Right now the number one problem we face in the US is the fact that a) the president of the United States can not be stopped or deterred from launching nuclear missiles if he choses to do so, by design; and b) Donald Trump will be inaugurated, if the electoral college so decides, in January.
If you are in a state that has electors slated to vote for Trump. send your city and state name to this email address:
votehrc@gmail.com
You will then receive instructions as to what to do next.
Pass it on.
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Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
Thank you Greg for posting about the letter writing effort Pat Bakalian and I teamed up to organize.
I want to emphasize that this is a DIRECTED campaign and we are asking people to do handwritten letters. The electors have been deluged with email and phone calls, with far to many of those communications being hostile or harassing.
We are asking people to stick to the facts and the fact is voting for HRC and not DT IS the “republican” thing to do. Our first priority was electors in states with no law regarding faithless electors. Because we have had such good response, we are now sending out lists of electors in states with laws proscribing “punishment.” In nearly all it is a misdemeanor that carries and up to $1,000 fine. There are efforts quietly underway to raise money for electors who cannot afford the fine. Realistically, what our research of the electors has shown, is that most of the GOP electors are people of substantial, or considerable means, followed closely by extremists.
What has risen for me regarding the electoral college is that most of the electors (in both parties) are from from the kind of person the electors envisioned with respect to intellect and character-again in both parties. To see that intent it is important to set the obvious racism and misogyny of the Framers to see the wisdom of their intent on electors and their actions.
I expect you have read Federalist #68-it is illuminating. Thanks again.
I bet a tenner that The Donald can not start a single nuclear weapon if the military establishment does not agree. And I bet a second tenner that there are submarine commanders out there who could start a lot of rockets with nuclear warheads. And I bet a third tenner that you are a fear monger.
I wonder, Michael, if you bet more money than $30 bucks anyone would take you seriously?
I would like to add to R.R.’s comment this: My understanding is that the few “faithless” (a bad term, really) elector cases that have happened so far where someone was subject to a fine or other legal effect were ignored by the authorities, as I understand it, because it is generally assumed that those laws are easily determined as unconstitutional.
The Constitution says what an Elector is, and what an Elector does, and those violate that in detail and spirit. No such prosecution would stand even at he lowest court. Judge Judy could overturn these laws.
Well, maybe not Judge Judy, but close.
I’ll say this, even though our constitution was written with this remedy in mind, I think that if I were one of those electors, that I would have to join something like the witness protection program for fear of what I and my family might face from that scary, armed and truculent faction of Trump’s army.
And don’t think for a minute that he would stop short of urging for some 2nd amendment retaliation. Scary times!
This whole faithless elector campaign is going to fail.
But feel free to try anyway – that is your right as an American.
But realize that each state appoints a slate of electors selected by the party which won the election in that state.
So California already has democrats as electors, and can be counted on not to vote for Trump.
On the other hand – every state which elected Donald Trump has a republican slate of electors – who can be counted on to vote for Trump.
Sure you might get one or two to be faithless.
There is usually one.
But this seems pretty desperate and a bit out of touch with reality.
Just saying.
Perhaps it’s time to go back to 1981 and implement Roger Fisher’s idea for the nuclear codes.
If Donald Trump wants to fire a nuclear-tipped missile, and the military goes insubordinate and refuses…
What does that tell us about the suitability of electing Trump to the presidency?
And does the above scenario equal or lead to the military taking over? Should they?
Then what?
Day 2 – HRC is president . All Congress and most state legislatures are GOP. Most rural law enforcement are Fox minions, as are most armed service members. Likely the FBI as well. Although I can agree with the sentiment, I cannot see day 2 as anything but the result of the same “lets just torch the whole fecking thing and see what happens” mentality that has us in this mess now….
Brainstorms:
What if Donald Trump doesn’t want to file a nuclear-tipped missile.
What if instead Donald Trump wants to bomb the shit out of ISIS (I think that is a quote)?
I suspect that will happen, as we have been doing that to Al-Qaeda for 15 years.
That seems a little more realistic to worry about.
lol
You really are a fear monger. This alone makes you an idiot.
I am surprised that you are indulging in fearmongering.
OK, the US slipped up this time. Just wait four years and get rid of him.
