Tag Archives: Electoral College

national news, political news

Here’s a possible constitutional crisis of major proportion

electoral-college-banner

Those 538Ā men and womenĀ who are set to meet Monday to elect the next president of the United States are poised to make some serious history, one way or the other.

Most of them come from states that voted for Donald J. Trump, the Republican, over Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democrat. They comprise the Electoral College, which the nation’s founders established in the 18th century to choose the person who would govern the country.

Here’s the big-time catch: some of them are “faithless,” which means they aren’t necessarily bound by the dictates of their states’ majorities. Add to that some major-league questions about whether Russian intelligence agents and computer hackers influenced the outcome the election and you have a situation of monumental proportions brewing … possibly.

Enough of those electors might decide they can’t vote for Trump and, thus, deny the president-elect the 270 electoral votes he needs to take office in January.

What happens then if, say, not enough of them switch their votes to Clinton, making her the next president? The U.S. House of Representatives, controlled by the GOP, then gets to pick the next president.

I don’t believe this will happen. I believe Trump will collect enough votes from the Electoral College to take the oath on Jan. 20. He will become the 45th president of the United States; Mike Pence will become the vice president.

Trump likely will have the Cabinet chosen by then. The U.S. Senate committees charged with recommending whether these nominees should be confirmed will get to work and make those critical decisions.

But some of the electors have asked to be briefed fully by the U.S. intelligence apparatus on what the Russians did and whether they actually influenced the outcome of the election. Just suppose the spooks tell the electors that, yep, the Russkies succeeded in getting their man elected. What happens then if you’re an elector from a state that voted for Trump and you can’t in good conscience cast your vote for the winner?

Lots of answers yet to come forward before the big day next week.

This could be the most fascinating supposedly pro forma electoral procedure in the history of the Republic.

It could be …

political news

‘Trump landslide’ becoming something quite different

voting

I keep looking at a website that tabulates election results.

A new number jumps out at me as I look at the unofficial vote count from the 2016 presidential election.

3 million.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s margin over Donald J. Trump is getting close to the 3 million mark. She has rolled up a vote total of 65.7 ballots, which is about what President Obama collected when he won re-election in 2012.

http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/

Don’t remind me of what I know already: Hillary lost the election. Trump is the next president. He’ll take the oath of office on Jan. 20. Hillary will go back to working on the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative. She’s likely done as a national political candidate.

But it’s Trump’s careless use of language that continues to bug me.

He says he won in a “landslide.” No. He didn’t. He captured 306 electoral votes, which is a comfortable margin. A landslide victory? Far from it.

I just need to remind the president-elect that a popular vote deficit approaching 3 million ballots should give him pause as he continues to build his government leadership team.

political news, State news

Texas might bind electors to vote for winner

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Is it a good idea for the Texas Legislature to enact a law that forces presidential electors to remain faithful to the oath they take?

Yes.

Another Texas Republican elector, Christopher Suprun of Dallas,Ā has declared he won’t cast his vote next week for Donald J. Trump, who won the state’s 38 electoral votes. He hasn’t said for whom he’ll vote, but it has drawn a response from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who said he’s going to look into whether the Legislature will write a law that binds future electors to their pledge.

I think that’s a reasonableĀ requirement. Texas would join 29 other states that have similar laws on the books.

Suprun joins another GOP elector, Art Sisneros, in denying Trump their electoral votes. There’s a big difference, though, in the two men’s decision. Suprun will cast his vote; Sisneros, on the other hand, took the more noble approach and quit his post as an elector. Sisneros said he couldn’t in good conscience vote for Trump — but neither could he violate the oath he took when he signed on as an elector.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/12/07/patrick-rogue-texas-elector-could-lead-binding-law/

I don’t suppose Patrick would seek a law that prevents electors from quitting, as Sisneros did. However, Suprun’s decision is a bit troublesome. The difficulty, in my mind, has nothing to do with Trump. I wouldn’t vote for Trump, either.

Instead, it’s related directly to the oathĀ this electorĀ took to keep faith with the state’s voters, who gave the president-elect a 9 percentage point victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

These public oaths don’t by themselves bind those who take them to remain faithful. But they should. These electors sign on as loyal Republicans or Democrats. Trump won the GOP nomination fair and square and won the presidential election under the rules laid out by the U.S. Constitution.

Patrick and the Legislature cannot enact a law quickly enough to make Suprun toe the line. They ought to do so for future presidential elections. Fair is fair.

national news, political news

Trump redefines electoral ‘landslide’

trump-won-election-landslide

Donald J. Trump is measuring electoral landslides with a different set of parameters than most of us.

The president-elect keeps saying he won the election this past month “in a landslide” over Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Hmm. I wonder about that.

When I was studying political science in college, I always believed an electoral landslide — when talking about presidential elections — usually meant something akin to a 10-percentage-point popular vote margin, give or take.

The landslide elections in my lifetime occurred in 1952 and 1956,Ā with Dwight Eisenhower’s two election victories over Adlai Stevenson; 1964, with Lyndon Johnson’s landslide win over Barry Goldwater; 1980 and 1984, with Ronald Reagan’s wins over Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.

