Harvard Law Prof. Lawrence Lessig wants Electoral College to go rogue for Hillary
Bill Buckley warned us about the Harvard faculty.
Lawrence Lessing, professor at Harvard Law School, wants the Electors in the Electoral College to go rogue and vote for Clinton regardless of the election results the led to the Electors ability to vote.
Conventional wisdom tells us that the electoral college requires that the person who lost the popular vote this year must nonetheless become our president. That view is an insult to our framers. It is compelled by nothing in our Constitution. It should be rejected by anyone with any understanding of our democratic traditions — most important, the electors themselves….
In this election, the people did not go crazy. The winner, by far, of the popular vote is the most qualified candidate for president in more than a generation. Like her or not, no elector could have a good-faith reason to vote against her because of her qualifications. Choosing her is thus plainly within the bounds of a reasonable judgment by the people.
Yet that is not the question the electors must weigh as they decide how to cast their ballots. Instead, the question they must ask themselves is whether there is any good reason to veto the people’s choice.
There is not. And indeed, there is an especially good reason for them not to nullify what the people have said — the fundamental principle of one person, one vote. We are all citizens equally. Our votes should count equally. And since nothing in our Constitution compels a decision otherwise, the electors should respect the equal vote by the people by ratifying it on Dec. 19.
Lessig’s argument boils down to him not liking the electoral college result this cycle. It’s complete pretext.
It would be like demanding that the football team with the most yardage deserved to win the game even if it didn’t score the most points. That’s not how the game is played according to the rules — the teams might have played differently had the rules been different. Perhaps Trump would have spent more time in California trying to drum up votes had this been an election purely based on the popular vote. Perhaps the winning team in the football hypothetical example would have spent more time racking up yardage had it known that it wasn’t playing for points, but for yardage.
Bill Buckley warned us about governance by the Harvard faculty.
How is this for a policy based on Lessig-like logic:
The federal government should strip all federal funding for Harvard University because it can, and most people in America would vote for it.
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Comments
If the members of the electoral college can vote whatever way they want irrespective of what the public voted them into their position to do, then what is the purpose of having a general election in which the members of the electoral college are chosen?
My ballot listed the presidential candidates and didn’t even mention the electors. How can the electors possibly be elected to vote for whomever they please when their names aren’t on the ballot?
The voting is not over, just the voter input part.
A couple of leftist principles in play here:
1) The ends justifies the means.
2) Liberty is anathema to the ruling class as it interferes with their divine mission to decide for the benighted masses.
Also, Lessig seems struggle with logic, judgment, and integrity.
Conventional wisdom tells us that the electoral college requires that the person who lost the popular vote this year must nonetheless become our president. That view is an insult to our framers.
Methinks, he would quickly get over this position were the electors go rogue and vote even more for Trump.
“That view is an insult to our framers.”
Puh-leeze!!! Why should Electors chosen by their state legislators pay any attention at all to the outcomes of votes in OTHER states? Why didn’t the Framers just go ahead and use a national popular election to determine the POTUS?
Short answer: the POTUS is the President of nation called “the United STATES”, not the President of the PEOPLE in those states. The intent from the start was to have a weak central government, with dispersed political power, not one where a Strong Hand ruled from the Center.
Selective logic. Declaration of Independence and the constitution refer to “We the people”.
The left: anything to win. Anything.
Harvard leftist nerds will urge others (they’re too big a pussy to do the dirty work) to lie, cheat, steal, destroy, kill, anything to retain power. The ends justify the means.
Pick up Castro by his dead legs, and use him to beat the crap out of this malignant clown. Then fire him.
Like gerbils running on a wheel, these liberal elites cannot stop their inane posturing as they spew their theories of how to attain utopia. Deceitful enemies of all freedoms, all liberties, all of humanity; not even fit to become fertilizer for the grasses of the field.
A message to the left: You say you want a revolution? Well, you know, we all want to change the world!
Pick up your arms and march into the conflict, we dare you!
They probably think you just invited them to a Hands Up Don’t Shoot rally.
Or a Trump versus Clinton duel.
Oh, wait – we won that!
Maybe we can this whole darn thing with a sudden death cage match.
the fundamental principle of one person, one vote
There’s his error. (Well, his biggest error. Maybe.)
That’s not a fundamental principle. It’s a late innovation. Since it conflicts with the Constitution, it’s not only not a fundamental principle, it’s not even legal.
