The Executive Branch: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part IV

We’re continuing our monthly series celebrating the nation’s 250^th birthday.

·       Part I: The Declaration of Independence 

·       Part II: The Preamble of the Constitution 

·       Part III: Lawmaking 

·        In our Part IV today, as we’re walking through the Constitution, Article II covers the executive branch, the powers vested in the President of the United States of America.

Before we get started, I just want to mention a version of the Constitution I got in the mail, from Turning Point USA. It’s all there, like a pocket version, although it’s slightly bigger than pocket sized. It includes illustrations, and on every page a definition of terms down at the bottom. (Some pages the definitions take up half the page.) The whole thing is there—all the original wording. But with the helps, it just seems easier to understand. If you’ve got a young person in your life—or if you just want an easier way to read and understand the Constitution—this might be a handy version. They sent me mine for free, in an envelope requesting a donation. But you can get these from their website, here. 

Article II, Section 1: Electing the President

OK, Article II of the Constitution first goes over the election of the President, which is using the Electoral college.

To read the full article, follow LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Vote Counts, Part II

We’re talking about counting votes, and how votes are counted. In Part I we talked about why the Electoral College is still a good idea and why the National Popular Vote (NPV) compact is a bad idea.

Just one of the significant reasons this is a bad idea is that we can’t get an accurate vote total. It’s just not possible in our current reality. Today, in Part II, we'll cover some of the details of why accurately counting all votes is an unattainable wish.

Harris County, Texas, where Houston is located (and where I live), has been an epicenter working toward voter integrity for a long time[i]. Alan Vera has been working for ballot security as his main battle for the past decade—and has trained people around the country on these issues. (He trained me as a poll watcher.) He spoke at our local Tea Party meeting a couple of weeks ago, reporting on the legislative session, and generally about ballot security issues.

Hart e-Slate machine
image from here

We have, in this county, what Vera believes is the gold standard for electronic voting machines, the Hart e-Slate. It has passed every test for every election, without fail. But, as of the last election, all countywide offices were won by Democrats, and the new County Clerk isn’t about voter integrity; she’s about getting particular results.

One of her “innovations” is countywide voting. This has been allowed in certain counties of Texas—mainly small, rural counties, where it makes some sense, where poll workers are likely to recognize their neighbors who come to vote. But she initiated it here without state approval for our May special election (a day for school boards, city councils, and other smaller things that don’t happen at the usual November election time—an issue for another day).

During early voting—the two weeks prior to voting day—we have citywide voting. You can vote at any designated voting location in the county. A computer system is set up to get the voter data and update it online supposedly immediately. People like the flexibility. But there’s a limited number of polling places, about three dozen. They’re spread out across the county, an area roughly the size of the state of New Jersey, so it takes a good twenty minutes to drive from one to another. It would be hard for a nefarious voter to vote at one place and get to another one before the system updated to prevent him from voting at another location.

But on election day we typically have as many as 800 polling places in the county. When they’re set up by precinct, you can more or less guarantee that you won’t overcrowd a place too badly. But when people choose their own voting location based on convenience to their work or whatever, you don’t know what kind of bottlenecks you’re going to cause. That’s just one problem.

But, back to the updates. My polling place is located in a middle school. The elementary school next door is a voting place for the adjacent precinct. It’s a two-minute walk.

Alan Vera
image from here

How long does it take for the “immediate” updates? Alan Vera and team did experiments to find out.

What needs to happen is that electronic poll books (a handy little tablet we now use, that works pretty well, I think) needs to register that a voter was given a code, and then relay that information to all the other voting locations to indicate that particular voter has voted and cannot vote again. During early voting, locations are set up to have good internet and quick updates. Training tells polling judges that they are instantaneous, so they shouldn’t worry. But in the many locations on a regular election day, they could be in schools, where internet access may be blocked, or there may be interference. It took as short as around 20 minutes for a machine to update to as long as 17 hours. The team even found that it took a half hour for the e-pollbook to update to the adjacent machine at the very same voting location, which should be instantaneous. Vera has the data now to prove that the county cannot qualify for countywide voting.

