors have to take a pledge to vote for their party’s candidate. (Section 103.021(1)) However, most think that such pledges are unenforceable and most don’t have any punitive measures attached.
If you really want to carry the bipartisanship/coalition idea further, remember that FDR appointed a Republican, Harlan Stone to be Chief Justice.
I doubt Bush would appoint a prominent liberal Democratic judge if given the opportunity.