RickA, Michael’s premise in #2 involved Donald Trump deciding to fire off a nuclear missile. In the context of the discussion thread, your response in #10 is a bit of a non-sequitur…
Brainstorms:
Huh?
I thought Michael’s premise was that Trump wouldn’t be able to fire off a nuclear missile.
I must have read it wrong.
Um, fear mongering vs. hyperbole, I think it’s fair to critique rhetoric on it’s effectiveness, artistic merit, and accuracy– and question when a line has been crossed. The banner photo suggests satire, which doesn’t rule out real concern. I admit I’m on the fence here.
But consider this:
https://thinkprogress.org/9-terrifying-things-donald-trump-has-publicly-said-about-nuclear-weapons-99f6290bc32a
Consider also that this is no longer the cold war area. Thinking and memory have faded on MAD. We’re also at a point where the line between a MOAB and a nuke is blurred. And as for radiation, we already contaminate battlefields with depleted Uranium. It has become that much easier for a stunted adolescent playing at being president, who wants to be an unpredictable mad dog, to do something really stupid.
Anyway, if nothing else we need to learn and adjust our approach on this and other issues:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/12/06/heads-sand
It’s not the cold war area, true. Our cold war with the USSR has morphed into a “cool war” in cyberspace with Russia.
However, we have a new kid on the block: China. That continues to edge towards a “hot war” due to Donny the Destroyer’s latest diplomatic f-up (and China now getting all uppity and hegemonistic lately).
OA, you should readily know the difference between spend U238 on the battlefield (about as dangerous as the presence of spent lead bullets) and nuclear fission products (about as dangerous as being shot with lead bullets). If you picked up and swallowed a depleted uranium bullet, you’re likely to die.. of old age. Eventually. Cesium-137, Iodine-131, Strontium-90 will dispatch you in an unpleasant way in a matter of days if you ingest them.
N.B. That last does include the expectation that your swallowed bullet becomes the requisite “bedpan bullet” within 24 hours… We won’t let that go without saying.
I’ll take your word for it on DU, although research on the effects of airborne particulates and by products on civilians is apparently ongoing.
I think the rest still stands as regards to messaging and changes in politics and evolving technology. This may not make so much sense to science types who never went to art school but… bell bottoms are dated.
——
General PSA
Note: Eating ordinance of any kind is contraindicated.
Definitely contraindicated. Worse would be to breathe finely powdered radioactive anything.
Which is why Plutonium is dangerous: If it is nestled within your lungs, it can irradiate living tissue with alpha particles and eventually cause lung cancer. But that’s true of any radioactive substance, including Uranium — but the rate of decay will vary, depending on what isotope of what element.
Outside the body, Plutonium, Uranium, et al are relatively harmless, as your clothes, skin, etc. block alpha particles. Otherwise ingested, they are toxic, yes, but “toxic like lead” — i.e., from being heavy metals.
Most people hear “Plutonium” and their brains go haywire… (They’ve been conditioned, more or less, to have that reaction.) If you’re worried about Plutonium, you’d better also be worried about lead poisoning — the lead risk is MUCH greater.
Very few people are at risk of breathing powdered Plutonium — its real risk.
The Russian spy who was assassinated by Putin using Po-210 is a case where they slipped a small amount of a very highly radioactive isotope of Polonium in his tea, which he drank. That effectively radiated his gut tissues with a large amount of alpha radiation. Akin to getting severe sunburns internally. Organ failure follows, and you die painfully after a number of days.
Ironically, many people are at risk, daily, of getting cancer from Polonium alpha particle radiation. Tobacco tends to pick up naturally-occurring Polonium from the soil and concentrating it in its leaves. Light up a cigarette and you’re breathing radioactive Polonium particles into your lungs… THAT is the radiation that the Plutonium-phobics should be screaming about as an existential threat to humanity.
And yes, its effects on civilians is ongoing. Sadly.
N.B. We’re talking about the “common” isotopes of the above that are typically used in reactors, DU ordnance, etc.: U-238, P-239, etc., that have half-lives of thousands of years — meaning, they aren’t very radioactive to begin with.
Po-210, on the other hand, has a half-life of just 138 days — very radioactive. (Fission products such as Cs-137 & Sr-90 = 30yr, I-131 = 8 days, by comparison.)
