Remember the olden days of 2016, when it was okay to mess with electors?
Back when it was the Democrats doing it against the dreaded Trump, they considered it a virtuous activity.
It seems as though there have been so many rapid-fire events starting with Trump’s 2016 election that it’s easy to forget many of the details. But I think it’s very instructive to take a little stroll down memory lane from time to time. The article is from 12/17/16 [my emphasis]:
On Monday, members of the Electoral College will cast their historic votes for the next president of the United States. In the meantime, they are under siege.
The nation’s 538 presidential electors have been thrust into the political foreground like never before in American history. In the aftermath of a uniquely polarizing presidential contest, the once-anonymous electors are squarely in the spotlight, targeted by death threats, harassing phone calls and reams of hate mail. One Texas Republican elector said he’s been bombarded with more than 200,000 emails.
Trump had been elected, but it seems it was perfectly okay to try to harass his electors and even to threaten them, in order to get them to vote for Hillary Clinton. Perhaps the perpetrators should have been tracked down and charged with obstructing an official proceeding (or at least attempting to do so)? After all, that has been one of the most common charges against the J6 demonstrators of 2021, including peaceful ones. But back in 2016 Republican lawyers were nowhere near as creative as Democrat lawyers became in twisting statutes into something they never were meant to be, in order to charge the opposition with crimes.
More [my emphasis, and my remarks in brackets]:
In recent decades, the Electoral College had become such a reliable rubber stamp of Election Day results that it was viewed as an afterthought.
But with many Democrats desperate to block the all-but-certain ascension of Donald Trump to the White House, this long-neglected body has been gripped by turmoil, and its members have been subjected to pleas to upend centuries of tradition by casting their votes for someone other than the president-elect.
There have been ad campaigns targeting electors and op-eds assailing their role. One Democratic member of Congress has called to delay the vote for president while an investigation of Russian involvement in the election is underway [isn’t that very similar to requests from Trump supporters in 2020?]. Two others have pleaded with electors to consider Russia’s role when deciding how to vote. Progressive groups are preparing protests across the country at sites where electors will meet to cast their ballots [sounds like a planned “insurrection” to me]. Personal contact information for many electors has been posted publicly — and it’s been used to bury them with massive email campaigns.
There were indeed demonstrations, although they were pretty tame. But the people involved certainly tried to obstruct an official proceeding. For example, in Wisconsin:
There were demonstrations in other states, too, and of course this happened in Congress:
The irony is that after all the Democrat efforts to get Trump electors to defect in 2016 more Clinton electors defected than Trump electors that year.
The foreshadowing is that other Clinton electors also planned to defect (and vote for Sanders or Kasich) but were “replaced” with more docile alternate electors.
When I recall the Gore attempt to change the national election result with selective “recounts” in precincts favorable to him, and the shenanigans of the Democrats in 2016, Trump’s activities in 2020 don’t look bad in comparison. Dems will never admit that if Trump’s efforts were illegal, then so also were theirs, and then some.
When political opponents repeatedly ‘overturn the chess board’, they have demonstrated that they will no longer act within the rules and have essentially declared war upon the former civil order. They are actively “cutting down all the laws”.
To insist upon continuing to play by the former rules of political discourse is to essentially declare that the Constitution is indeed a suicide pact.
You can’t win a gunfight with a knife.
I’m wagering the dumpy dames in Madison making a scene were all teachers’ union members.
Leftists always project. The things they accuse Trump of wanting to do are things they actually have done and are planning to do.
Speaking just to the Electoral College, there was a concerted push for mass defection of Electors in 2016, with the media cheerleading them, branding them “Hamilton Electors”, and a group called Unite for America making a celebrity-studded video encouraging them.
In the end there were 10 faithless electors in 2016.
Two of them were replaced with electors who voted normally as prescribed by the laws of their state: one from Colorado, one from Minnesota, both replaced by votes for Clinton. The faithless elector from Maine changed his vote to Clinton when his ballot for Bernie Sanders was rejected (the Electors don’t have a secret ballot).
Only Texas had faithless electors who were supposed to vote for Trump and didn’t; Texas has no law preventing them from not voting as pledged.
The end result was 5 EC votes lost for Clinton and 2 lost for Trump.
I am trying to imagine what the days after the election will be like. I am not sure anyone can with the odds being in the lottery realm.
The issue with faithless electors can be addressed by abolishing the office of elector. Each state and abiding territory would be assigned a quantum of electoral votes (e.g. a number equal to the citizen population of the state or territory) and the electoral votes would be assigned consequent to popular vote contests in each state (or territory). Ideally, the dozen or so most populous states are divvied up into constituencies to which a certain quantum of electoral votes are assigned and you have a contest in those constituencies to distribute them. The other states and territories have a single at-large constituency.
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As for the popular vote contests, constituencies with > two candidates on the ballot might have a ranked-choice contest, those with two candidates a first-past-the-post contest, and the odd constituency with just one would have an install-reject referendum on the candidate. A candidate receives the electoral votes if he receives a majority of the tally.
All’s fair in love, war, and politics. At least for the Democrats. I’d forgotten all the shenanigans that were pulled in 2017. Thanks, Neo, for reminding us. When they doit, it’s “saving democracy.” When Repubs do it, it’s an” insurrection.”
If we had a decent media, those differences would be reported on and understood by most. As long as the MSM acts as an arm of the Democrat party, the lies will continue.
J. D. Vance takes on an “interviewer” (read: Inquisitor) trying to pin him down to say Trump lost 2020.
He doesn’t adhere to her agenda.
https://notthebee.com/article/watching-jd-vance-turn-the-tables-on-this-new-york-times-schoolmarm-is-absolutely-the-best-thing-youll-see-today
They’ve solved their need for death threats by proceeding directly to assassination attempts.