There’s also a push toward throwing out the secure and accurate e-Slate machine and spending billions of dollars on a combination of electronic and paper system. You print out your vote, and then the machine has no other record. What could go wrong?

There’s a requirement to use electronic systems that meet a minimum standard, enacted eventually following the 2000 debacle in Florida. Paper ballots have always been subject to fraud.

Back in 2004, in the Washington State governor’s race, Christine Gregoire won against Dino Rossi, on a third recount, after Rossi had won by 261 votes, when all of a sudden, well after the close of the election, someone says, “Oh, my, I almost forgot. I have these boxes of ballots sitting out back in my shed. We have to count those.” And, lo and behold, they counted and counted until the total changed the outcome.

Look now at California. The governor has declared that they will give driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, and a driver’s license is the only requirement to vote. In other words, they are declaring that the vote total in California will include as many illegals as they can get to vote.

That means that, if the NPV compact were to be in effect, the vote outcome in any state in the compact would depend on the votes of illegal voters in California. And the outcome of the entire US presidential vote would depend on votes that should not count.

The reality is that we do not count all votes. We count enough to determine the outcome. All votes available and certified on election day get counted. Provisional votes take more time and depend on case-by-case circumstances. Mail-in votes—a larger portion and a growing fraud problem—get counted if received on time, but there may be leeway based on postmark date (different rules in different jurisdictions). Military votes that arrive this way tend to be left out of the count, unless there’s a recount that requires a more accurate count of all votes. If they’re deemed mathematically unlikely to change the outcome, they get left uncounted.

Then there are the disputed votes. Overvotes, for example, where more than one candidate is marked on a ballot (not possible on a certified e-Slate machine, but common on any kind of paper ballot and some other systems). This is the kind of detail that makes recounts slow and tedious and makes the outcome uncertain for long periods of time.

And there are issues of fraud that come up. If, for example, a particular voting place was found to contain an extra several hundred votes that all have the same signature—that means a poll worker, probably in cahoots with the presiding judge, found names from the precinct that hadn’t voted and they input votes for those names, signing each person’s name without even trying to disguise the signature. Yes, that has been done, in Harris County. And that was when each precinct was separate. With countywide voting, there could be such fraudulent voters who put in every name in the entire county at every voting place and truly mess up the accuracy of the count.

With NPV, there would be incentive for such fraud to take place—at any and every voting location that wasn’t run by honest Americans and watched over by other honest Americans from the opposing party.

Imagine how much discord there would be if states used this combination of fraud and NPV to prevent a win to a Republican president. Constitution-loving Americans would not stand for being subjugated under a corrupt, illegitimate ruler. It would end the centuries-long peaceful turnover of power that our founders designed.

The national vote total is not how we elect a president. It isn’t even possible for us to count an accurate national vote. The Electoral College isn’t antiquated and outdated; it is more necessary than ever.

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[i] I’ve written about election integrity here, here, here, and here. 

Vote Counts, Part I

image found here

Should every vote count? Yes.

Should every vote be counted? Yes, in an ideal world.

Should the winner be the one who gets more votes than the other(s)? Not necessarily.

There’s a Tom Woods Show podcast, from November 18, 2016, just after President Trump was elected, in which Woods was talking about the Electoral College with Kevin Gutzman[i] and Brion McClanahan[ii]. Woods shares a baseball metaphor that might help here. Suppose you’ve got two teams in the baseball World Series. Team A wins three games 8-1, 8-1, 8-1, and Team B wins three games 2-1, 2-1, 2-1, and then in the final game Team B wins again 2-1. Team B wins the series.

image from here

If Team A starts complaining, “Hey, but we earned a bigger total number of absolute points: a total of 28 points. And those guys only earned a total of 11 points. We’re the real winners”—everybody rolls their eyes and calls them sore losers. Total points don’t matter. The thing that matters is games won.

