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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