Plutonium is an extremely toxic metal.
Hell Uranium, even absent any radioactivity (and there will still be a lot of decays in your body from traces of dust in your lungs, you forget how light atoms, even of Uranium, are.
Your post is like saying that arsenic has a very low radioactivity, therefore it is entirely safe to ingest.
I didn’t say it was safe to ingest… Nor would I recommend ingesting any heavy metal, radioactive or otherwise. As with arsenic, interesting any of these in small amounts over a long period of time will cause all manner of health problems. But fission products with short half-lives are much more toxic, and it’s specifically the radioactivity of these that make them dangerous. Many of them, such as iodine, will be absorbed, even in small amounts, and incorporated in the body – where they will irradiate live tissues directly. As will powdered forms of the mildly radioactive elements that are inhaled.
You ably demonstrated my point that most laymen go apeshit at the mere mention of plutonium, and start spewing about how “it’s the most toxic substance in all the universe!”
No.
http://atomicinsights.com/how-deadly-plutonium/
No you didn’t say “But plutonium is safe”. However, if you didn’t mean that, then what the hell was the point of your post???
Moreover, you elide the fact that plutonium and uranium dust have a shedload of atoms in them, so therefore “it has a half life of a huge time” has very much less utility when it’s in your damn body (doubly so since it accumulates) than you infer.
And, note, I’ve had to use “infer” here since you’re currently on a blame jag where because you were incomplete with your statements leading to the ability for your comments to be misconstrued, reading in more than your absolute comment becomes my fault. Please note that you never said what conclusion we should make from “it has very low radioactivity” should be. Therefore we should have ignored it entirely???
Because either we’re supposed to draw our conclusion, adding words never said, or there was no point to the post, in which case it was a wast of everyone’s time.
So, two things to do:
1) Put all your words you want in your post, don’t leave it to others to read between the lines
2) Abort any post you fail to put a conclusion in, saving everyone time and effort and being blamed for trying to work it out
“start spewing about how “it’s the most toxic substance in all the universe!””
Yeah, see this? That’s a quote with quote marks around it. And I never said any of those words. Care to go back and quote what I DID say?
Double irony points for coming after your whinge “I didn’t say it was safe to ingest”.
So your link was proof?
No.
http://www.toxipedia.org/display/toxipedia/Plutonium
YOUR post, meanwhile only bangs on and on about it being ingested. When you ingest something, where does it go? Gut? Is eating it how you get DU dust in your body? Remember, DU is shot into things at very high speed and it burns because of the massive energy being dropped into the target by friction. Ever eaten something that burned up? No?
Now go to my link.
What does it say about plutonium? ONLY breathing it in? No? So is your link cherry picking just the “nice” bits? No? Is it more complete? Yes.
Now, you haven’t said WHY you got a biased POV and posted the link to it as if it were correct, so I’ll have to intuit it.
You’re incensed at “nanny state” and “chicken littles” and think yourself superior to them, therefore you’re looking for PROOF that they’re wrong and you are both right and much smarter and braver than they are.
You know, the same BS that RickA et al do when they want to support their self perceptions.
Try not doing that.
Brainstorms,
Please apply your expertise to the question of secondary radiation effects e.g. alpha particles impinging on aluminum foil and other materials. Also criticality. Been a long time for me since I knew some of this.
My point being that since plutonium and other such materials don’t come with a label, a high level of concern about the stuff (even DU) being loose in the world is reasonable even if the primary risk is ingestion/inhalation. I’m sure you know that bad stuff happens from low-probability combinations of events, through chance and ignorance and so on. Consider how many kids have lost their limbs or their lives from picking up cluster bomblets.
Heck, the reason why mercury is so bad is because it bioaccumulates. Brainstorms would point out that mercury isn’t very toxic (it’s in your dental fillings, people!!!!) and not radioactive, with a lethal dose that’s very high, compared to most people’s exposure to it.
Then complain that he never said it wasn’t toxic, just that the “scare” of mercury poisoning is overblown!