The strategy would be completely different if a team were playing for most runs scored over several games. For example, as Kevin Gutzman adds,

If you think about the strategy involved in managing the World Series, your analogy is illuminating. For example, in game 1 the team that’s down 6-1 in the 8^th inning isn’t going to put in it’s best relief pitcher, because it doesn’t care what the final margin is at that point. They know they’ve lost. They want to save their best pitchers for the remaining games, and so they don’t throw their number 1 guy out there in the 9^th inning.

On the other hand, if it mattered what the margin was in game 1, if that had anything to do with who was eventually going to win the series, then you might see the ace closer come on in the 9^th inning with the score 7-1, to try to ensure that there weren’t anymore runs scored….

So that’s like Trump not spending much time campaigning in California. There’s just no reason for him to go waste money and his own time, or Pence’s time, or some Trump offspring’s time, or anyone’s time trying to get more votes in California when they know they’ve lost. So, again, you get to the 9^th inning of game 1, you’re down 6-1, you’re going to put the scrub middle reliever out there to get batted around a little bit, because you really don’t care. You just want to get the game over with, and let’s move on to game 2.

Strategy would change in a presidential campaign, because, similarly, total votes is not the way the American presidential vote is won.

Think about this. What is united in the United States? The states. We’re not the “United Individuals of America.” Our states are not provinces, or districts, or boroughs segmenting a singular larger entity, as is common in other nations. According to the online dictionary, a state is:

a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government

While we have democratic (rule by the majority of the people) aspects, we are not simply ruled by the changing whims of the majority of Americans. We safeguard against that kind of tyranny by having a republic—a representative form of government. We have representatives at the state level, and at the congressional district level. And within states we have similar levels down to very local.

The way the election of our president was set up, the states—which are independently governed entities—hold elections to decide on electors, who will represent that state’s choice for president.

Anyone who wins the presidency has to win not only a preponderance of states, but a wide variety of little societies that have their own interests and needs. Gulf states have different needs from Eastern Seaboard states. Southwestern states have different needs from Midwest states. Mountainous areas have different needs from coasts or deserts or plains. Big urban centers have different needs from smaller cities, suburbs, and rural areas.

The rules of the game are to make belonging to the United States valuable to people in all these different littler societies. This is on purpose, and by design. It was never about getting the highest number of voters, any more than winning the World Series is about getting the most total points. In fact, the first several elections didn’t even record the total number of votes.

On that Woods podcast they point out that no one tries to determine the Senate majority by seeing which party got the highest vote total. The “game” isn’t played that way.

So the strategy is different.

The biggest difference is that we don’t have candidates simply go to the biggest urban centers, where they can accumulate the most votes, and ignore the rest of the country. Every location has at least some small strategic significance. And a candidate decides where to spend time and resources based on the effort to win the most electoral college votes.

That idea that the total votes is irrelevant is important. It’s especially something to look at as there’s greater pressure to do an end-run (switching sports metaphors) around the Constitution and its amendment process by states doing a National Popular Vote (NPV) compact, in which these participating states determine their respective electors based on—not their individual state’s voters, but on the national vote total.

There are plenty of reasons this is a bad idea. And you can tell they’re not serious if you picture what they will do if/when Trump or any other Republican wins the popular vote. Will they declare their electors for that Republican winner? Or will they demur and say, “Well, the courts haven’t decided on whether we can actually do this yet”? It’s a one-way strategy only. They’re not about fairness; they’re corrupt.

One of the main reasons this is a bad idea is that we can’t get an accurate vote total. In theory it ought to be possible, but in reality it isn’t.

In Part II we'll cover some of the details of why an accurate national vote count isn't even attainable.

Electoral College by Design

The National Popular Vote movement—a work-around-that-pesky-Constitution way of eliminating the Electoral College—has been progressing apace behind the scenes[i]. It has a particular purpose: give power to Democrats.

