CNN had a live tracker of the Electoral College voting by the states, updating it as the voters in each state met and recorded their votes. At 12:30 pm (ET), Trump was leading Biden in the Electoral College by 56-52 but then mysteriously Biden votes started appearing from nowhere and Trump’s lead disappeared! Biden suddenly shot into the lead with a 125-56 margin and he later won the votes in all the states that Trump has been contesting: Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada, giving him a 302-232 lead, with just Hawaii’s four votes still to come.
How could such a thing happen? How could Trump have an initial lead and then later lose it? We all know that the initial tallies are the only ones that count if Trump is in the lead. Clearly there was cheating going on. Trump should be declared the winner based on the results at 12:30 pm because those are the only legally valid votes. Any votes that came in after that were fraudulent, most likely cast by people working for George Soros and Hugo Chavez.
Rudy Giuliani, where are you? Why aren’t you challenging this latest steal of the election all the way to the Supreme Court?
But seriously, there are shenanigans still afoot. The Michigan legislative e office buildings were closed during the time the electors were meant to assemble today because of credible threats of violence against them.
Then Trump’s close adviser, the dead-eyed Stephen Miller, said on TV to the ever-fawning people on Fox and Friends that they are creating a list of ‘alternate electors’ in the contested states that they will submit to Congress.
Stephen Miller on Fox & Friends says "an alternative" group of electors is also voting today:
"As we speak, an alternate slate of electors in the contested states is going to vote and we are going to send those results to Congress."pic.twitter.com/5kIkfsbOFw
— Travis Akers (@travisakers) December 14, 2020
Is there a term to describe people who are even bigger losers than those we call dead-enders?
Well, alternate electors worked for Rutherford Hayes in 1876, when he beat Samuel Tilden by one vote in the electoral college.
Baghdad Bob
This is performative (of course): if the senate votes for the “alternate electors” and the house votes for the real ones, then the electors the governor of the state appointed (the real ones) win.
But they’ll drag it out as long as possible. And put on as over-the-top ranting and driveling and lying a show as possible. The republican national convention, great achievement as that was, will be nothing compared to it.
As for Stephen Miller, I think he doesn’t just look dead-eyed, he looks like a gargoyle on the side of a cathedral, or perhaps a man trapped in a painting. One commenter, hearing that he had a girlfriend, wrote “So, she’s under a curse, then?”
garnetstar,
The senate doesn’t choose which electors to accept, they are bound by the constitution to accept the electors selected by the state legislators. That’s part of Article II, Section 1 of the constitution. Once the state legislators have used the state laws to select electors, and the electors have voted in each state, it’s over. The federal government doesn’t have the power or authority to change that.
The compromise of 1877 was a different beast entirely, where some states set up competing legislative bodies. In that case neither candidate reached a majority, and because 20 electoral votes were disputed because of problems with the legislatures in each state, no candidate would reach a majority. What happened was that in Louisiana and South Carolina there were essentially two competing legislatures, both claiming to have been elected by the people of the state, and they certified different slates of electors. The Florida election was fucked up, nothing new there. And in Oregon a person ineligible to be an elector was selected, which screwed things up. Nothing like that has happened in this election.
After that election, the process was further refined such that the governors of each state must submit a “certificate of ascertainment” which specifies the names of the electors and the numbers of votes they received in the election of electors. This list of electors is the list which, per federal law, the federal congress must use for determining the vote of the electoral college. In this election there is only one legislative body in each state, there are not two governors in any state who could submit different certificate of ascertainment documents. Every legislative body has convened the electors under the state laws. The electors have voted. The legislative bodies have certified those votes in every state. There is no opportunity for the senate or house to legally challenge those votes. Will some congresscritters grandstand to help fundraising efforts, probably, but there is nothing they can do to change the result now.
It’s over.
@4, yeah, but on Jan. 6 congress has to vote to accept the electoral college’s vote. And, objections can be raised to any of the state’s electoral votes.
There is a representative from Alabama who had already proclaimed that he’s going to do this: not accept the votes of the electors and force a discussion and make the house and senate vote on each state he chooses.
A senator has to join the representative in objecting to a certain state’s electors, but they’ll find some spineless idiot.
Some house members did this after the electoral college had voted in 2016, but no senators would join them.
Then the senate and house vote again, and if it’s split, the state’s appointed electors win, and their vote counts.
So, all performative, but the republicans will be disruptive right down to the wire.
garnetstar @ #5
Yes, it’s performative, but that performance isn’t necessarily negative. The upside is that it MAY discharge some of the energy in Trumpland. The downside is the distraction from the pandemic and economic problems that desperately need attention.