Prof. Lawrence Lessig: Our attempt to steal the election is going well
Not a principled fight, just an attempt to change the election after the fact.
The Electoral College meets December 19, and Democrats are increasing their attempt to steal the election by getting Electors to vote contrary to the vote in their states even if bound by state law.
Prof. Lawrence Lessig, one of the first to call for the Electors to go rogue, claims 20 Republican Electors are ready to jump ship, about half of the 38 needed. Politico reports:
Larry Lessig, a Harvard University constitutional law professor who made a brief run for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, claimed Tuesday that 20 Republican members of the Electoral College are considering voting against Donald Trump, a figure that would put anti-Trump activists more than halfway toward stalling Trump’s election.
Lessig’s anti-Trump group, “Electors Trust,” has been offering pro bono legal counsel to Republican presidential electors considering ditching Trump and has been acting as a clearinghouse for electors to privately communicate their intentions.
“Obviously, whether an elector ultimately votes his or her conscience will depend in part upon whether there are enough doing the same. We now believe there are more than half the number needed to change the result seriously considering making that vote,” Lessig said.
Lessig’s claims contradict the assertions of Republican National Committee sources who report that a GOP whip operation intended to ensure Republican electors remain loyal to Trump found only one elector — Chris Suprun of Texas — would defy Trump.
In Colorado, a judge ruled against Clinton electors who claimed a right to vote against how state law required them to vote. So Lessig’s theory, advanced by many people, that electors can vote however they want even in states where they are bound, has so far not found any judicial authority.
Colorado presidential electors who do not vote for Hillary Clinton as the winner of the state’s vote risk criminal charges after a Denver judge delivered the second setback in two days to an effort to block Donald Trump from winning the presidency.
Denver District Judge Elizabeth Starrs ruled that state law requires members of the Electoral College, when the body meets at noon Monday, to vote for the presidential and vice presidential candidates who received the most votes in Colorado.
The order also granted authority to the Secretary of State Wayne Williams, a Republican, to replace electors who violate the law — essentially ending Colorado’s role in the “Hamilton Electors” movement to keep Trump from the White House.
“If (presidential electors) take the oath and then they violate the statute, there will be repercussions,” Starrs said in an order from the bench.
All pretense of this being anything other than a political ploy to steal the election was removed by two liberal writers in The NY Times today. Dahlia Lithwick, who covers the courts for Slate, and David S. Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University, Buck Up, Democrats, and Fight Like Republicans. They set up patently false assumptions for their argument, such as that the alleged negatives about Trump are new post-election and that Republicans in Florida 2000 used similar tactics, but understand it’s a purely political argument:
…. The Republicans in 2000 threw everything they could muster against the wall to see if it stuck, with no concern about potential blowback; the Democrats in 2016 are apparently too worried about being called sore losers. Instead of weathering the criticism that comes with fighting an uphill, yet historically important battle, the party is still trying to magic up a plan.
As Monday’s Electoral College vote approaches, Democrats should be fighting tooth and nail. Instead, we are once again left with incontrovertible proof that win or lose, Republicans behave as if they won while Democrats behave as if they lost. What this portends for the next four years is truly terrifying.
Similarly, an article at New York Magazine argues that the effort is worth it, even if unlikely to win, because it will damage Trump once he takes office, Challenging the Electoral College Vote Isn’t Futile, Though Trump Will Still Win:
Certainly a large number of people rallying to overturn the Electoral College vote believe that 2016 could hold one more surprise, despite evidence to the contrary. But denying Trump the presidency isn’t the movement’s only goal. Politico reports that a survey of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s 23,000 members found that roughly half were confident that Trump would be president, but about 91 percent were still in favor of lobbying electors. These are the main reasons people are pushing for an Electoral College upset, even if they don’t think it will succeed.
Denying Trump his 306 electoral votes could be important symbolically, as it would undercut Trump’s claim that he secured a mandate and serve as a show of strength from his opponents. As Brian Beutler explained this week in The New Republic:
… Thinning that electoral majority even further, through GOP protest votes, would be a small but useful public testament to both his unfitness for office and the lack of public confidence in his ascent to power. For the time being, this is what official resistance to Trump will look like: numerous battlefronts, some invisible, each inconsequential, but that have a real impact when taken together.