In part this means giving power to a few large urban centers, ignoring all the rest. The debate goes back to the Great Compromise between population and state power that led to our bicameral legislature in the Constitution, and to the Electoral College.[ii]

US 2016 presidential vote by county
image from here

There were 57 counties in which Clinton won heavily (70%) in 2016.[iii] But there were 30 states out of 50, that Trump won. Trump didn’t win all those remaining counties beyond the 57 (counties aren’t a way votes are counted in a presidential election anyway), but when you exclude those high density urban Democrat strongholds and leave the other 3084 counties in play, Trump won that count by 7.5 million.

We don’t, of course, exclude urban areas. But when you give so much power to those urban areas (occupying only 24.4% of the geography), you severely discount the opinions/votes of people living outside those areas in the remaining 75.6% of the country.

So, should there be a popular vote? Is that fair?

Another question is, is it even possible?

Think back on the 2000 election, when the final decision came down to a few counties in Florida—counties that were already leaning toward Gore and there was no reason to believe they were under-counted, but they were heavy enough in his direction that there might be people there willing to scrape up some more.

So counties suspected of fraud against Gore weren’t recounted; only securely Gore-winning counties were recounted, which included precincts reporting zero votes for Bush, a statistical unlikelihood.

There was evidence that the very existence of a “hanging chad” was cause for concern. The most likely cause was someone taking a stack of that type of ballot and poking a sharp object, such as a straightened paperclip, through a particular hole, pushing through the whole stack. Any votes already for that candidate choice would be left untouched, and would legally count; any votes for an opponent would show up as a possible double vote and be considered invalid. That sharp object through the stack may be the only way to get a chad to only partially let go, leaving a hanging chad or a "pregnant chad" (indented but not punched out). Yet, there we had examiners trying to divine the intent of the voters when they were faced with a hanging chad or pregnant chad—which pretty much never went in favor of the Republican candidate. Hmm.

Meanwhile, there were questionable results in various polling places around the country. But at that point it was decided the possible errors were not enough to change the outcome of the state’s winner, and therefore not changing those states’ electoral votes. So those questionable places were not recounted.

If the popular vote had mattered—something that would also entirely change campaign strategies—a question of voter fraud anywhere would affect the outcome everywhere. In 2012 the difference was about 10 votes per polling place nationwide. I was a poll watcher in a place that was off by 20 that day. I turned in my report, of course. But it wasn’t urgently pursued, because the outcome in the state overall wasn’t in question.

There’s a particular problem with the National Popular Vote movement. It is being adopted only by those states Hillary Clinton won solidly. In other words, it’s an attempt by Democrats to enforce their votes only.

Electoral College vote 2016 (including faithless electors)
image from Wikipedia

Don’t believe me? Try this thought experiment. Suppose the NPV movement were to obtain its 270 electoral vote total before the next election—meaning it would kick in for the 2020 election. Then suppose it’s a close election in which Donald Trump wins the popular vote by a small margin, but not the traditional Electoral College vote. Those NPV states are supposedly required by their own law to cast their electors for the popular vote winner. What do they do? If you’re guessing they’re suddenly up in arms about possible voter fraud and refuse to accept the count—or any number of recounts they can force to happen—that’s probable.

Do you see any scenario in which they say, “We really meant it when we said ‘one person one vote,’ and Trump is clearly the winner, because he won the popular vote, so of course our electors all go to him”? I don’t either.

What if Trump were to win the popular vote and the traditionally counted Electoral College vote? Does California give its electors to Trump, or back out of the compact and suddenly insist on the old system in which they at least can say their electors didn’t vote for him? There’s no mechanism in the compact to address electors who refuse to vote according to the NPV compact.

In other words, the only scenario in which they intend to go with the popular vote is when their Democrat candidate gets the popular vote. It isn’t about “fairness.” It’s a rigged game.

Let’s be clear. Rule by the National Popular Vote intentionally and forever disenfranchises voters everywhere except Democrats, who are concentrated in a relative few urban centers.

