As you know, there is interest in doing a recount for the presidential balloting in three key states. The chance that a recount in these three states would change Trump’s win (290 to 232 electoral votes) is small. But, it is possible that a recount could demonstrate irregularities that should be addressed.
Also, there is the possibility again small, of so-called “faithless electors” giving Trump a pass. If something like that happens, from Clinton’s perspective, it would be nice if even one of these states flipped (most likely Wisconsin).
So, to keep track of the numbers, here are the current vote values prior to any recount. I’m not too sure about Wisconsin because the Wisconsin Secretary of State does not actually provide the numbers to the general public, which I’m guessing is a violation of their state’s statute or constitution, but hell, that’s Wisconsin for you. The Louisiana of the North, they call it these days.
Friday, November 25th
Michigan (16 electoral votes): 10,704 (0.2%)
Wisconsin (10 electoral votes): 27,257 (0.9%)
Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes): 70,638 (1.2%)
On the electors: Some will claim that an elector is somehow rigging, violating, or otherwise besmirching the process by not voting for the candidate that won their state’s popular vote. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The electors are carrying out a duty in service of the United States Constitution, and and the Constitution does not stipulate that they vote for the majority in their state.
There have been so-called “faithless electors” — those that do not follow that state mandated rule — in the past, and they were never fined or otherwise prosecuted for violating state statute. There is, as I understand it, a reason for that. The state laws that tell an elector how to vote are so blatantly unconstitutional that even a right wing judge whose corrupt brother in law was the candidate harmed by the elector could not possibly uphold the law under an appeal. If a faithless elector was taken to court, and that case was challenged (which it would be), the entire edifice would instantly crumble and the electoral college would have to start to function like it did in the old days.
And, how is that, you ask?
Well, in their Enlightened wisdom, the Founding Fathers, who are today revered, even fetishized, by the likes of the Tea Party and the Sage Brush Rebellion and all the other yahoos, deemed the unwashed masses — the yahoos — unfit to vote for President (or Senator for that matter). The Electors are supposed to be your betters, who will make the decision for you. And, soon, possibly by the time of the next election, this is how we shall start to do things.
Or maybe not the next presidential election, but if the electoral system is tossed aside this year (Wisconsin shifts so the vote becomes 280-242 and 11 electors dump Trump so the vote becomes 269-253) and the election goes to the House of Reprehensible to decide, you can bet on change happening over the next few years, though it will probably come in the form of a bunch of state laws that continue to fly under the Constitutional radar screen.
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If Trump is not placed in the White House as president, how many people will die? I mean brown people, black people, and Muslims?
None for that reason. Maybe a couple, tops.
If he is placed in the white house, the possibilities are hard to define, but it could be thousands.
“None for that reason. Maybe a couple, tops.”
10 months ago I would have agreed; at the moment in the news I see and read about many tens of thousands of enraged, incensed, terrified white men who are faced with the modification of they see as their privileged status in the USA. The fact that they are oppressed and persecuted by the people they vote for and fund and defend is incidental to the fact that they believe they are “protecting” themselves, their families, and their white skins by voting for Trump.
These people see Trump as their savior; Trump is their last great hope of improving their lives; they blame brown people and black people for their low social status and economics.
While it is not equivalent in national security risks, denying Trump the White House would be equal in their eyes to denying Sanders the White House if he was the one expected to have the electoral college elect him. I would be outraged if Sanders was the president-elect but did not get the job.
If Sanders had been elected but the electoral college let the current Congress give the job to Trump I would be outraged; I would be in the streets burning cars and throwing trash cans into government office windows.
The Trump cultists would be just as angry, for different reasons, and their targets would be different. I fear that they would have human targets.
“None for that reason. Maybe a couple, tops.”
I’d like to know why you think that Greg. I think you are being overly optimistic there. The amount of hate and racism that has already been unleashed will be a inflamed if Trump is denied the WH. Putting those genies back in the bottle will not be easy.
Aside from that I read somewhere recently that a number of the Trump electors (I believe it was 6 maybe 7) were trying to convince a sufficient number of other Trump electors to spoil their ballots by writing in a different candidate to deny Trump the election and force it into the house where the GOP majority could elect the candidate of their choice. Don’t know if that’s kosher or not but it would suit the party to deny it to Clinton and Trump and put someone like Paul Ryan in instead.