Undermining Trump, not preventing him from taking office, is the essential goal of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s protest efforts, according to a letter sent to the group’s supporters this week.
The “Hamilton Electors” movement, or whatever other name you want to give to Operation Flip the Electors, is nothing short of an attempt to rewrite the election rules after the fact. Like saying after a football game that the team with the most yardage should win even though it didn’t score the most points. Perhaps the teams would have played differently had yardage, and not points, been the measure of victory. Here, the entire election strategy for both sides was focused on the “race to 270”, not the national popular vote.
Had this been a straight popular national vote, perhaps Republicans would have attempted to get out the vote in places they had no chance of winning the state (e.g. CA, NY, and IL) and tried to run up the vote in safe Republican states (e.g. TX, the South and Midwest).
All of the arguments against Trump were made exhaustively prior to the election, including the speculative Russian connection. The voters were able to consider those arguments when voting.
I usually don’t engage with liberals on Facebook, but I had to post today the graphic that is the Featured Image to this post.
I also had to break the news to them: If you are supporting this attempted coup, you are just a sore loser who is willing to win at any cost, even if that cost is the cohesiveness of the nation and the integrity of the election process. At least be honest about it.
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Comments
It’s amazing to me that these progs haven’t gotten the Harry Reed “exercise band treatment” yet. They’re certainly asking for it.
Just more progressive pixie dust. I suppose somebody should be assigned to keep an eye on them, but as long as they remain harmless leave them to toil in their own version of reality.
Perhaps some democratic electors should also “vote their conscience.”
Should they be successful in starting the next “civil” war, I do hope Mr. Lessig is the first casualty.
Too lenient and merciful. These people should be held up for what they are and kept well …. Emmanuel Goldstein personified. Double plus good idea…no?
When these folks use the word “democracy” as in the poster, substitute it with “Democrats”, and you will determine their true concern.
If the left thinks they’re going to gain seats in the midterms after this stunt, they’re delusional.
Why is it that Democrats resort to illegitimate, and even illegal, means to win elections. In 2000. G.W. Bush won the popular vote in Florida. This was in spite of thousands of ballots from overseas military personnel were not counted. The Dems demanded recounts, of selected heavily Democrat counties, where the ballots were “interpreted” by Democrat poll canvassers. And, Bush still won the popular vote. Subsequently, several additional recounts were conducted, beyond that mandated by state law, all of which showed Bush winning the the popular vote, if the votes were counted in any reasonable manner. Yet the Dems have continued to claim that the election in Florida was “stolen” from All Gore. All of the Dem’s arguments revolved around the premise that Democrat voters were too stupid to completely pund out a chad and/or they were too stupid to punch the hole directly next to the arrow next to their candidate’s name.
This time their arguments are a bit different. In this election they are arguing that because Trump won the Electoral College votes, but lost the popular vote, that this election was rigged in 1787. And, that people should simply ignore the law to obtain whatever they desire. Such people are usually called criminals, by the way.
They use these tactic’s because they realize that if they don’t the would win far fewer elections.
The Filthy Shit Party continues to live down to my expectations.
I don’t see any serious risk here. Lessig is just whistling past the cemetery, and dealing in the same mythical numbers as all those Hillarious poll results I didn’t believe either.
And if the Rats think their attempts to “delegitimize” Trump and his administration will be effective, then they still have no idea what they’re dealing with.
Professor, do you think states have the right to dictate to their senators how to vote, let alone to replace them if they dare to vote differently?! Of course they don’t, and they never had such a right even before the 17th amendment. Once a senator is elected, s/he is free to vote however s/he chooses, regardless of what promises s/he made beforehand. Those promises may or may not have been meant sincerely, but like any voter, senators are entitled to change their minds. So why do you imagine they have such a right with electors? In what respect are electors different from senators?
Laws requiring electors to vote as they had pledged before the election are brazenly unconstitutional, and I’m not impressed by the fact that some Denver judge declared otherwise; that just means the judge has the same contempt for electors that the legislature had in making such a law. Electors have a constitutional responsibility to vote, and that inherently means they have the freedom to choose how to vote.
