How To Steal An Election — Electoral School Version

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Except you could have been residing in a cabin deep within the woods with no web entry for the previous 4 years, you understand that Donald Trump and his enablers intend to make use of the Electoral School to steal the 2024 election. They tried in 2020 and failed, however they discovered from their errors and suppose they’ve discovered do it proper this time. Step one within the course of is to persuade individuals that there’s a tidal wave of ineligible individuals voting. The second step is to inundate native election officers with freedom of data requests, which by regulation have precedence, so they’re unable to carry out their statutory features. If a variety of them give up due to the stress, a lot the higher. Then they are often changed by unqualified sycophants who will contribute to the chaos on election day.

America noticed precisely that form of chaos on election day in 2000 when properly organized stooges employed by James Baker descended on Florida to disrupt the counting of ballots. In that case, the so-called Supreme Court docket stepped in to cease the counting of the votes and declared George W. Bush the winner. That courtroom has since been fortified with extra Federalist Society extremists and might be counted on to tilt the scales of justice in favor of the purple crew as soon as once more if requested to take action.

However Trump and his advisers hope it doesn’t get that far. They’re relying on slightly recognized provision of the Structure to throw the election to the Home of  Representatives, the place every state has one vote. Since there are extra purple states than blue states, the vote within the Home will probably be a foregone conclusion. Trump will win, however he’s only a stalking horse for the lunatics who’ve put collectively the 900+ web page Undertaking 2025 that can eviscerate democracy in America — perhaps ceaselessly.

Why Does America Have An Electoral School?

To know how we received into this mess, we glance to historian Heather Cox Richardson to elucidate the historic roots of this example. Many might imagine what is occurring right this moment is exclusive to this second, however the actuality is that we now have been right here a number of instances earlier than and the republic has all the time survived — till now.

In a rustic of 330 million individuals in 50 states and Washington, D.C., presidential elections are determined in only a handful of states and it’s potential for somebody who loses the favored vote to grow to be president, Richardson says. We received to this place due to the Electoral School and to 2 main adjustments made to it because the ratification of the Structure. The boys who debated elect a president in 1787 frightened about ensuring there have been hedges across the robust government they have been creating in order that he couldn’t grow to be a king. A few of the delegates to the Constitutional Conference wished Congress to decide on the president, however this horrified others who believed {that a} chief and Congress would collude to take over the federal government completely.

Others appreciated the thought of direct election of the president, however this frightened delegates from smaller states who thought that massive states would merely have the ability to title their very own favourite sons. It additionally frightened those that identified that almost all voters would do not know which have been the main males in different states, leaving a nationwide establishment, just like the Society of the Cincinnati, a company of Revolutionary Conflict officers, the facility to get its members to help their very own chief, thus discovering a special method to create a dictator.

The Origin Of The Electoral School

Finally, the framers got here up with the election of a president by a gaggle of males well-known of their states however not presently office-holders, who would meet someplace apart from the seat of presidency and would disband as quickly because the election was over. Every elector on this so-called Electoral School would solid two votes for president. The person with probably the most votes can be president, and the person with the second variety of votes can be vice chairman — a system that the Twelfth Modification resulted in 1804. The variety of electors can be equal to the variety of senators and representatives allotted to every state in Congress. If no candidate earned a majority, the Home of Representatives would select the president, with every state delegation casting a single vote. So that’s the place the thought of constructing the election right into a jumpball within the Home this 12 months originated.

Within the first two presidential elections, none of this mattered very a lot, because the electors solid their ballots unanimously for George Washington. However when Washington stepped down, leaders of the newly fashioned political events contended for the presidency. Within the election of 1796, Federalist John Adams received, however Thomas Jefferson, who led the Democratic-Republicans was keenly conscious that had Virginia given him all its electoral votes, moderately than splitting them between him and Adams, he would have been president.

Winner Take All

On January 12, 1800, Jefferson wrote to the governor of Virginia, James Monroe, urging him to again a winner-take-all system that awarded all of Virginia’s electoral votes to the one that received the vast majority of the vote within the state. He admitted that dividing electoral votes by district “can be extra prone to be an actual illustration of [voters’] diversified sentiments,” however, defending his perception that he was the true common alternative within the nation in 1796, stated voting by districts “would give a consequence very completely different from what can be the sentiment of the entire individuals of the US. have been they assembled collectively.” Virginia made the change.