The 1988 election with George H.W. Bush defeating Michael Dukakis came close to a landslide.

Then you can measure Electoral College landslides, which often don’t coincide with popular vote landslides. George H.W. Bush scored an Electoral College landslide over Dukakis; Bill Clinton rolled up big Electoral College margins over Bush in 1992 and Bob Dole in 1996; Barack Obama’s electoral-vote victory in 2008 over John McCain could be called a landslide.

Now, back to the president-elect’s preposterous assertion of a “landslide” victory over Hillary Clinton.

He’s now trailing the loser by 2.6 million votes nationally. Yes,Ā Trump won the Electoral College vote by a comfortable margin, at 306-232 — but it ain’t a landslide by what I consider to be most people’s measuring stick.

By all means, Trump won the election. He’s going to be the next president. However, the president-electĀ needs to stop with the delusion that he won by a landslide.

It was a squeaker, dude, in aĀ deeply divided nation. Furthermore, he would do well to listen to the views expressed by theĀ majority of those who voted against him.

media news, national news, political news

Media actually called the ’16 election … really!

voting

This just in: The media called the 2016 presidentialĀ  election correctly … sort of.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is leading Donald J. Trump by just a shade less than 2 percentage points in the popular vote. She’s up by 2.5 million votes and the number might climb.

So, why are the media taking such a battering over “missing” the results? Oh, yes. The Electoral College.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/live_results/2016_general/president/map.html

The media and the pollsters all across the country might have been too transfixed by the overall national mood and less intrigued by what was happening in rural communities blanketing those critical “swing states” that voted for Trump on Nov. 8.

I won’t give the media a pass.

I’ll just note that the RealClearPolitics average of polls had Clinton leading Trump nationally by 2 to 5 percentage points. She’s going to finish with a 2-percentage point “victory” in the popular vote.

That won’t get her a ticket — let alone the keys — to the White House.

If the media fell short, they missed the signs that were developing in rural America that propelled Donald Trump to the victory that shocked ’em all.

national news, political news

Voter math is the same, no matter how you spin it

avote

I’m having some fun rattling the cages of my friends on the right by reminding them that Hillary Rodham Clinton has a significant — and growing — lead in the popular vote overĀ Donald J. Trump.

They, of course, remind me — correctly, of course — that Trump won the votes that actually elect the president, the Electoral College.

Now comes a new spin that is born out of an old one. They are reminding me that Trump won many more counties across the country, that Hillary’s votes were gathered in the large urban areas — such as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York. They also seem to infer that because her votes are clustered in the larger metro areas that they somehow are less representative, or even less legitimate, than the vast expanse of territory that Trump was able to claim on Election Day.

Hold that thought!

Mitt Romney also won more counties than President Obama in 2012; but the president corralled 5 million more votes than his challenger. Sen. John McCain also won the vast majority of counties in 2008, but Sen. Obama piled up nearly 10 million more votes than McCain.

And yes, we heard much the same refrain from the losers in both those elections: Sure, Obama won, but Romney/McCain each carried more actual real estate than Barack Obama.

Sure thing, but human beings cast votes. More of them voted for Obama than they did for either of his presidential challengers.

I need no reminders that Trump’s victory was forged in Rural America. He turned out the rural vote precisely to counteract the large urban vote that Clinton was sure to get. It turns out that his rural vote outnumbered Clinton’s urban vote — in the states that mattered. I refer to those swing states that voted twice for President Obama.

However, I refuse to accept the notion that Clinton’s popular vote is somehow de-legitimized because of where her massive vote totals are being compiled.

“We are” — as the young state senator from Illinois reminded us during his keynote speech at theĀ 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston — “the United States of America.” We aren’t divided into political parties, said state Sen. Barack Obama. We are one nation, undivided and united, he said.

So it is that our votes all count the same. Whether they are come from large cities or small farming communities, they all are tabulated together.

Thus, Hillary Clinton’s popularĀ margin — sitting currently at 2.5 million — is the product of a targeted effort to boost turnout in strong Democratic bases within our cities, it remains irrefutably a national total.

Donald Trump has been elected president. I accept Americans’ electoral verdict. I don’t like it, but it’s what we’re going to get.

Accordingly, it would do the other side just as well to accept the notion that while Trump won where it counted the most, Hillary Clinton — and those who voted for her — still command a significant voice of opposition to the policies that the new president is about to drop on the nation’s lap.

national news, political news

That darn popular vote is getting in the way

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I know I am sounding a bit repetitive to some of you. Maybe I’m far too repetitive to suit you.

That’s just too damn bad. I’m going to say it again … with emphasis.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s popular vote margin over Donald J. Trump is expanding. It’s now at slightly more than 2.5 million votes. It’s likely to grow even more, although I’m beginning to think we’re getting quite close to the end of the ballot tallying.

Oh, yes. We have that recount in Wisconsin with which to contend. Don’t expect much of a change there. Or in Pennsylvania or Michigan, two other states that might get their votes recounted.