In a more abstract sense (that is, one not relevant to the specifics of this election), what he’s complaining about could be addressed by adjusting the number of electors, though it would take an Amendment to do it. If the number of a State’s electors matched its number of federal Representatives, rather than its Representatives plus Senators, “one man, would vote” would more closely represent the entire population, on average. But the basic electoral system would still function as it does now. Most importantly, it would provide some insurance against voter fraud. In a purely popular vote, with states eliminated from the picture, every fraudulent vote would count toward the final total. A single illegal “immigrant” voting in California would advance Crooked Hillary’s tally by 1. In the current electoral system, that doesn’t happen; no matter how many illegals vote in California, Hillary can’t get more than 55 electoral votes. So any single state which refuses to implement some sort of competent methodology for preventing fraud can’t pervert the entire system.
If Lessig could come up with some ideas which would eliminate fraudulent voting, maybe they’d be worth considering … in 2020.
Our votes should count equally.
Okay, Mr. Harvard Big Shot, if my vote is equal to yours, then my vote says let the electors do their job and you shut your trap.
You can always tell a Harvard man, you just can’t tell him much.
Imagine MLB or the NFL (or any sports league) deciding post-season playoff positions, not on the results of 162 or 16 individual regular season games, but only on the total points amassed throughout all those games.
That’s what the Electoral College critics want done.
Lessig mis-characterizes (likely intentionally since that’s the leftist way of doing things if an advantage results) the whole point of the Electoral College which through operation draws everyone voting, country-wide, into participation.
Trump did win the popular vote using the EC’s 50 separate elections design. And because he did, only he gets to play in the post season.
“Harvard Law School” is becoming the punchline to an unspoken joke.
Hillary was a corruptocrat who appeared to be above the law. Not even the FBI was willing to hold her responsible for her actions. Fortunately the people decided they had to hold her account for her misdeeds. The people got it right this time and all Americans are lucky.
Until this election, I called the 1960 Pirates-Yankees matchup the “Bush-Gore World Series,” because the Pirates won the series four games to three even though the Yankees outscored them 55-27 – more than twice as many runs. So even though the Yankees won the popular vote, the Bucs won in the Electoral College. That’s just the way it goes.
If you are looking for sanity at Harvard, go to the building maintenance department.
Sorry to potentially disappoint…. didn’t one of the janiyors punch out a stained glass window because he said yo promoted slavery? If not there then in a similar institution of “higher” learning.
Larry Lessig has done some really good work in the field of privacy. It’s too bad that he degrades himself this way. Just the lie that Hillary is qualified should make him a laughingstock. The way he completely ignores her corruption tarnishes whatever reputation for integrity he had ever earned.
Lessig has always been a tool. He has done good work in his area of expertise, but thinks that he is just as smart in other areas, but isn’t. He is a dilettante, and thinks that his Harvard job can compensate for years of study in an area. It can’t, and it shows, here, and in other areas where he has jumped in, tried to do something spectacular, and has failed miserably.
I agree, if things were the opposite, Trump lost and the big H has won, intellectuals would be arguing exactly the opposite.
IT is only that T. Rump is so obviously unqualified, to be president. And worse, T. Rump does not even know it.
Our only hope is that P. T. (Trump) Barnum will be so ineffectual we as a nation can survive the loss of 4 years of leadership.
Lets just hope no nations leader insults him, he has the nuke codes!
Lessig was just passing through the campus, right? He doesn’t actually *teach* at Harvard? Hell, I doubt he would even be admitted to Harvard as a student.
Next you’ll be telling me Harvard has no standards…
…okay not funny guys. Obviously this is not THE Harvard. It’s the Harvard Cosmetics School of Laredo Texas. Or something like that.
Nice try.
“Conventional wisdom tells us that the electoral college requires that the person who lost the popular vote this year must nonetheless become our president. That view is an insult to our framers”
No honey, it’s an insult to your education. And would you mind letting us know what other “schools” you attended?
See, Joe Blow over here dropped out of high school at age 16. But even he knows that no could have “lost” the popular vote because… wait for it…the popular vote was not in play.
Your numbers are incidental. Yes, Emmit has the most rushing yards. Yes, Aikman had the highest completion average. Yes, Dallas has the most 3rd down conversions.
They still lost 10-7. Because it was POINTS SCORED that determined the winner of the game.
I can’t believe you have such horrible critical thinking skills. And you teach? OMG. How the hell did you get through law school?
Really think someone should a look at your documentation. Who are you and where are you hiding the real Harvard professor?
Never mind the will and results of the election!
I do not like that mean guy Trump so this election should be
overturned because the stupid whit voters did not know what they were doing.
I know better than you! Lawrence Lessing
PS
What would happen if this was reserved and a conservative
professor called for the electoral college to vote Trump if Crooked Hillary won?