Speaking strictly as a person who has grown-up in a ‘democracy’ I must say that there should be absolutely nothing wrong with checking on how we are doing now and then, right? There is nothing wrong with making sure our ‘democracy’ is still on track is there? Or that the voting process is not as clean as we think it is, and/or that foreign governments, or others, are not secretly meddling in an attempt to change the outcome of our elections is there? This College Vote is a musty old piece of paper that has no place in modern day politics … I TRULY believe that IN A TRUE DEMOCRACY EVERY SINGLE vote should count as exactly that: ‘that every single vote should count: as ONE VOTE’. We don’t need a group of people (the College Vote) deciding after the fact, that certain votes of the unshaven, unbathed, educationally ignorant, of the wrong skin color, and/or that it is of the correct political affiliation to bear enough weight to be counted in the first place. The meaning of ‘democracy’ has been clarified since the 1800’s, we have several billions more people in the process now, instead of small scattered pools of water we now have oceans moving in the direction of the WILL OF THE PEOPLE. Let each vote, a individual drops of water do what it must: be counted in the spirit of unity and justice.
Doug@3: That is very much a “be careful what you wish for” scenario. We could end up with a President who is every bit as bad as Trump but actually knows how to work the system.
The House wouldn’t be able to install just anybody, either. They are restricted to the top three vote-getters in the electoral college, so the not-Trump not-Clinton option would be whoever the faithless electors agreed upon (or the one who got the most such electoral votes if they don’t agree).
Trump has thus far cut through every firewall he has encountered in his life. I don’t know what form of asbestos or kryptonite is going stop him, but it sure looks like he is taking a direct shot at being emperor. The fate of humanity may now be in the hands of the less radical parts of the Republican Party because, IMO, the only realistic blocking action of the Trump juggernaut that I can see taking place will be at the behest of the Republican Congress and the United States Constitution.
It is a real source of concern to me that the German situation of the thirties is being reproduced here in far too many ways. The characterization of scientific climatology as a communist plot is concerning too. The intrusion of the now capitalist Russians into our election process has me concerned too. And the overlooked, dissed, crazed, superstitious, heavily armed white lower class is not a source of comfort either. It is no longer unrealistic to picture myself being threatened or evicted from my own house by armed white militants some day. We ignored and belittled Ted Nugent’s insanity at our own peril.
So the advocates for the principles of the enlightenment are now in free fall. We don’t yet know if Trumpism will be a terminal illness for Democracy or just an irritating rash. We can speculate till the cows come home, but the twitter horses of the apocalypse are long since out of the barn and we don’t know what is going to come home to us or when.
In the back of my mind, I kind of knew that Hillary would not win. That high school-girl-spotting-a-girlfriend-antic every time she got on stage looked very un-presidential to many of us. Totally oblivious to the fact that her firewall boyfriend was going to dump her right before the prom. Great imitation of the attacking dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park though.
Well, now we get to feel the sort of pain and fear that poorly educated unenlightened whites have been feeling for many decades. A tribe that we ignored and did not feel sorry for now has the ear of the man at the helm. And they are well armed. This is going to get very very interesting. He and his family have a long history of exploiting the weaknesses of that tribe. He had better hope that the tribe doesn’t wake up to that fact and decide to turn on him.
Have a wonderful day. Really. I mean that. Black humor helps. Facing the unpleasant worst helps. And we do, after all, have science on our side. Cheers.
Apparently about 5000 of Trump’s votes have already disappeared prior to the recount, down to a lead of ~22K now. http://www.palmerreport.com/news/ahead-of-recount-wisconsin-has-already-wiped-out-5000-phony-votes-for-donald-trump/234/
I for one welcome the Wisconsin recount.
I suspect it will confirm that Trump won Wisconsin – but lets count again and see!
Just imagine if the popular vote actually decided the election.
We still haven’t finished counting the actual vote and we are already starting recount(s).
Really – we should update our counting system(s) – what a joke.
Keep it straight and simple. If investigation and recount prove convincingly and beyond reasonable doubt that a state’s election result of November 8th., 2016 is false and that is has to be corrected into the true amount of votes, it has to be done so, whatever the outcome may be. Let it be controlled and decided by the impartial supreme court of that state. The warnings of Desertphile are important. Don’t be lighthearted about this. Before you know it one spark can cause an uproar or worse. Good luck, America, Laren NH, Saturday 26th. November 2016, 19.07 PM Dutch time.
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2016/11/26/dont-get-mugged-by-voting-irregularities/
How come only states where Clinton lost are suspected of “irregularities”?
If the US elites massage the voting system post-facto to make sure Trump is denied presidency, US democracy will become the laughing stock of the world. You will have no moral stand to lecture China or Russia.
You really don’t understand do you Roman?
Roman: “How come only states where Clinton lost are suspected of irregularities?”
No.
Desertphile and Gerrit make valid points. And- even if HRC were to be elected , can anyone imagine the level of intransigence she would now encounter in this congress?
I just read Livingston’s Fuck Work https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-jobs-are-not-the-solution-but-the-problem …. I encourage you to look at the dept of Labor data he cites. Much as I wanted this to be an election that so repudiated the bottom feeding of Trump, I may need to see that it really was “the economy, stupid”
It kinda already is.