Sure, no need to bother with a pesky election.
Just have the “elites” decide.
The election in November was for electors. Now the electors have to elect the president. The constitution gives the election of the president to them, not to the public who elected them, just as it gives the task of legislation to the senators and representatives, not to the public who elected them.
How many electors names were on the ballots? I pretty sure that will be a great big fat ZERO. The electors have a duty to do and that is to vote for the winner of their state (you know, who the popular vote for that state chose as their next President).
Whether the electoral candidates’ names were on the ballot is utterly irrelevant. It’s up to the state legislature what should appear on the ballot. The names of the various parties’ candidates for elector were public information, and if you wanted to you could have looked them up. But the ballot did not say “Trump and Pence” or “Clinton and Kaine”, it said “Electors for Trump and Pence” or “Electors for Clinton and Kaine”. Because that’s who you were voting for, whether you knew it or not.
No the vote in November was to tell the electors how to vote, since . Let me try again to explain it to you.
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”
First of all neither the above or the 12th amendment give the electors the “right” to vote as they please.
The right to punish faithless electors is clearly given in the following; “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct” so the legislature may “direct” them to vote as ordered and levy punishments for not following that directive.
You can’t possibly be that stupid, so you must be deliberately lying.
The vote in November was not to tell the electors how to vote, it was to choose the electors. You seem to imagine that the electors would be the same regardless of the result in their state, but would simply vote the other way. That’s not how it works, in any state. Republican electors are never required to vote for a Democrat or vice versa. Each party nominates a slate of candidates for the position of elector, and the candidates who get the most votes win.
The legislature has plenary authority to direct how the state appoints its electors. It can direct (as all state legislatures do) that they be elected by the public, or it can decide to appoint them itself, or to have a lottery, a contest, or even to sell the state’s electoral seats on ebay. Once the electors have been appointed, though, it does not have the authority to direct them in any way, any more than it could direct the senators it used to elect.
Obviously I understand the process for choosing electors much better than you do, since all of your screeching rants come sans proof of your delusional assertions.
Also, no my ballot did not say “electors for” it has a simple header that says President/Vice President, then below that a circle to fill in with the candidate’s name beside it.
But keep screeching I am sure there are some more low info folks here who might take you seriously.
You clearly do not understand the process, since you so blatantly misstate it. It is true that Arkansas ballots are very misleading, not mentioning that the election is for electors, not for president and vice president themselves; that does not excuse you for being misled, since anyone intelligent enough to post here ought to know better.
What a silly analogy. Senators run under their own names and the job is to conduct legislative business for a term of years. Electors are essentially invisible and are elected for one specific purpose (hint: you vote for them by picking “Trump” or “Clinton” on the ballot). Not the same thing at all.
Also most electors are not elected they are chosen by party elites.
That is an outright lie. All electors are elected by the public, not chosen by any party. Of course the candidates for elector are chosen by the parties, just as are all candidates for public office.
Oops, wrong again, as I have proven repeatedly.
This is how electors are chosen in Arkansas, but don’t let facts confuse you.
“The parties select their electors at their State Conventions. So, there are actually 12 potential electors. But, only six will cast their votes.”
http://katv.com/archive/the-electoral-vote-in-arkansas-how-presidents-are-chosen-in-the-natural-state
The KATV article you linked to is confused and confusing, written for morons by a near-moron (the electoral college is not a “process”), but it does say that there are 12 potential electors. “Potential”, as in candidates for election, who if elected would become electors. There were also 3 “potential” senators, Boozman, Eldridge, and Gilbert, 2 or 3 “potential” representatives in each district, and eight “potential” presidents.
(Actually the article’s statement that there were 12 “potential electors” is outright false; there were not 12 but 48 candidates for the position of elector. 42 of these candidates were not elected, and therefore did not become electors, just as Eldridge and Gilbert did not become senators.)
How they appear on the ballot is irrelevant; the constitution does not know of any ballots. The constitution doesn’t even require that they be elected at all; the legislature can choose them itself, or have them chosen in any way it directs. But however they’re chosen they’re now public officials exactly like congressmen, with the same constitutional duty to vote as they think right.
