Can Electoral College save the republic?
It's a little ironic that the Electoral College—the very institution that got us into this mess—now holds the only hope of getting us out. It's admittedly a very faint glimmer of hope, but not an impossibility: Trump's electors could refuse to vote for him, and effectively nullify the election. The fact that Hillary won the popular vote gives the idea a moral and political credence. Yes, a general revolt of the Electoral College is utterly unprecedented in American history—but then, so is the election of a balls-out fascist as president. And there have been decisive outbursts before in American history of Mugwumpery—sensible Republicans so aghast at their party's own candidate that they defect to the Democrats. A New York Times primer on the Electoral College explores the question:
Has an elector ever 'gone rogue' or broken his or her promise? Would that be legal?
Yes, this has happened many times. There's even an insulting name for an elector who does so: a "faithless elector."
But faithless electors have never affected the final result of any presidential election.
Until now. The campaign has been launched under the hashtag #NotMyPresident. Here's the basic theory, as laid out by one campaigner:
The electoral college does not vote until December 19th. We have 40 days.
What does this mean?
Right now, the presidential election results are only a PROJECTION of the election outcome. They are PRELIMINARY RESULTS. A candidate still needs to earn 270 electoral votes to win. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, which means that more than 50% of the voters wanted her for president. The electoral college shouldn't guarantee an override of the public's opinion– and it doesn't have to.
There are 21 states that do NOT restrict which candidate the electors vote for.
Out of these 21, Hillary lost 16—worth 166 electoral votes. In these states, it is perfectly legal for electors to switch their vote. Now follow the math...
As it currently stands, Hillary Clinton is projected to receive 232 votes. Trump is projected to win 306. This means that 37 votes need to be taken away from Trump to bring him down to 269. Hillary Clinton needs 38 votes ADDED to win 270. These electoral voters can also abstain, which means that they can refuse to vote for either candidate. If 37 of the voters within these states abstain then no candidate will have reached the required 270. In this case, the vote would be taken to the House.
Trump won Pennsylvania, a state that typically votes blue, by less than 100,000 votes. While it is highly unlikely to get all 20 electoral voters to cross party lines and vote democrat, it also isn't impossible to convince a few of them to be "faithless electors." We only need to convince 38 out of the 166. That is 23%. There are SIXTEEN states we need to focus our attention on...
The accompanying map shows Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arizona and Idaho.
A move like this would be unprecedented. However, as we all saw on November 8th, odds don't guarantee reality. Trump had a less than 20% [chance of] winning, yet given the circumstances, enough people came together and made it happen. We can make this happen.
Ask yourself this: What do we have left to lose? We can stay complacent and accept that this country will be run by a racist, sexist, islamophobic, homophobic, ablest bigot, or we can at least try.
Other campaigners are using the hashtag #ElectoralNullification.
Daily Kos is in the wake of this debacle pushing a petition to "Abolish the Electoral College." By all means support it, but it won't get us out of the immediate mess now. The electoral nullification idea could. It is a longshot, but not impossible. We owe it to ourselves and posterity to do all we can to make this idea go viral by Dec. 19.
Petition for Electoral Nullification
The petition "Electoral College: Make Hillary Clinton President on December 19" is online at Change.org. It has won 2,010,778 signatures, of the 3 million it seeks.
Sign it. It can't hurt. And if nothing else, we can undermine Trump's credibility from jump street. Exactly as the right undermined Obama—except for legitimate reasons.
Electoral Nullification was broached in August
Politico reported Aug. 25 that members of the Electoral College from Texas were threatening not to vote Trump. Quoted was Chris Suprun, who said he won't rule out throwing his vote to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton if Trump didn't moderate. "I'm not a professional politician. I've got no training on this one. The nominee is...saying things that in an otherwise typical election year would have you disqualified."
Would-be rogue elector backs down
Well, the New York Post caught up with Chris Suprun, who now says he intends to vote for Trump. But the idea has been broached—it is in the political discourse. Let's keep pushing.
Can we impeach him before he takes office? Serious question.
From KUTV in Salt Lake City:
May electors defect? Actually, yes....
The Green Papers explored the question in a commentary after the 2000 elections, entitled "May Electors Defect?" Ironically, it finds that under the framers' "original intent," electors were supposed to be "free agents"—but that case law is ambiguois and divided on the question. Time for the conservatives to swallow some of their own "original intent" medicine?
Yes, this is the longest of longshots. I nonetheless consider it to be tactically critical. The odds of it actually working are vanishingly slim (although not quite zero, as it is technically legal and things are just topsy-turvy enough). But it positions us well on the propaganda front: denying his presidency legitmiacy from jump street—just as the Republicans effectively did with Obama, only with us it is for VALID REASONS.
Voter suppression laws tipped the scales for Trump
From McClatchy:
The Electoral College must rise to the occassion and correct this fatal mistake of Trump's victory—before we abolish the Electoral College itself and overturn the voter suppression laws, to assure that this never happens again.
Electoral Nullification idea gains ground
An encouraging account on International Business Times is entitled: "Can Hillary Clinton Still Win? Electoral College To Vote In December After Candidate Wins Popular Vote." It notes the petition online at Change.org, which ia already above 3 million signatures.
