2020 Election

[Dill]

(08-18-2020, 11:49 AM)hollodero Wrote:  Also, if the system were failproof, you wouldn't need an armed populace to avoid tyranny in the first place :) - And it probably always needs people doing the right thing, and overall vigilance and an effort of everyone, to keep the democratic system in place. Congress as safeguard already sort of failed, now as kind of a "next safeguard up" it might just be the electorate's turn to say, no Trump, not like that. I kind of see it that way.

People need to know and agree on the right thing first.

Anyway, Wondering if you remember this Colorado elector from 2016.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/faithless-elector-betrayed-his-state-s-voters-you-won-t-n1120551

Baca, in the weeks before the December 2016 Electoral College elections ... had gotten in touch with dozens of other electors, hoping to find at least 37 Republicans willing to cast their ballots for someone other than Trump.

Had he been able to, he said, both Trump and Clinton would have been short of 270. In that scenario, the House of Representatives would then have elected the president, choosing from the three candidates who got the most electoral votes.
"I thought this plan would give Colorado voters a better deal," Baca said. "They didn't want Trump. They wanted anybody but Trump. I thought that if it got kicked to the House and they picked a more moderate Republican, it would have been good for Colorado voters."

In the end, Colorado's secretary of state threw out Baca's vote and immediately replaced him with another elector, who voted for Clinton. Only a handful of other faithless electors joined Baca, including three in Washington state (where Clinton won the popular vote) who cast ballots for Colin Powell.

Washington accepted the votes of its faithless electors but fined them for violating a state law requiring them to conform to the popular vote. The electors challenged the fines, but the state Supreme Court upheld the law.

In Colorado, however, Baca sued in federal court, and the case eventually reached the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, which ruled that electors can vote for any legitimate candidate.

Faithless electors have not been much of an issue in U.S. political history. But in an election that could be decided by a razor-thin margin in the Electoral College, a small handful of faithless electors could sway a presidential race — which many legal scholars say is good cause for the Supreme Court to weigh in.

Faithless elector: A court ruling just changed how we pick our president
The decision could give a single elector the power to decide the outcome of a presidential election — if the popular vote results in an apparent Electoral College tie.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/faithless-elector-court-ruling-just-changed-how-we-pick-our-n1044961

A federal appeals court ruled late Tuesday that presidential electors who cast the actual ballots for president and vice president are free to vote as they wish and cannot be required to follow the results of the popular vote in their states.