While y’almuch l are arguing over how much poison can fit on the head of a pin, we need to remember that, should the elector gambit fail to derail P.E. Flaggenpussygrabber, we can still all look forward to the very interesting proposition of having an administration with a certifiably batshit crazy, hate everything and everybody with more melanin than him, certified science hater as a key presidential advisor ( that would be Steve Bannon in case anyone has missed any recent episodes of The Rise of P.E. Flaggenpussygrabber).. Is his P.E.F’s daughter really going to save the world by interceding and getting him to dump his rabid friend? Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, it is starting to look like the 60’s again! Cheers!
Now the rovin’ gambler he was very bored
He was tryin’ to create a next world war
He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor
He said I never engaged in this kind of thing before
But yes I think it can be very easily done
We’ll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on HIghway 61
First line should read. “While y’all are arguing….”
“While y’almuch l are arguing over how much poison can fit on the head of a pin”
Or arguing that you should make a complete argument, which requires a proposal, evidence and then conclusion supported by the evidence and supporting the proposal.
Nobody arguing about how much poison fits on the pin, your proposal. Where, then is your evidence for this?
Oh dear. Wow just failed his Turing test. Back to the Troll farm for you, Wow . Time for a sock change. Ha ha. Just joking. Have a really nice day.
“Meanwhile, it is starting to look like the 60’s again! Cheers!”
Yep. I see that. Also the gilded age and…
And I can predict with some confidence that in the year 2056 some poor old geezer will be saying, “Damn! This stupid crap reminds me of the Trump era!”
The more things change, the more they stay the same. History repeats itself. And if we pay for the sins of our fathers, what goes around comes around goes around comes around.
How to break the cycle of stupid.
Anyhoo, the 60’s had a burst of creativity, despite the weird excesses, that we’re just not seeing now. Not yet anyway, the way I see it.
I wrote (elsewhere) in advocating (first, the nomination and election of Bernie Sanders and, when he was cheated of that, the preference for Trump over the phony “Democrat”, HRC, ) that Trump’s election would have the advantage of forcing the nation to confront and serious examine some very important issues–here to fore ignored to the general public’s peril–which, were HRC to be elected, would go on festering,
This matter touches on several of the most important issues I had and have in mind.
I think that, first, it’s interesting (and important) that in the discussion above, though the term “Constitution” has only been used two times, you find yourselves obliged to go back to the Constitution and reconsider how it use has eveloved, often for the worse.
The Constitution’s framers, though they made serious mistakes in state-craft and produced a documnent which greivous flaws –one led to the nation’s worst war in its history (so far)–provided for the safe vouching of military power in the Congress of the United States. That’s right. In the Congress, not the Executive. If you read the Constitution and you uphold it in both spirit and letter, you have to admit that it was intended that, as it provides,
Under the Constitution as it was written and as it stands, the president has no automatic and abiding military authority, His authority as commander-ion-chief is a derived authority, residing only in a grant of Congress, calling the president into duty as the commander-in-chief particularly, and, then, intended only, in time of war–which only the Congress could declare by an act, moved and voted upon.
Those provisions were settled on for good reasons and those reasons remain valid today,
But much conventionally-accepted nonsense has led people and officials to abuse and undermine them –bringing us to this pass today.
There is no longer any good excuse to carry on in this mistake, The power to determine when, where and under what terms the United States goes to war belongs to the Congress, not to the president. The president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces when the Congress appoints him to that duty under the specific circumstances of a declaration of war and not unless and until it does.
Again, there are seriously considered reasons that the Constitution was so devised.
I agree with others above who argue that pinning hopes on the Electoral College’s electors to defy the usually-agreed terms and practices of the system and refuse to elect Trump invites more harm than is avoided in the straightforward faithful following of the operational rules as they’ve been applied and understood by the voting public.
To attempt now, after the fact, a resort to what its advocates regard as a “remedy” to a terrible “problem”–Trump’s winning the Electoral college vote in the popular balloting of the states–is a treacherous act and one which, had the roles been reversed, and it was HRC about to be inaugurated under the same thin margins, these same advocates wouldn’t dream of allowing Trump’s supporters to resort to such a plan.
This is really desperate and shameful stuff. And to think that only a few months ago, so-called Democrats were all in a twist over their fears of the prospect of Trump not honoring and respecting the election’s outcome–as they saw it, a certain election of their heroine, Hillary Clinton.