The idea is enthusiastically plugged on Huffington Post, under the title "The Electoral College Was Designed to Prevent Trump. You Can Make This Happen." States wrtier Douglas Anthony Cooper:
Daily News Bin also runs a piece promoting the idea. Politico back in August reported that: "Even red-state Republicans in the Electoral College are uncomfortable with the man they’ll have to support." We must urgently appeal to their conscience.
NBC reported in 2007 that Maryland was actually drawing up a plan to free electors to give their votes for president to the winner of the national popular vote. This idea is not as radical as it wounds.
See also the page on the 2016 elections on the National Archives' Electoral College website.
Do not normalize Trumpism!
Masha Gessen writes eloquently in New York Review of Books about how the conciliatory talk from Obama and other Democratic leaders now of the need for "good faith" in Trump is dangerously "treating him as a 'normal' politician" and "close off alternative responses to his minority victory."
Shaun King writes in the Daily News: "No, we should not wait and see what a Trump administration does. We should organize our resistance right now."
He concludes: "We can't wait until he does those things before we act against him. We must outsmart and out-organize his team. I implore you to ignore anybody saying anything other than that." We heartily agree, although the question of how to outsmart and out-organize them is a very tricky one...
Don't believe the 'moderate' facism hype
The Independent perhaps unwittingly plays into the perception of a new "moderate" Trump, listing "Nine times Donald Trump has already betrayed the US voters who put their faith in him." One of them is building the Mexico border wall, wth Newt Gingrich quoted saying: "He'll spend a lot of time controlling the border. He may not spend very much time trying to get Mexico to pay for it, but it was a great campaign device."
Please don't fall for this. This is a calculated tilt to the center in rhetoric to weaken resistace at this critical moment. His "100 days" document explicitly calls for appropriations to build the wall.
Pressure grows for Electoral Nullification
The idea does seem to be gaining ground. Politico just reported that two Democratic members of the Electoral College have issued a call for their Republican colleagues to refuse to seat Trump. P. Bret Chiafalo of Washington state and Micheal Baca of Colorado are appealing to “Moral Electors,” in an effort to persuade 37 Republicans to dump Trump —just enough to block his election and leave the final decision to the House of Representatives.
Said Chiafalo: "This is a long shot. It's a Hail Mary. However, I do see situations...when we've already had two or three Republican electors state publicly they didn’t want to vote for Trump. How many of them have real issues with Trump in private?"
Politico reported in October that Virginia elector Erich Reimer broached dumping Trump after the pussy-grabbing revelations. He said: "If the Electoral College were free to be a more deliberative body, his troubling character would be a prime and disqualifying concern in considering who to vote for."
A Huffington Post commentary points out that the electoral college was designed in part "to prevent a person unfit to govern from attaining office," as snopes.com puts it.
The National Archives page on the Electoral College informs us: "If no candidate receives a majority of Electoral votes, the House of Representatives elects the President from the 3 Presidential candidates who received the most Electoral votes."
Now, the idea of it going to the House is not comforting. But even the worst Republican nimrod they could pick—say, Pence—would lack both Trump's charismatic appeal and dictatorial ambitions.
Can America survive President Donald Trump?
Thus asks Eric Zorn in the Chicago Tribune.
Yeah, yeah. But why, then, do you write "when Donald Trump is sworn into office," Eric? This is the moment for urgent pressure on the Republican electors not to seat him.
Hamlton invoked in support of electoral nullification
Paul Abrams has a commentary on HuffPo, "Not Over Yet: Russian Involvement Confirmed, Electoral College Should Deny Trump The Presidency." He quotes Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers boasting of the safeguard against chaos provided by the Electoral College:
While saying that we "should not recommend lightly" that the electors act against the will of their voters, Abrams himself concludes:
In another good sign that the idea is gaining currency, CBS runs a commentary entitled: "Amid Electoral College debate, will some electors go rogue?" It deliciously recalls that Trump himself denounced the Electoral College as a "disaster for democracy" four years ago, but today hails it as "actually genius," now that its machinery has made him president-elect! Let's hold him at his word from four years ago that the popular vote should be respected!
A group called Hamilton Electors has been launched to promote the idea. It also quotes Hamilton from the Federalist Papers: "The process of [the Electoral College] affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications."
Fuckin' A, Alexander.
Wikipedia happily provides a "List of United States presidential electors, 2016." Can they be pressured—legally, respectfully and politely?
Hillary Clinton's lead in the popular vote has now widened to a million, making her margin bigger than the winning margins for John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. (The Nation)
National Review is meanwhile prominently featuring screeds in defense of the Electoral College. One imagines they would be dissing it as a tool of the elites if the results had been otherwise. Let's show 'em what that Electoral College is really for, Hamilton-style! Go argue with Alex, National Review!
Finally, the Washington Post notes that Breitbart is resorting to "bizarre math" (basically, dropping California from the totals on the basis that real Americans are in the "heartland," or something) to propagate the lie "that Trump won the REAL popular vote."
Shameless.
Electoral Nullification campaign starting to have an impact
The Arizona Republic reports Nov. 17: "Arizona presidential electors report flood of pleas to reject Donald Trump."
Yet several of the e-mails are quoted, and all are very police, appealing to the electors' patriotism and conscience.