The big "C" word

[GMDino]

(11-13-2020, 12:14 PM)Big Boss Wrote: Trump asked aides if he could pursue a wild plan to replace the Electoral College with loyalists who would ignore the vote, report says

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-discussed-replacing-electoral-college-with-loyalists-nyt-2020-11

Plenty out there and on this board who would support that because it would be "legal".

Of course they will also say he's just "talking" about it and didn't really "do" anything...because words don't matter.  Sometimes.

[Big Boss]

I'm not quite sure how this would even be possible.

Each political party in each state chooses their own slate of electors. The party that wins the popular vote in that state gets their slate electors chosen. If Biden wins GA, the electors of the GA Democratic party are chosen to cast their votes in December.

So we are operating under the assumption that Trump is going to somehow convince 37 Democrat-appointed electors to vote for him instead? And that's ignoring the fact that most states require electors to "pledge" their votes to their party's candidate, and this was upheld by the Supreme Court earlier this year.

And even if 37 electors were somehow able to defect from Biden, that would result in a Congressional election.

[BmorePat87]

(11-13-2020, 01:15 PM)Big Boss Wrote: I'm not quite sure how this would even be possible.

Each political party in each state chooses their own slate of electors.  The party that wins the popular vote in that state gets their slate electors chosen.  If Biden wins GA, the electors of the GA Democratic party are chosen to cast their votes in December.  

So we are operating under the assumption that Trump is going to somehow convince 37 Democrat-appointed electors to vote for him instead?  And that's ignoring the fact that most states require electors to "pledge" their votes to their party's candidate, and this was upheld by the Supreme Court earlier this year.  

And even if 37 electors were somehow able to defect from Biden, that would result in a Congressional election.

Every state has different laws. The Constitution gives them pretty broad discretion on how to do it. So it depends on the individual state. If Republicans control a legislature in a state that Biden won, depending on the law, they could try to force their own electors in.

This is where the recent unanimous SCOTUS rulings come in handy. They suggested that states do not need faithless elector laws to prevent faithless electors. The question is if they'd agree with Democrats that electors need to follow the state results and if they'd bind them to that even if a GOP legislature tried to allow them to be faithless.