Here’s my point. The president-elect is going to find a growing voice of discord among his constituents if and when he tries to foist his agenda on the nation.

Donald J. Trump’s vote deficit is approaching record levels among those candidates who won the presidential election while losing the popular vote. He and Clinton’sĀ vote percentagesĀ are zeroing in on the Rutherford B. Hayes-Samuel Tilden contest of 1876.

http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/

What’s fascinating, too, is that Clinton’s popular vote total mirrors what the polls were indicating on the eve of Election Day. Trump, though, benefited by his ability to flip several states that had voted twice for President Obama, enabling him to win the Electoral College votes he needed to become president.

I am not calling for a wholesale reform of the electoral system.

I merely want to caution the president-elect to mindful of the hurdles he and his team are going to face governing a country with a widening vote deficit.

Go slow, Mr. President-elect. Stop playing to your “base” and remember that more of us out here voted against you than voted for you. Got it? Good. Now … proceed.

national news, political news, State news

Texas elector follows conscience out the door

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Art Sisneros apparently is a man of deep faith and conviction.

He takes an oath and plans to stick by it. So, when he took an oath as a Texas Republican elector to vote for the individual who won the state’s electoral votes in the presidential election, he felt he had to abide by that oath.

Except for one thing: The person who won the state’s 38 electoral votes is Donald J. Trump, a man who — according to Sisneros — doesn’t deserve his vote.

What to do?

Sisneros did the only thing he felt he could do: He resigned as a Texas elector. He walked away from his task of casting a vote for president because he couldn’t (a) vote for TrumpĀ or (b) become something called a “faithless elector,” meaning he would break his pledge to support the GOP candidate for president.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/texas-elector-art-sisneros-to-resign-instead-of-voting-for-donald-trump/ar-AAkRIX1?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

Sisneros calls the Electoral College “corrupted from its original intent.”Ā  I won’t weigh in on whether we should toss the Electoral College out. My sense is that it still performs a public service to the national electorate by giving smaller states more of a voice in the electoral process … which I consider to be a good thing.

But I do like the notion that one elector has weighed carefully the consequences of his actions and decided his best option is to walk out, to follow his conscience out the door and to allow the state to appoint someone to his spot who isn’t as conflicted as he is.

As U.S. News and World Report noted: “(Sisneros’)Ā decision followed a previous post in which he posed the question of whether it was ‘acceptable for a Christian to vote for a man like Trump for president,’ and concluded that he could not ‘in good conscience’ do so.

This is precisely the kind of contradiction that many of us saw, with committed evangelical voters sticking with Trump, even in light of the candidate’s admission that he groped women and behaved like a complete and utter boor.

I cannot help but wonder if there will be more of this kind of soul-searching among electors as the date approaches for them to cast their important votes for president.

national news, political news

President-elect shows how to win ugly

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Even in victory, the president-elect of the United States is continuing to defame, degrade and denigrate elections officials.

Donald J. Trump now contends — without a shred of substance — that millions of voters in California and New Hampshire cast their ballots illegally. He presumes, of course, that the illegal ballots were cast in favor of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who Trump defeated to win the presidential election.

With victory in hand, Trump now has decided to ratchet up the absurd, baseless and idiotic assertion that the election was “rigged” to favor his opponent.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-claims-with-no-evidence-that-%e2%80%98millions-of-people%e2%80%99-voted-illegally/ar-AAkP3mF?li=BBnb7Kz

Does this clown have any proof of what he’s alleging? No. He doesn’t.

He is continuing this ridiculous habit of making allegations with no basis upon which to back them up.

Trump’s list of people and groups that he’s insulted and defamed certainly must include the state and local elections officials he now has asserted are corrupt.

Can you even imagine what this guy would be saying if he had lost the election? He won it fairly and openly. Trump is going to be the next president.

Why in the world he makes these ridiculous assertions is totally beyond many of us.

You’ve heard of sore losers, right? We’re now witnessing the antics of a seriously sore winner.

national news, political news

‘Millions voted illegally’ … seriously?

donald

Donald J. Trump hasĀ cemented his titleĀ as a provocative prevaricator.

The president-elect has launched a fascinating counterattack against those who want to recount the ballots cast in Wisconsin, and possibly in two other states.

Trump said he won the Electoral College in a landslide and would have won the popular vote as well if you take out the “millions” of votes that were cast “illegally.”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-attacks-recount-effort-in-election-where-millions-voted-illegally/ar-AAkPasR?li=BBnb7Kz

Really, Mr. President-elect?

Here is what he wrote in one of his flurry of tweets: ā€œIn addition to winning the electoral college in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.ā€

Well now. A 306-232 electoral vote victory isn’t really a “landslide,” but I digress.

I guess Trump is presuming that most if not all the “illegal votes” were cast for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

He how does he know that? He doesn’t. Trump doesn’t know anything about the electoral process that’s been called into question.

However, he knows that “millions voted illegally.” I believeĀ the president-electĀ is applying the same base of knowledge he used to declare — falsely — that “thousands of Muslims cheered” the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11.