We’re starting to see the inevitable stories of faithless electors and rampant speculation that the electoral college could end up electing the “other” candidate than the current president-elect. It was the subject of breathless, whispered speculation by republicans in 2008 and 2012. However, this election is “different” than those elections.
Right now one candidate, the ‘president elect’ has more electors from his own slated to attend the electoral college than his opponent. In a “normal” year, the vote would be a party line vote, but there is a historical precedent for one or two so called ‘faithless electors’ to vote other than how they are expected to vote.
What makes this election different?
This election has been unusually divisive. So divisive in fact that one elector had already declared his intent to vote against Hillary Clinton prior to the election. There is an unusual amount of open discussion by the electors themselves about voting against one of the two candidates available to them.
This election is unusual in that the candidate with more electors from their party is also the candidate who is going to lose the popular vote by ballpark 2 million.
This election is unusual because the candidate who has more electors selected from his party ran an intensely divisive, even apocalyptic campaign. After becoming what can most accurately described as the president presumptive, he has started acting in the opposite manner quite the opposite of someone in his position. He has been appointing radicals and loyalists to his cabinet, and leaks are coming out that he is rejecting overtures from other factions in his own party, much less extending any to the party that won the popular vote.
All of this leads up to the question that is the point of the diary.
The electoral college is the constitutional mechanism that allows someone to lose the popular vote and still have the chance to become president. What is wrong with the same mechanism upholding the popular vote instead?
What about the guy facing down pundits or your friends? Here is how to deal with them.
Arguments about tradition are as much a red herring as declining a search to a police officer being “suspicious activity”. The mechanism of the electoral college exists, it is a real election, and it is as much a part of our constitution as the second amendment. It wouldn’t be written there if it didn’t matter.
In response to anyone who argues that the electors cannot or should not make a decision on their own, I ask, “doesn’t the constitution matter?” This is part of the constitution as much as anything else. If we are going to claim the electoral college is meaningless and do away with the discretion of the electoral college, then let’s just do that and declare the winner of the national popular vote the president. Either throw out the whole damn charade or respect the constitution.
Let’s not forget that the electors are not independent people. They are party loyalists. A candidate whose behavior is so atrocious that they turn away electors from their own party does not a fitting president make.
Also, if the electoral vote favoring Hillary Clinton happens, Take the fucking win.
Epilogue:
At this point I am seeing talk of something like 7 electors talking publicly exercising their discretion. That would not be enough to take the electoral college. I have the same confidence in the electoral college favoring Trump as Sam Wang did in a Clinton victory on election night.