“Oh dear. Wow just failed his Turing test.”
You dont appear to have read or understood my post, therefore it would be more accurate to make this claim of yourself, SteveP.
“Time for a sock change”
OK, so who do you think I’ve been posting as in addition to this moniker? And why is that an answer to the request I made?
Indeed, this “reply” is merely adding to the situation yet more of what you whine about in that post you made, and added yet more “content free” proclamation without either of the two requirments for actual useful discourse in discussion, evidence and conclusion.
For example: if I were a sock, what would that change about my post? Nothing? Then there was no need to post it, was there. Was it supposed to do something else? But there was no indication what that might be (missing, therefore, a proposal, the inferred one being it was somehow related to my post).
So it neither regarded itself to my post you were “replying” to, nor did it address itself to the problems indicated, and it did not even do as you demanded others do. This complete tangential reply is exactly what a poor modern AI would do, failing its Turing test.
I take it you DO know what that test is and why it’s done, right? So it’s not just you are thinking of a different situation, yeah?
“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;”
Moreover, no soldier is required to follow illegal or immoral orders, even in times of war, as agreed by ratification after WWII, and even relied upon in the Nuremburg Trials and the prosecution of Nazis in hiding in the decades since.
The USA cannot (well, morally and until they change their laws, anyway) just apply that international law when they used it against Nazis, then pretend that it’s not meant to apply to THEM later. Trying to do so would open the USA up to reparations from Germany for the murder of German citizens (the reason for their legal standing being this law).
“To attempt now, after the fact, a resort to what its advocates regard as a “remedy” to a terrible “problem””
I have been told that the college have done this five times in the USA’s history.
Why would it be bad to do it for a sixth, right now?
“How to break the cycle of stupid.”
Don’t accept stupid wherever you find it, and ignore (and berate others) for trying to shame others with “You’re being unreasonable!!!!”.
We stopped drink driving and smoking (as much as could be expected in a free society) by just not putting up with that shit.
Why wouldn’t it work with stupid? 90% of stupid is just laziness. It’s EASIER to be stupid, because there’s actual calorific effort put into thinking, and at best you’ll only be in the same place as you were before you started thinking, at worse, you’ll find you’re wrong, which is frightening: if you can’t predict the world properly, you are more at risk by the unforseen accident.
Stop putting up with stupid, and don’t fall into the stupid yourself by thinking that someone else could not do any better: they may take longer to think things through, but they CAN do it. They just rather not.
“I have been told that the college have done this five times in the USA’s history. Why would it be bad to do it for a sixth, right now?”
“Done” _what_ 5 times before?
Ignore the vote and decide who to go for as president, prox.
#41
“the vote” is ambiguous as you used it there. The electors are chosen by the ballots cast in their respective states , not the popular vote nationally–which can differ. So the only vote outcome they’re supposed to respect is that of their state.
If you object that this can and this time did produce an undemocratic result, I agree with you and I’d like to see the electoral college system scrapped–(but not this way merely because the outcome didn’t suit the losers this time.) But such were the terms on which people cast their ballots. For electors to disavow the voters’ expectations and vote contrary to their states’ results is to change the agreed and expected operating procedures in the middle of the operation. That’s blatantly unjust and I think you can see that.
““the vote” is ambiguous as you used it there.”
OK, take one meaning of “the vote”. Does it apply to the Electoral College’s powers and reason for being formed?
“The electors are chosen by the ballots cast in their respective states , not the popular vote nationally–which can differ”
So “popular vote nationally” cannot be the one I meant, can it? After all, the vote for president is not a national popular vote,is it? So that’s off. Go try another one.
“If you object that this can and this time did produce an undemocratic result, I agree with you and I’d like to see the electoral college system scrapped”
Does this mean the electoral college has the power to override the vote by the state-level popularity? If so, then given this is one of the meanings of vote AND it comports with the powers of the EC, then inductive reasoning would indicate that this is indeed the meaning of “the vote”, and the attempt to wonder about a meaning of “the vote” that doesn’t apply to the US elections rather a waste of words, doesn’t it?
And how can you agree that the vote can produce a ridiculous and undemocratic result, yet wish to scrap the method designed to undo that error???