Alarmed, the Federalists in Massachusetts adopted go well with to ensure Adams received all their votes, and by 1836, each state however South Carolina, the place the legislature continued to decide on electors till 1860, had switched to winner take all. This variation horrified the so-called Father of the Structure, James Madison, who frightened that the brand new system would divide the nation geographically and encourage sectional tensions. He wrote in 1823 that voting by district, moderately than winner take all, “was principally, if not solely in view when the Structure was framed and adopted.” He proposed a constitutional modification to finish winner take all.

However virtually instantly, the Electoral School induced a special disaster. In 1824, electors cut up their votes amongst 4 candidates — Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and William Crawford — and none received a majority within the Electoral School. Though Jackson received the preferred votes and probably the most electoral votes, when the election went to the Home, the state delegations selected Adams, the son of former president John Adams.

Livid Jackson supporters thought a growing elite had stolen the election, and after they elected Jackson outright in 1828, the brand new president on December 8, 1829, implored Congress to amend the Structure to elect presidents by common vote. “To the individuals belongs the fitting of electing their Chief Justice of the Peace,” he wrote; “it was by no means designed that their alternative ought to in any case be defeated, both by the intervention of electoral schools or … the Home of Representatives.”

Jackson warned that an election within the Home could possibly be corrupted by cash or energy or ignorance. He additionally warned that “below the current mode of election a minority could … elect a President,” and such a president couldn’t declare legitimacy. He urged Congress “to amend our system that the workplace of Chief Justice of the Peace will not be conferred upon any citizen however in pursuance of a good expression of the need of the bulk.”

Racism Rears Its Ugly Head

By the 1830s, the inhabitants of the North was exploding whereas the South’s was falling behind. The Structure counted enslaved Individuals as three-fifths of an individual for the needs of illustration, and direct election of the president would erase that benefit slave states had within the Electoral School. Their leaders weren’t about to throw that benefit away.

In 1865, the Thirteenth Modification ended slavery (besides as punishment for against the law) and scratched out the three-fifths clause, that means that after the 1870 census, the Southern states would have extra energy within the Electoral School than they did earlier than the battle. In 1876, Republicans misplaced the favored vote by about 250,000 votes out of 8.3 million solid, however saved management of the White Home via the Electoral School. As Jackson had warned, livid Democrats threatened revolt. They by no means thought of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, whom they known as “Rutherfraud,” a authentic president.

In 1888, it occurred once more. Incumbent Democratic President Grover Cleveland received the favored vote by about 100,000 votes out of 11 million solid, however Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison took the White Home due to the 36 electoral votes from New York, a state Harrison received by fewer than 15,000 votes out of greater than 1.3 million solid. As soon as in workplace, he and his crew got down to skew the Electoral School completely of their favor. Over twelve months in 1889–1890, they added six new, sparsely populated states to the Union, splitting the territory of Dakota in two and including North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming whereas leaving out New Mexico and Arizona, whose inhabitants they anticipated would vote for Democrats.

Rural vs. City

The twentieth century introduced one other wrench to the Electoral School. The expansion of cities, made potential due to fashionable trade, together with the metal that supported skyscrapers, and transportation and sanitation, created growing inhabitants variations among the many completely different states. The Structure’s framers frightened that particular person states may attempt to seize an excessive amount of energy within the Home by creating dozens and dozens of congressional districts, in order that they specified {that a} district couldn’t be smaller than 30,000 individuals. However they put no higher restrict on district sizes.

After the 1920 census revealed that city Individuals outnumbered rural Individuals, the Home in 1929 capped its numbers at 435 to maintain energy away from these city dwellers, together with immigrants, that lawmakers thought of harmful, thus skewing the Electoral School in favor of rural America. At the moment the common congressional district contains 761,169 people — greater than all the inhabitants of Wyoming, Vermont, or Alaska — which weakens the facility of bigger states.

Within the twenty first century, the sooner issues with the Electoral School have grown till they threaten to ascertain everlasting minority rule. A Republican president hasn’t received the favored vote since voters reelected George W. Bush in 2004, when his reputation was excessive within the midst of a battle. The final Republican who received the favored vote in a standard election cycle was Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, in 1988, 36 years and 9 cycles in the past. And but, Republicans who misplaced the favored vote received within the Electoral School in 2000. George W. Bush received the Electoral School vote over Al Gore, who received the favored vote by a few half one million votes. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton received the favored vote by about 3 million votes however misplaced within the Electoral School to Donald Trump.

Partly two of this dialogue, we’ll have a look at what the affect the Electoral School will seemingly have on the election this November.

Featured photograph by Elizabeth Perry (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license)