About faithless electors
I’ve learned a lot of new words in 2020, many of them I can do without. I like Corona beer and knew that a virus can be bad, but who knew “coronavirus” could be so deadly? “Social Distancing” used to be what we did with our exes. Then I learned about “faithless electors.”
Most of you thought you voted for either Biden or Trump for president. You’d be wrong. You actually voted for your state’s electors for the Electoral College. Each state has as many electors as they have legislative members. California has 53 Congressmen and two senators, so we get 55 electors. The exception is Washington, D.C., which has three electoral votes. In most states, the winner of that state’s presidential popular vote takes all of its Electoral College votes. Each state’s respective parties (Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarians, etc.) had to submit the names of their electors to the State Board of Elections on Nov. 3. Each state’s electors will meet at their respective state capital on Dec. 14 and these sealed state electoral votes will be forwarded to the president of the Senate, currently Vice President Mike Pence.
To be named an elector for the Democrats or Republicans, one must be a hardcore party activist, former elected or Central Committee member. So the odds of 28 California Democratic “faithless electors” flipping their votes to Donald Trump in Sacramento on Dec. 14 is zero. In addition, 32 states have some form of “faithful elector” laws on their books.
Earlier this year the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Chiafalo v. Washington that the states have a right to force the electors to vote for the popular vote winner in each state.
It got so bad that for the past year, a bipartisan group has been gaming a worse-case scenario if Trump lost the election and wouldn’t leave. They call themselves “Keep the Republic” and their mission was, “We aim to discover, highlight and help to prevent an array of extraordinary risks to the integrity of the 2020 Election and Transition. Our civic creed is: Let all citizens vote. Let all votes be counted. Let the count stand.” They’ve gone over every option if we have a losing president who won’t leave office.
Trump’s final nuclear option was to get three crucial states — Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia (44,00 vote difference) to overturn their state elections and the will of their voters, which would make the Electoral College 269-269, causing the House of Representatives to cast the deciding vote. In Congress, each state gets one vote by majority of Congressmen. Currently Republicans have a majority in 26 states and Democrats in 24 states. A better idea is, since we no longer have to please the slave states of the South, why don’t we just abolish the Electoral College?
Don’t feel bad for Trump, as his election loss has turned into his biggest grift yet. I signed up to receive both candidates’ emails just to follow their respective election strategies. I thought these emails would stop after Election Night. Little did I know that since Election Night I would be getting around ten emails a day pleading for money for Trump to overturn the election, “They’re trying to STEAL the Presidency.” While I just hit delete, delete, delete, delete all day long, Trump has managed to raise over $200 million from the rubes. The fine print states the money goes to pay down campaign debts, then it goes to Trump’s new “Save America” leadership PAC set up so Trump can use these funds for personal expenses. It’s rumored that Trump has spent over $8 million on the individual state recounts and the 50-plus lawsuits (all lost but one in Pennsylvania) and now gets to keep the remainder of these funds. Not a bad business model. Send out some emails and make over $200 million in a few weeks. Now Trump just needs to figure out how to avoid paying any taxes on this windfall.
It’s truly sad that one political party who used to believe in the United States Constitution has resorted to shredding the Constitution into tiny pieces, setting it on fire and pissing all over it in order to please one demigod who can’t admit that seven million more Americans voted for Biden than him and he lost this election fair and square.
Most of you thought you voted for either Biden or Trump for president. You’d be wrong.