Or do you mean “scrapped” as in “beat people up”? After all, “scrapped” is ambiguous, right? It has more than one meaning, yeah? I know it doesn’t apply to the EC’s powers, but this appears to be no panacea for working out which meaning in English we’re to use.
MAYBE what you should mean is you want the state-level election wins to be to fill the senate seats, but the president to be the popular vote total. That would comport with both your claims: it wouldn’t be undemocratic, and there’d be no need for the electoral college, therefore it could be scrapped.
But you should be thinking that, instead just leaping to the endpoint.
RE : “The electors are chosen by the ballots cast in their respective states , not the popular vote nationally–which can differ”
‘So “popular vote nationally” cannot be the one I meant, can it?’
Yes, it could logically and syntactically been the total national popular vote that you’d meant. Since you didn’t specifically identify whether you meant the total national aggregate of the popular vote or only the state-by-state total, your phrase ‘the vote,’ was ambiguous.
‘After all, the vote for president is not a national popular vote,is it?’
Yes, there’s a realistic and practical sense in which it is: the aggregate of the states’ popular votes constitutes a national popular vote as a whole. The fact that, under the electoral college (EC) rules, that (national aggregate) total isn’t necessarily indicative of the election’s outcome doesn’t make it any less a real fact.
I see you mean the state-by-state vote totals. In that case, no, in modern U.S. presidential elections –as recently as the Gore / Bush race–the EC has acted in accordance with each state’s vote total. Thus, though Gore had a larger total national popular vote, the EC electors cast their ballots reflecting their state’s total–which respected the process as the public understood it to work.
So the answer is then, ‘No, the EC has _not_ “Ignore(d) the vote (five times) and decide(d) who to go for as president”
Instead, they’ve voted (barring rare exceptions in the case of only a few electors) according to the state’s ballot result–wherever a winner can be determined–that is, where no tie was declared.
Re : ” Does this mean the electoral college has the power to override the vote by the state-level popularity?’
We don’t know whether they do or not since it has never been tested in practice. At the present time, the conventional view is that they don’t have that authority. If they tried to assert it, the issue would almost certainly go to the courts for judgement–and in the first instance they’d be state courts since elections are administered by state law. So the answers could conceivably vary from state to state between ‘yes, they do _in this state_’ or ‘no, they don’t’–after the courts have ruled.
‘If so, then given this is one of the meanings of vote AND it comports with the powers of the EC, then inductive reasoning would indicate that this is indeed the meaning of “the vote”, and the attempt to wonder about a meaning of “the vote” that doesn’t apply to the US elections rather a waste of words, doesn’t it?’
No, it isn’t–as explained above.
As things now stand, the vast majority of the nation’s voters expect–for good cause– the EC electors to cast their ballots in accordance with each elector’s state results. They do not have a record of having defied those results in five presidential elections–that is, choosing the winner of the national total popular vote rather than their state’s popular vote winner–not that I’m aware of, no.
Oh, by the way, “Wow,” : Our correspondence here is finished. “done,” “concluded,” “O-ver.”
No, logically it could not. Maybe you mean “linguistically”. Logically, a meaning which cannot apply in the situation cannot be the one referred to. See the “scrapped” homonym of “having a fight”.
No, you got some wrong. For a start, they decided not to allow a recount, despite it being within the rules to allow such a thing. And you missed a few earlier ones.
Yeah, not liable to be right, is it. If out of the entire country it only happened when there was an identical number of people, it would never happen. And even you admit that hasn’t been the case.
Yes you do. The constitution and the legal system set up the EC to do this. BY DEFINITION they can do it.
Yes it is, as explained above.
Yes, never even implied otherwise, it’s all about what they COULD do, and noting that they’ve overturned the vote before.
It’s very unlikely (five times in 200+ years), but it happens. Never said it will or must happen this time, just that it can.
“They do not have a record of having defied those results in five presidential elections”
Deciding not to allow a recount in Florida for Gore is a record of them doing just that: a difference that would have reversed the election result.
You WERE alive then, weren’t you?
