Even when the electoral count was exciting, it was peaceful.
On January 6th, 2021, an armed force of Trumpists stormed the United States Capitol Building. Congress was interrupted in the middle of an American ritual that had been completed every four years since 1789: Counting the electoral votes. This has never been interrupted before.
The counting of the electoral votes has been marked by both small and large controversies over the course of American history. Lesser controversies included technical irregularities with Vermont’s electoral votes in 1796 and Georgia’s electoral votes in 1800. Both sets of votes were counted without lasting controversy.
For Democrats And Republicans Alike
Demographics is not destiny. Moderate politicians are more electable. The Electoral College system is fragile and should be replaced. Each one of these lessons was illuminated clearly in the 2020 elections.
The fragility of the Electoral College is obvious
Trump filed a raft of lawsuits challenging results in individual states and attempted to convince state legislatures to throw the election results out. If Biden dies at any time before electors vote, everything would go haywire. A national popular vote, on the other hand, would be in no danger of reversal and could not be litigated, contested, or easily thrown out.
Moderates are more electable
Democrats went through a large and very public debate over which candidates were more electable. Conventional wisdom (and the median voter theorem) says that candidates who are closer to the median voter generally do better. A more heterodox view, saying that radicals are more electable because they generate more enthusiasm in their own base, has become fashionable recently. There is little evidence of note in favor of this theory. …
Elections matter.
The fifty states with their different laws and governments are natural laboratories of democracy. This year, those laboratories of democracy have held an epidemiological experiment. Preliminary results from that experiment are in: Elections are a matter of life and death.
For an American in the year 2020, the risk of death from COVID-19 has varied quite significantly from state by state. Part of the pattern is geographic; population density accounts for a majority of the variation in risk thus far. Part of the pattern can be seen in when governors are elected.
For good or ill, it is governors that have led the response to COVID-19. Not all governors have led equally capable; and not all state governments have been as competent and able as others. Competence and capability varies significantly with different election schedules; states where governors are elected in mid-term or off-year elections tend to have more corrupt state governments and lower gubernatorial approval ratings. …
There are holes in our democratic process of succession
America has seen the death of presidential candidates; America has seen the death of presidents. Thus far, those two events have happened separately, and America has avoided a major crisis in the presidential succession process. Even after the passage of the 25th Amendment, however, the presidential election system is vulnerable to badly-timed deaths.
Presently, President Donald Trump is in ill health, may have infected rival candidate Joe Biden, and a presidential election is already underway. If he, Biden, or both were to die any time between now and December 14th, it could lead to a major electoral crisis.
The open window in the Electoral College
Ordinary American citizens have already begun to vote for president. Technically speaking, however, an ordinary citizen’s vote for president is actually a vote for a slate of electors. It doesn’t matter whether or not the presidential candidates die; a vote for a presidential ticket is counted as a vote for that ticket’s designated electors. …
“A good compromise leaves everybody mad.” — Bill Watterson
The Electoral College was a compromise. Most of us know this. As far as I can tell, none of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention thought that the final version of the Electoral College system was the best possible method for electing the president —it was just the compromise that they were willing to agree to.
I will begin by saying what the Electoral College was not.
- It was not intended to protect the interests of small states.
- It was not intended to protect the interests of rural voters.
- It was not intended to insure elections were resolved quickly. …
The Electoral College system is vulnerable to political attack
This article was originally written in the lead-up to the 2020 election. For those of you reading it after Election day but before electors meet and vote, see the section about retroactive rules changes.
Reportedly, Trump is exploring plans to appeal directly to state legislators in order to win the appointment of electors in key battleground states. The unfortunate reality is that this line of attack is constitutional. Not only that, this strategy has been employed in the past. State legislatures can and have stolen elections out from under the noses of voters.
There are three different ways in which state governments can steal a state’s slate of electors from a candidate who won more votes than their opponent. First, and most simply, they can cancel the election, as happened in New Jersey in 1812. Second, they can certify results that are known to be inaccurate, irregular, and incomplete; the 1876 and 2000 elections were both decided on the basis of counts known to be inaccurate. Third, they could simply order electors to change their votes; in Colorado in 2016, the state successfully compelled electors’ votes. …
The geography of who lands in the White House
There are forty-four presidents. Thirty-nine were elected (five accidentally became president). Of the thirty nine people elected president, twenty-eight have lived in either New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, or Ohio for at least part of their life. Twenty-one were born in one of those four states.
He probably is lying about his height, though.
“Girthers” suspect that President Donald Trump’s vital statistics are misrepresented, and that he has a serious obesity problem.
Even considering the uncertainty over Trump’s height and weight, he is definitely not the fattest president in history. He might be pushing second place, but it’s hard to be sure.
The first thing to understand is that Trump does seem to have padded his vital statistics. His 2012 driver’s license and 1961 draft card both list a height of 6′2″. In other words, there is an official chain of records stretching from 1961 to 2012 showing him with a height of 6′2″. Trump currently claims to be 6′3″. …
If Biden dies on November 3rd, 2020, things could get very complicated very quickly.
Here’s the deal: The president is elected by a set of 538 presidential electors. Not states, not citizens, but electors. The electors vote on December 14th, 2020. If Biden dies between November 3rd and December 14th as the apparent president-elect, any votes cast by presidential electors for Biden won’t count, according to current precedent.
The same is true for Trump; if any presidential candidate dies between the election and the meeting of electors, this could lead to some unusual outcomes.
1872: The precedent that electors cannot vote for a dead man
In 1872, Horace Greeley, famous newspaperman, challenged incumbent president Ulysses S. Grant. He lost the election by a landslide on election night, and then died before the electors met. …
The Supreme Court settles the “faithless elector” question.
On June 6th, 2020, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in the case of Chiafolo v. Washington and also Baca v. Colorado Department of State. (The two cases were separated because Sotomayor recused herself from the latter case.) The decision can be summarized in a single line from the decision:
[E]lectors are not free agents; they are to vote for the candidate whom the State’s voters have chosen.
The Supreme Court has specifically decided that states are free to either fine (as in the case of Chiafalo v. Washington) or replace (as in the case of Baca v. Colorado) electors who vote for a different candidate. …
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