Interesting scenario - - Electors can overturn people's choice at their whims, and they call it 'democracy' ?!
Obama has formally accused Moscow of interfering in the US elections on behalf of Donald Trump. These are serious allegations, the objective of which are ultimately to prevent Trump from acceding to the US presidency. What is at stake is tantamount to a “conspiracy” to manipulate the Electoral College vote on December 19.
Obama has formally accused Moscow of interfering in the US elections on behalf of Donald Trump. These are serious allegations, the objective of which are ultimately to prevent Trump from acceding to the US presidency. What is at stake is tantamount to a “conspiracy” to manipulate the Electoral College vote on December 19.
If Electoral College votes against Trump, US will get worst constitutional crisis in its history'
The system of the Electoral College is corky, but it is not
going away anytime soon. Each party thinks they can work the system to
their advantage. The losers complain about it. The winners are happy
with it, says political cartoonist Ted Rall.
Donald
Trump may have won the US presidential election, but he faces one last
hurdle - the Electoral College which convenes on Monday to vote for
America's 45th leader.
Technically, it has the power to block him
and electors are facing immense pressure from those hoping to scupper a
Trump presidency.
RT: How can you explain all
the pressure about the vote of the Electoral College members to usher
in Donald Trump as President of the United States?
TR: Every time there is a situation as in 2000 when
George W. Bush technically won the Electoral College vote over Al Gore,
who won the popular vote - and there have been other examples in the
history - the losers always look to the Electoral College as sort of a “maybe we can get these guys to change their minds after the fact”.
But the fact is that historically, although technically it is legally
allowed for members of the Electoral College to change their vote, there
isn’t much precedent for it. The fact is that they are expected to vote
in accordance with the way that their states ordered them to vote. They
are appointed by their respective political parties and 99 percent of
the time, they always have cast their votes exactly the way that they
are supposed to. It does seem a little bit churlish at this point for
Democrats to be complaining about the Electoral College. If the election
had gone the other way and Hillary Clinton had won with the minority of
the popular vote but had won the Electoral College, you could probably
guess that the complaints would be coming from the Republican side. As
they say “Hypocrisy, thy name is politics.”
RT: What
can you tell about the history of the Electoral College? Is there any
chance that pledged electors will change their votes over to Hillary
Clinton?
TR: The Electoral College does have
a long and strange history. The US is the only country that I know of
that has a system like this. And it is balanced in order to benefit more
rural states. The way it works is basically the number of Electoral
College votes per population tends to benefit small states like Rhode
Island and Vermont over large states like California, Texas and Florida.
So, it is a system that is quirky. But I think it is not going away
anytime soon. And the reason is that each party thinks that they can
work the system to their advantage. The losers always complain about it.
The winners are always quite happy with it. You would need a bipartisan
effort on the part of both Democrats and Republicans to get rid of it.
And while there are certainly grounds to complain about it. It is not
direct democracy; it is not purely one man, one vote or one person, one
vote. But nevertheless is also does serve to give a more equal vote to
people who live in parts of the country that might not otherwise get
that much attention. The Democrats are kind of looking foolish by not
only trying to look anti-democratic by trying to defy the system that
they tried to work and lost fair and square. This is just not going to
work. And the last thing you want to do in politics is to try to get
involved in a battle that you don’t have any chance of winning. There is
just literally no way that you are going to get forty or more of this
pledged electors to change their votes over to Hillary Clinton.
RT: What could be the consequences if members of the Electoral College really decide to change their mind?
TR:
If you remember during the campaign Democrats really thought they are
going to win and not by a little bit, they thought that Hillary Clinton
really thought she was going to win by a landslide. And many of the
polls said the same thing. And at that time there was a lot of pressure
on Donald Trump to agree, pledge and promise that he was going to honor
the results of the election when he lost. Well, he didn’t lose. Now, you
have the Democrats doing the same thing that they didn’t want Donald
Trump to do, which is an attempt to delegitimize the winner. Trump won
the election fair and square. No matter what any Democrats say, there is
just no allegation that there were millions of votes were changed
somehow by magical means… I don’t think they are thinking this through
very carefully. If by some miracle they were able to get the Electoral
College to change its mind and install Hillary Clinton, this would
create a constitutional crisis which would be unprecedented in American
history. And nobody knows where that would lead. You’d have the odd
situation, and you’d be doing it at a time when the Supreme Court –
which could be called upon to settle it – isn’t in any position to do so
due to the death of Antonin Scalia. You now have a 4-4 balance between
Democrats and Republicans on the Court. So literally the system couldn’t
cure the problem they’re creating. They really need to stop this… the
country is already terribly divided in the aftermath of this very
difficult and divisive election. If they want to take on Donald Trump
there are better ways to do so.
Selected Readers' Comments:
# Can someone please tell me who's pushing this agenda, and would this have been pushed if Hillary had won the election?
# They rigged the election and lost. Now they are trying to rig it even more.
# Cue Civil war... justice will have be served when New York looks like Aleppo does now.
# .. 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. (The Federalist Papers)
How on earth did Bush get to be president?
# The demonrats are fighting for their very survival.
# Meanwhile, if they can't sneak Clinton in, California is already planning an independence referendum.
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