Oh, by the way, our conversation is over, don’t bother making another post anywhere on scienceblogs. Your posting actions are done. Finito. Ended. OVER. Live with it.
proximity1 – the electors are in no way legally bound to vote as per the majority of voters in their state, While several of the states have passed laws requiring the lectors to do so or face fines, most legal scholars believe those laws to be unconstitutional. Electors are free to place their vote for whomever they choose. In deed that was the original intent of the framers – to give the electors an opportunity to avoid a popular but bad potential president (popular and bad being relative terms depending on the person making the judgement – vis a vis. landowners vs. the hoi polloi in the original context)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Clause_3:_Electors see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Electoral_College_under_the_Twelfth_Amendment which amended Article 2 also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector – to date thee have been 157 instances of faithlessness in presidential elections,
#47. : ••• ” the electors are in no way legally bound to vote as per the majority of voters in their state, While several of the states have passed laws requiring the lectors to do so or face fines, most legal scholars believe those laws to be unconstitutional. Electors are free to place their vote for whomever they choose. In deed that was the original intent of the framers – to give the electors an opportunity to avoid a popular but bad potential president” •••
Granted that they may indeed have a strictly legal right to ignore the popular vote in their state (the “could” aspect of the matter) , I think this misses a larger and much more important point–the “should” or “ought” aspect of it.
Can you think of a more direct and effective way to undermine what remains of public respect in the political order? I can’t.
If the E.C. set aside the popular votes under which they were chosen, the public at large (and the voters among them
, especially) are going to ask: why the bother with popular votes at all? They’d be right to wonder. It would be much cheaper, faster and easier to just consult the editorial board of The New Yorker or its parent company, Conde Naste or some association of electors drawn from alumni of the private colleges and universities which make up the Ivy League.
The answer, we now know, is that the elites would lose the cover, the democratic facade, which the present system affords them.
Currently, they enjoy a semi-respectable pseudo-democratic order which leaves them free to either ratify the popular vote–as it nearly always conforms to their preferences–or to set it aside in those extremely rare cases where it doesn’t conform, as some are urging be done here.
Worse than a system which is undemocratic yet still regular and openly understood in its operations, however unfair, yet still adheres to established practice and precedent–worse than that is a completely arbitrary and unpredictable system which is incoherent from the ordinary person’s point of view –except as a scheme to perpetuate selfish rule by an undeserving elite.
As you watch, even the pretense of a semi-democratic system is collapsing as self-styled ‘liberals’ seek any means to thwart an established system’s regular operation just because they are particularly dissatisfied with the popular vote on this occasion.
And this suits just fine anti-democrats among the elite whose objective is to bring democratic practice into such disrepute that the public can at last be persuaded that it is a worthless thing and ought to be abandoned completely.
I agree with RickA in his comment at #6.
Hey, no way! You’re not allowed to post, poxy! You KNOW that some random internet poster gets to write the rules for who can talk on the internet!
So when you claimed:
You were… gasp!… incorrect!?!??!?!
correction of # 48 :
Condé Nast rather than “Conde Naste.”
Don’t you mean correction of your earlier claims: the EC can do it?
This is a stupid post. I do not support Trump. I have no fear that Trump will start or even engage in a nuclear war. So exactly what was the point to this post?
Sorry, Jess, I should have checked with you first to see what your specific fears are.
Doest matter though, you can substitute the nuclear launch with any other bone headed thing Trump might do. Then re-read the post and there is point being made here!
Jeff, you should have been able to tell that your post was stupid.
Even apart from the point Greg gave out: his actions are not required to be pre-approved by you), what on earth was the point of complaining? We can’t do anything about it can we? Nothing we can do would matter because you don’t care about nuclear launch codes being in Trump’s hands. And you don’t WANT people to try to change your opinion on that.
But if you don’t care to have that opinion changed, what about those who ARE worried about those launch codes in Trumps tiny mitts? They don’t care either to have that opinion changed, any more than you do.
But if you DO care to discuss and are open to having your opinion changed, how is that supposed to happen without someone saying they’re worried? And how are their opinions supposed to be changed if they’re not allowed to let anyone know what their worry is?
It’s not as if you actually tried to come up with any counterargument for how it’s not worrying, you just let everyone know what you think on the subject.
Which is 100% what you called “a stupid post” when Greg did it.