The Constitution says that the electors shall vote by ballot but I can’t find anything about the “duty to vote as you think right.” Can you supply a pointer?
It’s inherent in the concept of voting. A compelled vote is not a vote at all.
I’ve already linked to proof that you were wrong several times. Your delusional and should seek help soon.
You had several opportunities to link to proof of your claim, but you did not, because you couldn’t find any. Instead you linked to popular articles by people of no particular expertise or credibility, none of which constitute proof of anything.
Isn’t the state-level selection of electors more analogous to employment than to representation? Am I correct in stating the electoral college is not a legislative body, and has only one task specified in the Constitution? If so, wouldn’t the electors be more like a County Clerk than a Senator?
Given that, would you hold that a County Clerk should be allowed to exercise his or her conscience in the performance of their state-mandated responsibilities? As in, say, whether to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples?
Electors are not state employees, or state officials of any kind. They are federal officials, fulfilling a federal function, exactly as are congressmen. The directions for their appointment is given to the state legislature. When it gives those directions it is filling a federal, not a state function, and thus is not subject to the state constitution or judiciary.
No, the electoral college is of course not a legislative body, it’s an electoral body. That’s why it’s called that. It’s beyond me why you think that makes a difference. Both legislating and electing are deliberative functions, not executive ones.
County clerks are executive functionaries, whose duty is to see that the law is carried out, just like the president. As to whether they have the right to interpose their own conscience, I would say it depends on whether they are elected or appointed. If they’re appointed, and serve at the pleasure of whoever appointed them, then they’re responsible to that person or body. If they’re elected then like the president they’re responsible to the voters, and like the president they have discretion in setting the priorities of their office, subject to the ultimate approval of whichever body has the authority to remove them.
Your assertion that electors are analogous to Senators is ludicrous, at least for electors in Washington State. The slate of electors put forward by each presidential ticket is PLEDGED to vote for that ticket should they become part of the Electoral College. Electors are subject to civil penalty if they fail to cast their vote in accordance with the result of Washington’s winner-take-all presidential election. To my knowledge, no legislator is bound by pledge or subject to penalty with regard to their vote.
Here’s an excerpt from the website of the National Archives and Records Administration – the agency actually responsible for the administration of the Electoral College:
*****
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Constitution does not require that Electors be completely free to act as they choose and therefore, political parties may extract pledges from electors to vote for the parties’ nominees. Some state laws provide that so-called “faithless Electors” may be subject to fines or may be disqualified for casting an invalid vote and be replaced by a substitute elector. The Supreme Court has not specifically ruled on the question of whether pledges and penalties for failure to vote as pledged may be enforced under the Constitution. No Elector has ever been prosecuted for failing to vote as pledged.
***** https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/electors.html
In your thread-spawning post, you stated the following: “Laws requiring electors to vote as they had pledged before the election are brazenly unconstitutional….”
Ummmm… No. Even as specious opinion… No. You are not entitled to your own facts.
You also stated: “Electors are not state employees, or state officials of any kind. They are federal officials, fulfilling a federal function, exactly as are congressmen. The directions for their appointment is given to the state legislature. When it gives those directions it is filling a federal, not a state function, and thus is not subject to the state constitution or judiciary.”
No. Since the Constitution is silent on the issue, and no Federal statute has been enacted, the laws of the individual states are controlling authority (Supremacy Clause, you know… Article VI, Clause 2). Electors are subject to state penalty, not to Federal authority, if they do not follow the proper procedure. While fulfilling a necessary function within our federal system, Electors are NOT Federal officials within any reasonable understanding of that term.
“Your assertion that electors are analogous to Senators is ludicrous”
It is also ludicrous since the founders specifically mandated that Senators and Rep’s could not be electors which should indicate, to any reasonable person, a distinct difference.
I wonder if all this is really to make such a mess of the Electoral College process that more people will support direct election, thereby only needing to count votes in New York and California.
That would be a silly goal, since there is no chance that 38 state legislatures would pass such an amendment.
“Had this been a straight popular national vote, perhaps Republicans would have attempted to get out the vote in places they had no chance of winning the state (e.g. CA, NY, and IL) and tried to run up the vote in safe Republican states (e.g. TX, the South and Midwest).”
