Update: RNC’s count claims 1 dissenter, Lessig claims 20.
In this part, let’s look at the potential strategy of faithless/dissenting electors to take the election to the House of Representatives, with the goal of electing a Republican-Other-Than-Trump.
Part V of this series examined the individual state level, in the most significant relevant states, to see how well Trump and the national Republican party are positioned to defend against “rogue” electors acting outside of the national R party’s control. I think they are positioned very well, in terms of the national R party driving whatever happens in the electoral college going forward.
I consider the possibility of individual electors acting in favor of Clinton, to be eliminated.
The remaining possibility is to deny Trump a majority of electoral votes, and take the election to the House of Representatives, where the Republican majority would then vote for a different Republican to be president. This is actually much more appealing to several groups. Republican party leadership. A good number of Republican voters who were more interested in defeating Clinton than supporting Trump. And quite a few Democratic voters who never really liked Clinton in the first place, may be willing to settle for this.
I repeat, though, this a hypothetical, a distant possibility.
Procedurally, it would be driven by the national R party, who would have to back up dissenting electors against any political punishment coming from the local level. To take the vote to the House, you would probably see a couple of R states flip completely, from Trump to someone else (such as Romney, to pick a name out of a hat).
The House would then vote between: Trump, Clinton, and whoever has the 3rd-most-electoral votes. (again, lets say it’s Romney for the sake of argument). If the R party maintains unity, they can get a that 3rd person,to be President. [update: see addendum at the bottom for the procedure the House uses in this situation]
On the whole, if an alternate Republican is selected, the country will probably approve, or at least forgive them. I think any civil disobedience coming out of this would actually be pretty minor, since most people didn’t really like Clinton or Trump anyway. Several million voted for Trump in the primaries, but that’s not enough for any kind of revolution (a good thing), other than in a primary election (hint: 2020 would be wild if this all happens). As an insurance policy, though, it probably would make sense for Republicans to pick a third candidate palatable to law enforcement and military types.
And also, anything that involves Congress is never that simple. The House vote would be preceded by all kinds of horse trading and procedural shenanigans. Or else done in the middle of the night without reading the text being voted on, which is even scarier.
So there’s a chance the gambit does not go according to plan, and Clinton wins in the House. In this case, the national R party could simply hang the dissenting electors out to dry. Or it could defend them, that being the job of the future RNC chair (Romney’s niece!). Also if Clinton pulls together a block of R votes in the House to get in that way, the whole civil-disobedience issue is back on the table. But again, unlikely.
On the whole I don’t think Republican leaders will choose the “House option”, for 2 reasons:
1. the Republican party will suffer for it with voters in future elections, since they’ll have completely corrupted their own primary process.
2. I think in general most of the interested parties with any say in it can live with Trump, and at this point, with a conservative and ultra-business-friendly cabinet picked out, that’s probably a lower-risk scenario from their point of view.
[this paragraph updated] Personally, as a Sanders-Democrat/Stein-Green-party supporter, depending on which Republican alternative is chosen (i.e., not Cruz), this scenario may be a slight improvement. On the other hand I definitely don’t want to normalize such an anti-democratic process. While it’s sad to see someone who didn’t win the popular vote become president, does that justify installing someone who didn’t get any votes at all, which is what would happen? This is expanded on, here from the R. point of view.
The real “problem” was that both D and R parties selected 2 deeply compromised (i.e., f***ing awful) candidates, and that the US electoral system is set up to block out 3rd parties. If anything, I hope voters come away from all this with more awareness of these issues.
I’m also getting sick of this election process that never ends. Trying to keep up with another round of obscure rules and backroom gameplay in the House is the last thing I really want to do.
Addendum: Procedure in the House. What happens there is there will be 3 candidates to choose from — the top 3 electoral vote-getters. Trump, Clinton, and whoever the faithless/dissenting electors write in. Then! The representatives form groups (delegations), for each state. The delegations vote amongst themselves, then come together, and each state’s delegation will get one vote! The current House would have 32 state delegations contorlled by Republicans, 15 Democrat, and 3 evenly split. (source: daily beast).
In Part III, I listed the states in question — specifically states won by Trump, in which state law allows electors to be faithless. In this part, I will review what I could find from a quick news search on the larger states from that list. Looking very, very unlikely.
The electors typically include the top 3-4 state republican party officials, so without the national R. party on board with dissent by electors (Reince Priebus scored a Chief of Staff position), we can forget about dissent in states with just a handful of electoral votes. In larger states, the remaining electors are of course also chosen by the winning party, but individuals could potentially get positions as electors for other reasons (owed favors, etc), simply because there are more “moving parts”.
