An Election Day Tour Through the Electoral College

‘What Could Go Wrong?’

It’s Election Day!

Let’s take a short trip back in time to the days of our Founders, to review one of their most consequential actions.

Let’s visit the Electoral College.

No, it’s not a real place, but it does have a gift shop.

It’s been under mild but constant scrutiny lately because we’ve had presidents elected winning the Electoral vote, but not the popular vote. Most recent case in point, Trump winning over Hillary, despite her 3 million vote edge. Then, of course, there was Bush in 2000.

The idea comes up early in the Constitution, Article II-Section 1. It lays out how many electors, and the House vote if there’s no majority winner. And it allows state legislatures to ‘chuse’ how they ‘chuse’ electors (sic).

For a time, in some states, no candidates were on the ballots, and the voters elected the electors, entrusting them to ‘chuse’ the candidate. Nominations could come from practically anywhere.

Outside of those few instances, the public generally doesn’t have a voice in or even know electors are ‘chusen’. That’s because it’s up to the state, and they all do it according to who’s in power. The Constitution doesn’t say, and no federal law defines it. They could be appointed by the legislature or the governor or a city council or the president of the local Kiwanis Club. They could draw them out of a hat. They could assign electors any way they want. The Reps, Senators and Governor couldn’t be the electors, but they could have a role in chusing, er, choosing them.

When the Electoral College Act- the 12th Amendment- happens in 1804, it basically repeats most all of the Article II clause, but it does spell ’choose’ correctly. It tweaks a few things, like reducing the candidate list from 5 to 3 if there’s no majority winner, requiring a 2/3 quorum to vote, and, by the way, requiring the Vice President to be eligible for the presidency to be Vice President. Who’da thunk it?

So, it was adopted early on, that each state would have an elector for each voting district, and one for each senator. So, e.g., a state with 10 districts would have 10 reps in the House, two senators and therefore 12 electoral votes.

Theoretically, if both candidates won 5 each, it would be down to the two senate electors and how the law treats their votes. Would they then be able to choose the winner, or could even they be split and force a tie? If one wins 8, does the other still get those other 4? There were myriad vagaries and holes in the original law.

Some split by district and many gave those two senate electoral votes to the majority winner.

That made sense, but most all of the states then chose (chused?) to go even further, giving all of the state’s electoral votes to that winner. From Wiki;

“All states except Maine and Nebraska use a party block voting, or general ticket method, to choose their electors, meaning all their electors go to one winning ticket. Maine and Nebraska choose one elector per congressional district and two electors for the ticket with the highest statewide vote.”

So, in Maine and Nebraska, each candidate gets the electoral votes they won, and the popular vote winner gets the bonus two. This seems to be a fair way to do it, although it still doesn’t represent the actual popular vote, just the majority distribution of partisanship.

This is why it’s become red vs. blue districts. Districts are drawn geographically by population, so, the more districts you control, the more EC votes your party gets and the more seats in the House in DC, and the more chance of taking the House and the White House. To hold a majority of districts means to hold the entire state’s EC votes for your candidate, no matter who it is. To hold a majority of states that way would mean permanent control of the presidency and the House.

This, of course, led to demographic voter research which led to gerrymandering which led to states’ districts drawn to create artificial majorities and limit the opposition’s districts.

This is how we get presidents who lost the popular vote.

But, only two out of 50 states use an EC form that at least mimics the poplar vote at the district level.

Now, not to name names, but, aw, hell, naming names, Republicans have been actively gerrymandering states where they gain control exactly as described here, and the result is both Bush and Trump being elected by EC alone.

If you think this ‘winner take all’ rule creates an unfair advantage by allowing states to be manipulated to control their electoral votes then you are f-ing right!!

But, to be frank, this is the only real advantage Republicans have.

If they allowed districts to be fairly drawn by population, there would likely be more urban districts that tend to vote blue. Similarly, many sparsely populated red districts would be combined. Their long term strategy since the 90s has been to maximize red districts and minimize blue ones (usually majority black) so they can take the whole state’s electoral vote with a predetermined majority. (And send more House Reps to DC.)