The argument works both ways. If the decision were by popular vote, CA, TX, NY, IL, MI and a few other states would likely get 75% of the attention from EVERY candidate. Even if you boost your margin by a few percentage points, it can still amount to a million or more votes. Even in the South, you would expect most of the time to be spent in FL, GA, and NC for the same reason. MS, AL, etc. do not give the same return on your effort in total votes.
If I lived in WI, for example, I might be especially in favor of the current system. There is a reason Trump spent a lot of time there and it wasn’t because the state was in the top 10 for voters. It isn’t.
If they succeed in delegitimizing the political process, they are not going to like what they get. Politics is the agreed on substitute for physical violence in the allocation of power, resources, and political succession. If it is no longer agreed upon, the process defaults to violence. They [both wings of the Unified Governing Party] seem to think that such will not affect them or theirs. This after the government has shown no compunction in killing the innocent dependents of those it dislikes.
Once that reality begins, there is no calling time out or king’s X. Returning to Hobbes’ “State of Nature” is not something to be done lightly.
I wonder if what Professor Lessig and his confederates are doing is illegal: Does offering free legal services to any Elector willing to break his/her oath constitute conferring something of value in exchange for a vote?
No, it doesn’t. The representation is of no value to an elector unless s/he wants to exercise his/her right to vote as s/he thinks fit. And the representation is being offered regardless of how the elector wants to vote; the Colorado electors who want the right to change their votes are Democrats pledged to Clinton.
I wouldn’t be so sure. The white collar felon population is chock full of folks who thought they’d come up with a foolproof scheme – only to have it exposed, following investigation – that the substance of what they’d done broke the law. Having perused relevant federal and state statutes prohibiting bribery in elections, it seems to me there’s ample ground to investigate Prof Lessig’s little scheme – and how such investigation(s) turn out will depend on the actual granular facts. If I had to bet, I’d go with a likelkihod of charging decision(s).
I don’t see how what you point out is relevant. The definition of a bribe is a payment in return for an official doing some specific thing that he would not otherwise do, but that the payer wants him to.
If an elector has no interes in deviating from his pledge the offer of legal representation is of no value. Hence it cannot be a bribe to induce the elector to consider such a course. It’s only of value to someone who already wants to do so of his own accord, and thus can’t be bribed.
And again, the offer is open to any elector who wants to break his pledge, regardless of whether he wishes to vote as Prof Lessig wants or just the opposite. Therefore it can’t be a bribe.
Another feature of the Electoral College is that by design it never meets as a group in one place. Per Article II, Section 1 (and per the 12th amendment) the electors meet in their respective states to cast their ballots. The framers thought this would make it harder for them to be improperly influenced/corrupted. See Federalist Papers, No. 68. Modern communications would seem to frustrate that design.
Based on his utter failure and embarrassment, Lessig will thus become a lion of the progressive movement. This is because even self-made martyrs are victims in their eyes and the left loves them some victims.
Just spit balling here, but why do we need actual electors in this day and age anyway? Think about it. We watch the election results come in state by state. As a state is called for a candidate, the electoral college results are updated. By the end of the night, a candidate has conceded and the other is declared to be the winner. All of this is done without a single elector casting a physical vote. It’s all done electronically, so to speak.
This is all validated by the final election counts, and if needed, recounts.
Keep the electoral process, just change the execution of it by eliminating the “human factor”. In doing so, you remove the possibility of these kinds of shenanigans.
If you want to amend the constitution in that manner, go ahead and propose it. If 2/3 of each house and 38 state legislatures agree, I’ll have no problem with it. But right now the constitution requires an actual election by actual electors, at which they are free to vote however they like.
The idea of “Hamiltonian Electors” comes from early Federalism. It presumes that the people aren’t to be trusted, and that the government should be run by their betters – people with more education, more money and property, and better connections – an American aristocracy. This aristocracy should flex its muscles in the electoral college, to prevent the harm that may come to the nation when its unwashed masses make a mistake at the polls, and elect the wrong person. It’s a necessary “correction” such as might be applied to the bottom of a wayward child. Not surprising to see progressives pushing a concept that’s oligarchic, patriarchal, and aristocratic as well as classist, elitist, arrogant, and condescending.
