The electoral college [View all]

[BzaDem]

I'm seeing many posts here arguing that we should support electors changing their votes to elect Hillary, or a non-Trump Republican, to the office of the presidency.

Presumably, everyone OK with this idea would be completely fine if Hillary won the EC, and the electors threw it to Trump regardless. (Note the chances of this prior to the election were actually higher than the chances of the reverse, given all available information.) I suppose the argument would be that the election we pretend to have is just a convenient fiction that we have, prior to the actual selection of President by 538 power-brokers that no one has ever met. What those 538 electors say is what goes, voters be damned.

But if you subscribe to that argument, I wonder what your thoughts are on the following scenario. Imagine that Hillary won enough states to put her over the top, without any electors switching their votes. But then imagine that when Congress met on January 6th to count the votes, they "miscounted", and decided that Trump actually was the victor. Note that Congress' role in counting the electoral votes is not subject to review by the judicial branch, or any other higher power. According to the Constitution, what Congress says is what goes.

You might say that this hypothetical is different. The people would rise up, to prevent our country from becoming a banana republic. Whether or not that is actually true, what makes you think anything different would happen if the no-name electors reversed the verdict of the people on November 8th?

Ultimately, when it comes to the transition of power, longstanding norms are what govern -- not arcane technical arguments. Both parties agree to be bound in advance by the result of a process that is out of their full control. The norm of following the results of the election is ultimately one that both parties have observed since the founding of this country. Both sides agree to this, in part because they realize that having a title such as "president" doesn't really mean much if people do not respect the legitimacy of a clear winner of the process everyone understood in advance. In a country where this norm is not ingrained, power would flow to the strongest, who would not be competing for our votes every fourth November.

In our system, you become president if you are the winner of the popular votes in states making up 270 electoral votes. (If the winner of one or more decisive states is not clear, the courts resolve the cases that come before them.) In this election, it is not remotely unclear who won. There is no credible evidence that any voting machines were hacked, much less enough voting machines to flip a state (much less enough voting machines to flip the three states HRC would need to win).

This does not make me happy. I am horrified by what is in store for us come January 20th. But I would be even more horrified by the result of living in a country where unambiguous election results are not respected. In fact, when comparing the two horrors, it is not even a close call. I'm sure many citizens of non-democratic countries would agree.