Thursday, December 15, 2016

There is wild talk on line

about gaming the Electoral College via Faithless Electors to upend the 2016 Presidential Election and make Hilary Clinton President.
Its a pretty desperate project that likely won't work....it requires the cooperation of hard core GOP electors and those people are selected for loyalty and reliability, a sufficient number of them cannot be suborned given the historic context.
AT BEST the election might be thrown into the US House where I can assure you the Rotten Boroughs of Dixieland will do their duty by Donald Trump. He won't have much of a mandate left it's true, but he'll still be sworn in even if the onus will be on congress not the American Electorate.
Different path same outcome.
And anyway the Founders designed the Electoral College as a brake on popular passions and a defacto fourth branch of the US Government ALL subsequent practice with respect to Presidential Elections in the US has been to mute this role or render it completely ceremonial.
And there are sound reasons to support that practice, elections should be determined by popular ballots not a quadrennial meeting of some obscure Federal Council. Which in turn brings me to the brink of calling for the College's Aboliton, but that is another blog post indeed.

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