This scheme is so blatantly racist and diabolical that it has yet to be upheld in court, except in Ohio, where the governor’s son is on the state Supreme Court. When they lose, they just draw another bad one, and it stays in effect while it’s going through the courts.

The Republicans lean completely on the block vote paradigm. They know that if all districts were fairly drawn or counted like Nebraska and Maine, they would never win the White House. This is also why you don’t hear much about GOP campaign stops in Nebraska and Maine.

While suppressing votes has always been a strategy to reduce opposition votes, gerrymandering is specifically aimed at the Electoral College and the House.

Republicans are hoping to corral these elements into a guaranteed Republican White House win and House majority, which is still enough to keep Democrats shut down if they have the Senate.

But, this is old news. This is ‘of course’ kind of stuff. Sure, they’re trying to win by hook or by crook, running every kind of game they can, from the districts to the ballot box to social media.

But, they know they won’t.

They are so sure of that, they have been executing the plan to thwart the election since 2020.

Just having the White House and the House? Peanuts! We’re talking about taking over the whole government for a shmear.

The Electoral College remains at the heart of the plan. Trump’s ‘visions’ and Project 2025 can’t take off unless he wins the White House and gains the power to declare martial law. With nowhere near the votes that will likely come out for Harris, Republicans have been executing their strategy, placing election supervisors willing to decertify their election if Trump loses. They plan to claim fraud, refuse to certify, be sued, and go to the Supreme Court, who rules that the official had the authority to decertify, so votes can be rejected, and with no one reaching 270, the House votes Trump in.

No, no, I’m not shitting you, that’s actually the plan!

They expect Harris to win, and are ginning up the works to decertify locally in states like Georgia and West Virginia- acts intended to kick off the litigation that enables SCOTUS to basically award Trump the presidency by allowing a never-used clause in the Electoral College Act to be invoked.

Committing election fraud by claiming election fraud. (And the judge is in your pocket.)

As of this writing, lower courts have rejected last minute election laws aimed at allowing decertifications by local officials, just as they rejected the over 60 lawsuits in 2020 over unproven election fraud. The Republican plan hinges on a circuit court judge allowing a case and getting to a judgement, so there can be an appeal chain. They’re hoping one of their 200-some Federalist Society placements will oblige.

Ironically and then some, the strategy had been to get closer to guaranteeing 270 EC votes. Now, to keep Trump out of prison, and to execute Project 2025, they’re scheming to keep anyone from reaching 270.

But, the end move- the vote in the House- is contingent on the GOP retaining it’s 26 state majority today. House seats were already +2-4. If Dems gain two red states and the two split states, the GOP plan is, how you say, kaput.

They’re turning and twisting the Electoral Act upside down and inside out, and not just to take the House, but to reinstall the most criminal president in history.

For today, that’s the plan and it must be foiled. We can only hope as we read this that the vote is going that way. That Trump will not be corruptly installed and Project 2025 will not happen.

Then, we can look objectively at the Electoral College and talk about our options.

It’s gone from a simple method for determining a winner- at a time when vote counting could take months- to a tip-able game board for political power brokers.

So, yes, the best thing might probably be to just get rid of the damn thing. We have the technology to handle a full-on popular vote paradigm.

But, failing that, if we make it through this, no promises, but, at least making Nebraska and Maine the templates rather than the standouts would be a good start.

It’s up to us. We must ‘chuse’ wisely.

Update;

Since Trump has unexpectedly won the election, obviously, none of these machinations are necessary. That doesn’t mean they didn’t exist- they did these things. They started placing their operatives ready to decertify pretty much as soon as Georgia’s Raffensburger refused to overturn or ‘find 11,780 votes’. The pieces all remain in place, just unused this time.

If we are lucky enough to have another election, it still behooves us to examine and correct the Electoral College.

We did not ‘chuse’ wisely. If we get the chance again, we must.

c. 2024 Cousin B