It’s also ironic that the people who have complained that the winner of the popular vote lost the election are now attempting to make a president out of somebody (elected by Congress) who didn’t garner a single vote.
Gremlin1974, I am calling your BS once and for all. You rely on an uninformed claim that you found in some anonymous article on the national archive web site, that a supreme court decision in 1952 allows states to bind their electors. You couldn’t cite that decision, because you didn’t even bother looking for it.
I suspected that this decision, if found, would turn out to say not that the state could require electors to fulfill their pledge, but merely that it could require candidates for elector to make such a pledge as a condition of being listed on the ballot. In other words, the state can say “if you won’t say in advance who you intend to vote for, we won’t put you on the ballot; if you want to be an elector anyway you’ll have to get people to write you in.”
That is the extent of how wrong I thought the article would be. It turns out that I far underestimated its wrongness. Because when I found the decision it turned out that it wasn’t even about the state requiring anything in exchange for listing on the ballot at the general election, but the party requiring a pledge as a condition of being allowed to run in the party primary as a candidate for elector.
The Supreme Court said that a political party is entitled to expect that people who want to be considered for its nomination to any office will pledge loyalty to the party and its nominees. If someone is not prepared to make that pledge, the party does not have to nominate him, or even allow him to run in its primary. This does not prevent him from becoming an elector; he is free to run for the electoral college as an independent.
The state, on the other hand, has no business even extracting such a pledge in the first place, let alone enforcing it afterwards.
An elector’s promise to vote for someone is no different from a legislator’s promise to vote for some upcoming bill. Everyone agrees that if such a legislator becomes convinced that the bill is wrong he may and ought to break his promise; in exactly the same way everyone ought to agree that an elector who becomes convinced that the candidate he’d promised to support is wrong may and ought to break his promise.
You can call anything you want to, for that to effect me I would have to care if you live, die, or grow mushrooms in the crack of your ass and nothing could be further from the truth.
The fact of the matter is that you claim to be the Alpha and Omega of how electoral college is run and you are just so ignorant that it should be painful. Anyone else reading your comments realized that you lost this argument 2 days ago.
Once again you make wild assertions without proof or standing. You are letting your hatred of a candidate cloud your judgement and understanding.
So let me just go ahead and tell you how I really feel. As far as I am concerned faithless electors should be shot in the street like dogs. If you don’t agree…well I don’t care. Have fun living in your own pissed off delusional little world I have better things to do than feed your mental illness.
Don’t know about shot like dogs. I have a rather high opinion of dogs.
But if the Texas guy follows through with his announced intention, he will have to move out of Texas altogether, possibly as far as Austin.
LOL, I had a buddy tell me that while Texas may be “Like a while other country”, Austin is like a “whole other planet”!
I’ve just proven, beyond all possible doubt, that you are a liar, and this is your response?! You linked to articles of extremely dubious origin; I linked to actual irrefutable evidence, so anyone can see that I’m telling the truth and you are lying.
And if anyone’s getting shot like a dog, it should be you. You have shown yourself to be a worthless and despicable excuse for a human being, and you deserve a slow and painful death.
From my reading it appears there has been no case brought before the SC regarding the ability of the state to require electors to be held faithful to their pledge under penalty of the law. If that is correct, and since you have posted nothing that refutes it, I see this as a states right until the SC rules otherwise.
That’s because Milhouse has no clue what he is talking about, as usual, he hasn’t figured out that the world isn’t Burger King and he can’t have it his way.
The only thing you have “proven” is your own ignorance and complete lack of ability to admit when you are so far out in left field you are climbing bleachers.
You linked nothing that comes anywhere near proof.
“so anyone can see that I’m telling the truth and you are lying.”
Yea that is why you have gotten so much support for your delusional ideas! (Crickets chirping)
“And if anyone’s getting shot like a dog, it should be you. You have shown yourself to be a worthless and despicable excuse for a human being, and you deserve a slow and painful death.”
Why for disagreeing with you? While I invite you to try you luck anytime you feel froggy, skippy. Hopefully this will be enough to finally get you banned, have a nice day.