YES….
This could happen, though unlikely?
A majority party COULD simply vote to accept their own electors irrgardless of their state’s vote and throw the election to their choice ….
For 134 years things have worked on tradition of ‘doing the right thing’…
But?
Donald Trump & Co. tried to get around the system thru Mike Pence, who refused….
Some in Congress want to hardwire this ability to steal and election out…
They will probably fail….
Congress has spent 134 years avoiding the subject.
Instead, it has agreed to abide by the Electoral Count Act every four years, even if, as a constitutional matter, the statute may be little more than a glorified suggestion. In fact, Congress has diligently sidestepped the debate by passing resolutions tying itself to the rules of the law — a nod to the notion that they might not be mandatory.
The unanswered questions leave today’s Congress in a perilous position. Democrats, along with the two House GOP members of the Jan. 6 select committee, want to prevent a future effort by Trump or any other losing candidate to attack the transfer of power during certification. That makes Electoral Count Act reform a central part of the select committee’s mandate.
Yet before the panel can propose a change to the law, it must at least try to settle a question that’s vexed generations of constitutional scholars: Can the Electoral Count Act’s key provisions be enforced, or can a rogue future Congress — in league with a losing presidential candidate — simply ignore it?…
…
Across the aisle, Jan. 6 select committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) — who has lambasted Trump since the Jan. 6 attack — acknowledged “substantial debate” over the Electoral Count Act’s constitutionality in a pre-insurrection memo to colleagues urging them to certify Joe Biden’s victory.
Experts are split on whether any Congress can pass a law that would dictate how its successors certify presidential elections. Typically, the House and Senate have the constitutional power to set their own rules, which can be changed at will. Attempting to legislate against this would be unconstitutional. But the Electoral College certification is so significant that many constitutional scholars say it overrides that congressional prerogative….
…
Until the Electoral Count Act, the only requirement for the counting of Electoral College votes appeared in the Twelfth Amendment, which requires the House and Senate to meet in the presence of the vice president and count ballots delivered by the states. If no candidate gets a majority, the amendment sends the election to the House…
Note….
Of Course the Congress and President COULD just move the election to the popular vote like EVERY OTHER election in this country for political office, eh?
Nah!….
That wouldn’t make sense , right?
I put nothing past these Right Wing Republican creeps…
NOTHING!
Are you confident that the courts would not allow a GOP attempt to discard an actual presidential vote in a state? my guess is that the courts would likely allow it if the law changed before the actual presidential vote, but not allow it if it the law changed after the actual vote but before the certification?
I assume this would ultimately be a Supreme Court ruling?
I am very interested in your thoughts Jack. Unlike James, I don’t pretend to know anything about the law.
They WILL TRY….
Yup!
And to think that It was Dan Quayle who may have save Democracy by convincing Mike Pence to certify the election.
There’s nothing I see in the Constitution (again I defer to Jack) that says state legislatures cannot follow South Carolina’s example before 1868 by choosing Electors themselves rather than by submitting the choice to the voters (as has happened in every other state since 1820.)
Article I does say that each state’s delegation to the House of Representatives shall be elected by those qualified to vote for the “most numerous branch” of that state’s legislature [written when upper houses sometimes had a more restrictive franchise than lower houses].
And the 17th Amendment does say that the voters of each state (rather than the legislature or — except for vacancies between elections — the Governor) shall choose her two Senators.
But there’s no prohibition I see in the Constitution that would forbid majorities in each House of Congress, with the assent of the President [or else concurrent 2/3 majorities], from repealing the Electoral Count Act and allowing each state’s legislature (rather than her voters) to pick that state’s Presidential (and Vice Presidential) Electors
Regarding Dave’s last paragraph, I vaguely recall that about four decades ago, some states essentially had presidential primary elections, but the results did not directly impact the delegate selection. They were called beauty contests. I don’t recall the details.
Perhaps Dave can correct me as needed?
Also remember primaries are simple creations of each state.They are not mentioned in the Constitution .
I think that some states hold statewide partisan primary elections whose results bind no one, while the state’s delegation is decided partly by national party rules (e.g. the state party chairman, the National Committeeman and National Committeewoman) and partly by some method (or combination of methods) of selecting convention delegates — such as district elections, county conventions, or town caucuses.
Sources like the Green Papers, BallotPedia, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters and FairVote are invaluable for looking up each state’s or territory’s particular rules.
In Rhode Island, the Democratic voters chose Bernie Sanders delegates in 2016, but the state’s ex-officio members, all pro-Clinton, outnumbered them. The unit rule (all of a state’s ballots cast one way) no longer applies in Democratic conventions, at least since the post-1968 McGovern Commission reforms.
And Right HERE?
We point out to the ‘Do the Right Thing’ thread that governs our Presidential election process that does NOT lock in the the vote of the Majority….
Of course Republicans , especially NOW, see NO reason to get rid of the loose/weak legal process….
Things HAVE changed since the late 1780’s…..
In the weeks leading up to the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a handful of Americans — well-known politicians, obscure local bureaucrats — stood up to block then-President Trump’s unprecedented attempt to overturn a free and fair vote of the American people.
In the year since, Trump-aligned Republicans have worked to clear the path for next time.
In battleground states and beyond, Republicans are taking hold of the once-overlooked machinery of elections. While the effort is incomplete and uneven, outside experts on democracy and Democrats are sounding alarms, warning that the United States is witnessing a “slow-motion insurrection” with a better chance of success than Trump’s failed power grab last year.
They point to a mounting list of evidence: Several candidates who deny Trump’s loss are running for offices that could have a key role in the election of the next president in 2024. In Michigan, the Republican Party is restocking members of obscure local boards that could block approval of an election. In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the GOP-controlled legislatures are backing open-ended “reviews” of the 2020 election, modeled on a deeply flawed look-back in Arizona. The efforts are poised to fuel disinformation and anger about the 2020 results for years to come….
More …
I agree.
I was agreeing with DSDs post @5:03 yesterday.
Just another reason to get rid of the Electoral College.
The Republicans will never agree to getting rid of the Electoral College.
A party that has won the popular vote just once in the past thirty two years knows that without the EC their chance of winning a presidential election is remote indeed.
Ocassionally,individual Republicans will support getting rid of it ;however, since they know it’s not going to happen it’s a cheap way to show how “reformist” they are and means nothing.
And that word “reform” is much on Repubilcan lips of late.They claim that they are interested in “reform “ of the election process.Of course that is a solution in search of a problem.Indeed the 2000 election was one of the best run in history.There were far fewer problems than usual ,yet Republicans (who lost) claim there is need of “reform” and in every instance their “reform” served in some manner to restrict access to casting a vote and all of it was aimed at restricting minority voting efforts.
Some of it was blatant(see Georgia passing a law allowing the State,i e, the Republicans, to take over the conduct of elections in counties with “problems,” as defined by Republicans.) Nothing a Republican proposes as regarding elections can be viewed as legitimate now that the party is serving as a conduit for the authoritarian aspirations of Donald Trump.
I recall, in fact, that this language in Article II (unaffected by the 12th Amendments) is the Constituion’s only mention of how Electors should be chosen:
“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.”