Several people on Twitter asked me about this:
Trying to steal the election by means of “faithless electors” is a plan doomed to failure. Electors are not state employees or bureaucrats. Each party, ahead of the election, chooses its slate of potential electors. They pick loyalists who they know and trust, people not likely to change their minds and vote for the other party’s candidate. For example, Hillary Clinton is on the slate of Democratic elector from New York and Stacey Abrams is an elector from Georgia.
(When voters vote in a presidential election, they’re actually voting for the slate of electors who will then vote for the president. You can read more about how the electoral college works here.)
Electors are routinely lobbied to change their votes. They rarely do it, and when they have, it’s been to make a political statement rather than to change the outcome. Although the Constitution allows the electors to vote as they please, every state has laws requiring the electors to vote as they were slated to vote, according to the will of the people. These laws have teeth. Most states have passed laws that immediately cancel a faithless elector’s vote and require that the elector be replaced. On June 6, 2020, the United States Supreme Court upheld such laws as Constitutional.
Biden is likely to end up with 306 electoral votes, which means the Trump campaign would have to persuade thirty-six long-time Democrats serving as who are willing to switch their votes in states where they actually can get away with it.
It’s a plan doomed to failure. The question for me is why Trump is trying this and why the GOP goes along. As I explained yesterday, Trump is trying to enrich himself and retain power, and the GOP is afraid to cross him.
Q: How can we decrease the risk of electing another president like Trump; i.e., someone who is so unqualified in so many ways?
Can additional criteria be established for candidates for POTUS?
For example:
1) prior to having your name on the ballot you must release your taxes and record of outstanding debt to a panel who will review for potential compromising financial issues. If unable to resolve these issues within two months of the date of the election, you are ineligible to run for this election.
2) you must meet the following minimum requirements: documented 2+ years of community service in a role that relates to being a successful leader and potential POTUS; passing grade on a exam that demonstrates understanding of the U.S. Constitution, Civics and Government; concise statement or written essay on why you want to be POTUS; passing grade on a test that evaluates reading comprehension, analytical and logical reasoning.
This is up to the states. States can pass laws limiting who can appear on their ballots, and requiring financial disclosures is a good idea. I think that the second idea is less likely to be implimented. The Constitution limits the presidency to people over 35 who were born in the United States.
This, by the way, is why local elections matter. Too often people only pay attention to the top of the ticket, but what happens in states has a direct bearing on presidential elections. To take an example, each state regulates and monitors its own elections.
If you can, consider running for local office. Here is one resource to get you started: Don’t Just March! Run for Something!
The best way to prevent another Trump is for more productive active civic engagement. Get involved in local politics. At the very least, stay informed about local politics and vote in every election, at every level.
Q: What are your thoughts on the recurring questions about voter fraud in states like Kentucky, particularly given the strange numbers we are seeing this week?
I am not pleased to see people suggesting that McConnell or Lindsay Graham won their elections due to fraud because these allegations are based on nothing more than innuendo. In other words, there is no solid evidence to support any of these claims.
To begin with, you cannot draw any conclusions about how people are registered, particularly in states like Kentucky or South Carolina that have historic ties to the Democratic Party. Local politics often looks nothing like national politics.
What most distresses me about this is that claiming fraud without evidence is exactly what Trump is doing. It undermines confidence in elections.
In bold letters, CISA (which is part of DHS), says, “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” Elections are monitored according to local law.
If you live in Kentucky and you suspect elections are not being monitored fairly, get involved.
Speaking of election integrity, it’s a curious matter why Georgia secretary of State Raffensperger is ordering a full manual recount of the votes in Georgia, even though the law does not require this. Voter rights advocates wanted Georgia law to require manual recounts (without the machines) but the state would not pass such a law. Raffensperger, does, however, have the authority to order a full manual recount. He has ordered such a recount now.
As some of you who are also on Twitter know, lots of people have made a lot of noise about the Georgia voter machines, insisting that they are easily hackable. Raffensperger has also taken criticism for allegedly giving the contract to a buddy.
When asked why he wants a full manual recount, he said, “This will help build confidence. It will be an audit, a recount and a recanvass all at once. It will be a heavy lift.”
I suspect that if a full manual recount finds that the machines were in fact accurate, he can quell some of the criticism of the machines.
Q: I was wondering, why you decided to create the making of America Series?
I had been casting around for a while to figure out how to make constitutional history and constitutional law accessible to young readers. It seemed to me that (1) most people wish they knew more about the Constitution and (2) the way civics is taught in high school is dull.
I can relate to that last part. All you had to do when I was in high school was say, “There are three branches of government,” and I went right to sleep. I didn’t realize how interesting this stuff was until I got to law school. Since most people don’t go to law school, I wanted to find a way to make the material accessible.
I hit on the idea of tracing American constitutional law through a series of interlocking biographies on the theory that biography humanizes history. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “There is properly, no history, only biography.”
I selected my six subjects (Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Thurgood Marshall) as the six people who did the most to shape the Constitution into its modern form.
The biographies overlap because their lives overlap. Andrew Jackson appears in Hamilton’s story (he meets up with Aaron Burr on the frontier after Burr shot Hamilton.) Lincoln appears in Andrew Jackson’s story (Lincoln is a young man who becomes head of the party determined to reverse Andrew Jackson’s policies.)
I trace several themes through the series, including an ever-expanding idea of who is included in We The People.
- At the time of Hamilton, only white well-educated, mostly elite men voted. Many assumed that this was the way it should be.
- Under Andrew Jackson, “we the people” expanded to include all white men. The idea was that the vote of a frontiersman was equal to the vote of a Princeton-educated New York banker.
- As a result of Lincoln’s work and the Civil War amendments, black men were included, at least in theory.
- Susan B. Anthony gave us the Nineteenth Amendment that brought women into the electorate.
- Finally, Thurgood Marshall expanded the Constitution to include all people, regardless of race.
Other themes include:
- How should the Constitution be interpreted?
- What is the meaning, and where are the limits, of personal liberty?
- What is the proper role of the federal government?
Books for young readers (middle school and high school) fall into two categories: Books that kids reach for and want to read (for example, books about vampires and wizards) and books that a teacher or parent tells them to read (biographies that also teach about American Constitutional law.) Books of the second type are mostly read by adults who don’t want to wade through thousands of pages to learn what they want to know.
My question isn’t “technical” or political, as much as it is logistical… I am curious about your process when you’re planning a new thread, blog post, or even a book. What tools are your go-to resources that help you organize & keep articles, tweets, & notes together? I’d love to hear what works for you, along with any tips!
I’ll begin by saying that my challenge right now is figuring out how not to lose questions that you all ask. I get so many, sometimes I miss one.
I can talk about writing strategies more if people are interested.
I will add that I usually do these blog posts in the evening and probably don’t proofread them enough, so I should let you all know that any typing errors are entirely the fault of keyboard gremlins.
I got the idea about three years ago to write a book called How Trump Happened. (I never wrote the book. Totally lost interest.) I had a Twitter account, but I only used it to find out if someone was talking about me, so basically, all I’d ever tweeted were things like “So glad you liked my book!”
I got the idea to tweet out my research as I did it. I researched Trump’s background, his ties to organized crime, his family history, his connections to Russia.
Because I wrote my research as Twitter threads, I needed a place to store them. I don’t know how to use databases but I know how to use WordPress sites, so I downloaded a WordPress site and copied my threads into the site as blog posts. I had a search function and categories so I could find whatever I needed.
After I lost interest in writing that book, and decided to make my research public, as a service, so, with help from my IT staff (my husband) I made the blog look nice and uploaded it to the Internet.
And I’m glad to have you all here!