There would be a nuclear explosion in the media!
I love it when specialists show their abysmal ignorance in areas outside their specially. In Lessig’s case, he apparently has no firm grounding in US history and his logic is lacking.
As I have previously noted, institutions such as our bicameral congress and the Electoral College were designed to limit the influence of the large population states on the federal government. The electoral college also reduces the power of a single group of people who spend a good deal of time together in a federal governmental setting, the Congress, and installs it in the members states. Our federal government was all about restraining power. The Electoral College allows the broadest range of voters to be directly represented in the election of the Chief Executive, while limiting the power of the populations in large population states and/or districts on the overall choice.
Now his logic collapses when he suggests that because the total popular vote, in the country, favored Clinton, that the electors should vote for her, rather than the candidate which won the popular vote in the state or district represented by the individual elector. This, of course, would negate the reason for the existence of the Electoral College and grant the large population states undue influence on the election of the Chief Executive. And, as the individual elector represents the voters in his district or state [depending upon the manner in which the states assign their electors] the individual elector can not simply ignore the preference expressed by the majority of the people whom the represent in favor of the preferences of those people living in another state.
This country was founded upon restraint of governmental power. It is a very good idea to remember that. To do otherwise is to end up paying a personal mandate, to the central government, for not purchasing a product that they wish you to buy.
The country was founded upon restraint of governmental power.
So it was. The American (and, to an almost equal degree, English) liberal writings of the founding era are almost exclusively devoted to consideration of the relationship between the individual and the state. To men of that day the concept of “liberty” implied severe limitations on government and its powers.
Modern liberalism is the diametric opposite, based more on the totalitarian ethos of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man—an enumeration of things a pervasive and all-powerful government is obligated to guarantee or give to the citizen—than on the contemporary thought of the Anglophone world.
… Which I suppose all strays a bit afield of the Lessig problem. Well, blame it on the weekend.
As the the old adage says, “Less is more.”
Except in this case. Lessig is less.
Looks to me like the Electoral College is working as intended, and not for the first time in our history either. The left is just butt-hurt that they can’t overwhelm the rest of the nation with their pockets of paid for democrat dependents.
“Conventional wisdom tells us that the electoral college requires that the person who lost the popular vote this year must nonetheless become our president.”
Lessing establishes a faulty thesis – that electors should consider the votes of people in States other than their own, when they were intended to be representatives of only those voters in their respective States.
Well geez, lets go back to the old way and count only votes of property owners.
I wonder if he was following the enemedia (hat tip to Pamela Geller for that term) in all their reports of the electoral college votes hilldawg had sewn up prior to the actual election and if he felt smug self satisfaction in those reports.
can we start culling these fools yet.
The Electoral College and the Popular Vote explained with a simple analogy using the Baseball’s World Series of 1960: Yankees(Clinton) vs Pirates(Trump).
1960 World Series:
New York Yankees vs Pittsburgh Pirates
Game 1 Yankees – 4 Pirates – 6*
Game 2 Yankees – 16* Pirates – 3
Game 3 Pirates – 0 Yankees – 10*
Game 4 Pirates – 3* Yankees – 2
Game 5 Pirates – 5* Yankees – 2
Game 6 Yankees – 12* Pirates – 0
Game 7 Yankees – 9 Pirates – 10*
Pittsburgh WON 4 games out of 7.
Pittsburgh WON the World Series!
BUT WAIT!!! Pittsburgh didn’t win!!!
Yankees scored more runs. 55 to 27
Liberal thinking, Yankees won the world series because
they scored more runs. But that is NOT how the game is played.
And that is NOT how our elections is played either.
TRUMP WON! PERIOD!
One more thing. Donald Trump won 3,084 out of 3,141 counties in America’s Heartland, yet there are people who believe those remaining 57 counties should dictate the fate and future of the entire United States.
One look at Lessig’s Wiki bio tells you why he’s having a snit fit: almost all of his pet projects (e.g., net neutrality) will have been swept away by this time next year.
Here’s the really hilarious bit:
“In a speech in 2011, Lessig revealed that he was disappointed with Obama’s performance in office, criticizing it as a “betrayal”, and he criticized the president for using “the (Hillary) Clinton playbook”.”
Gee, now Lessig is shilling for the Electoral College to overturn a legal, free, and fair election in order to install Hillary Clinton as Prez. What a difference 5 years makes, huh?
Well, I’d like the ELectors for Clinton to go rogue and vote for Trump.
Because, you know, I think Clinton is clearly unstable emotionally and physically and is too crooked, even for D.C.
So, you Clinton Electors! Vote for Trump! You know it is the right thing to do!!!