I searched for any news on the larger states, below:
TX (38)– 1 elector resigned (gets replaced), 1 elector says will vote for a Republican other than Trump (and receives death threats from Trump supporter). State Repub. party appears on board with Trump. Not much on state GOP chair. TX governor Rick Perry scored a cabinet post.
http://www.gosanangelo.com/story/news/local/texas/2016/12/12/texas-electors-unlikely-affect-outcome-race/95360620/
PA (20) – all electors on board with Trump, per phone interviews. State GOP chair is a trustee of U Penn. A couple of the state GOP electors are associated with former PA gov and Bush’s first homeland security chief, Tom Ridge.
http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/pennsylvania/mc-pa-trump-unbound-electors-20161211-story.html
GA (16)– 1 elector resigned (gets replaced). interviews with 14 GA electors indicate loyalty. Not getting much out of the bio’s.
http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2016/11/20/georgias-gop-electors-stand-by-donald-trump-amid-pressure/
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/baoky-vu-donald-trump-electoral-college-232080
MI (16)– 1 elector receives threats, from Clinton supporter, actually. The state’s party chair, who is also Mitt Romney’s niece, just got named to be the new RNC chairman, so I’m guessing this state’s R party just got a very nice reward.
IN (11)– Interviews suggest electors are on board with Trump, includes state party chair etc. VP-elect Pence is from Indiana.
AZ (11)– 1 elector “reluctant” but will honor commitment. 4 electors, in interviews, say they are entirely unswayed (but in at least one case, are annoyed) by thousands of emails. Also, state party GOP chair Robert Graham was also in the running for that RNC top position that went to the MI person, above. No news articles on what, if anything, he is getting. Can’t draw any insights from wiki bio’s of state party chair etc. McCain who seems to be anti Trump is from AZ, and is one of the prominent Republicans in congress publicly buying into the Russia hacking-the-election-to-help-Trump line. He has struggled against the local Tea party wing within his state’s Republican party.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/electoral-college-effort-stop-trump-231350
For one thing anyone in the US world with a decent sized checkbook can just make a donation to a PAC, or the charitable foundation of a globetrotting politician. /cough/ Saudi Arabia /cough/. Heck, Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, has a brother who is a registered agent for the desert kingdom. But nevermind that.
Here we have a piece on where the CIA lies on the spectrum of trustworthiness.
More detail on the political situation in Austria, in light of the recent victory of the candidate who was not the far right. Basically, all the other political parties had to unite, and make concessions to their opponent during the campaign, on some immigration related issues, and they just barely won.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/12/austria-fpo-hofer-bellen-right-fascists-trump/
This is a potentially sensitive subject, so I want to clarify my position on it in advance. I am opposed to using the EC to change the results of an election. I also think the whole structure is flawed and does not deliver good results, a system of nationally proportional voting, perhaps with some bonuses for smaller states to acknowledge the history of the US, and a preference voting system, would be better. Using the EC to counter the results of a vote is a tool intended for extreme emergencies, and further is a tool susceptible to manipulation.
To start off, the Electoral Collge (EC) balloting process is up to the states or the winning parties in each state, I’m still not clear on that. Here’s a source from the Congressional Research Service (RL32611) that says a paper ballot is the typical method for EC:
The electors almost always meet in the state capital, usually in the capitol building or state house itself. They vote “by ballot”—paper ballot—separately for President and Vice President.
After which, they sign a form indicating the results of their vote for their state, and per-state EC vote total is delivered to the federal government, as per the constitution.
Or the state’s electors can simply sign their names on the form that will be sent to the federal government and be done with it, with no further process. An article in Slate citing someone from the Office of the Federal Register suggests this is typical (via Phil Ebersole) .
At least one state, Minnesota, has had secret balloting, indicating that it is allowed. (google results). They changed back to non-secret after one of their electors dissented.
Until this year, the details of this didn’t really concern anyone.
Secret balloting for the EC matters because electors who participate in a dissent that fails would be punished otherwise, in career terms. On the other hand, state or state parties (whoever of those decides the EC balloting process) would wish to have the ability to punish electors who are disobedient.
However, this year, a potent argument in favor of secret balloting in the EC has come up. It turns out that a number of crazies have been making death threats etc against electors. (google results). So in all fairness, the sensible way to protect them, if you do believe in their constitutional power to dissent, is to allow them secret ballots. And I’m guessing they could put up a decent legal case in their state courts based on this.
The flip side is you would then have both an extreme concentration of power and secrecy — any combination of 3 dozen or so individuals out of a group of 300 could swing this year’s result. I very much doubt that this was the intent of whoever came up with the EC system, and is a great reason why the whole thing is bad, and why sticking to the actual vote, while vulnerable to national group thinking, is still much better than what we have. This would be regardless of whether you take the vote to be under existing rules, or a plain national vote, or some hybrid adjusted-proportional system giving extra weight to voters in smaller states.
The voter fraud story is indicative of a much wider problem with U.S. political media: its attempts to point out Trump’s falsehoods are consistently undermined by the media’s own lack of credibility on matters of fact.
link: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/12/the-necessity-of-credibility
[via NC]
side note: Here, the word “credibility” is used, to mean trustworthiness, vs willingness to follow through on threats, in the context of a negotiation. In the past I’ve complained that the the latter meaning of the word is intentionally conflated with the former, when justifying US foreign policy.
States won by Republicans, where the state law does NOT require EC electors to vote for state’s vote-winner:
TX 38 electors
PA 20
GA 16
MI 16
AZ 11
IN 11
KY 8
LA 8
IA 6
KS 6
WV 5
ID 4
NH 4
ND 3
SD 3
AK 3
Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Electoral_College