There are arguments about the legality of the NPV. I’ve heard many opinions, including pro-Constitutionalists, who believe, while it’s a dirty trick, it’s probably legal. But, if it is challenged, it will be for violating Article I, Section 10, which requires that interstate compacts receive congressional consent, which Trent England[iv], legal policy analyst and Director of Save Our States, believes will be its legal downfall. In addition, it could be challenged for ignoring the Electoral College clause, which he says “implies there is some limit on the power of state legislatures to ignore the will of their state’s people.”[v]

That is an important point: will the voters in California actually sit silent if voters in Texas and Oklahoma, for example, determine the winner contrary to California’s voters? This is not the same as feeling disenfranchised because other states’ electors voted differently; this is actually being disenfranchised because enough individual voters in other states change the votes of electors in California contrary to the voters in California.

NPV supporters are only willing to risk it, because they believe it will always fall only in their favor.

This is another case where, if you don’t see the wisdom of the founders, it’s more likely that you’re under-educated than that you’re smarter than they were.

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[i] The Harvard Review article “The Danger of the National Popular Vote Compact,” from March 13, 2019, is a good explanation.     

[ii] I discussed it in some details in “Population, Urban Thinking, and the Vote” and “Great Compromises.”

[iii] See the Breitbart article “Donald Trump Won 7.5 Million Popular Vote Landslide in Heartland” and also the Snopes Fact Check article “Did Trump Win 3,084 of 3,141 Counties in 2016, While Clinton Won Only 57?” which doesn’t dispute the Breitbart article, but only some of the math people extracted from it. I used a graphic that used the somewhat distorted county count here. The fact check article does not address the other claims in the graphic, and I have not independently verified them. Those not related to the original error are probably accurate.

[iv] Trent England, director of Save Our States, “The Danger of the Attacks on the Electoral College,” Imprimis, June 2019, Volume 48, Number 6. 

[v] William Josephson, in the New York Law Review article “17 Reason Why the National Popular Vote Initiative Is Likely to Fail,” offers his reasons, both legal and practical, that NPV will fair.    

Population, Urban Thinking, and the Vote

Did I ever mention that I was once a cartographer? It’s what I did as a summer job, putting myself through college. This was back before AutoCAD, so we created overlays by hand. Fun times. It’s always been kind of a family joke, because I’m not good with directions (that’s an understatement). In a city the size of Houston, flat enough not to have directional clues on the horizon, it’s helpful that we now have GPS systems wherever we go.

Anyway, I’ve always been kind of fascinated by maps. I’ve come across some recently that are for different purposes, but imply some correlation. Those red spots are urban areas. I think that's cities with over 100,000. 

Most populated areas of the US (excluding Alaska and Hawaii)

This next one shows that information by counties. Essentially half of the US population lives in those densest counties, including Alaska and Hawaii. The blue "half" includes 146 counties out of a total of over 3141. That's about 4.6% of counties.

 

Half the US population in the blue counties

Here's a map of where the most murders take place. According to the commentary accompanying this map, "The worst 1% of counties have 19% of the population and 37% of the murders. The worst 5% of counties contain 47% of the population and account for 68%of murders. Over half of murders occurred in only 2% of counties."

Murder rates in the US by county

This next one is the 2016 electoral map, showing vote winners by county, with more intense color indicating wider margins of the vote.

2016 Presidential Electoral Map

You’ll need to use your imagination to overlay all four maps. But what you see is likely this:

·         Urban areas cover a relatively small part of the land.

·         A relatively small part of the land contains half of the population.

·         The urban areas coincide with high murder rates, and possibly other cultural differences from the less populated areas.

·         The urban areas tend to vote Democrat, while the less densely populated areas tend to vote Republican.

The maps may not show this, but people who live outside the relatively few densely populated areas think differently, on the whole, than people who live in urban areas.

It may be that people self-select. Maybe cities make people think that government control is the answer to all their needs. Or maybe people who think that gravitate toward cities, and maybe more self-reliant types live in the suburbs and rural areas.

Maybe people who are born in cities inherit the ways of thinking that surround them. And people who live outside cities think in ways the people around them think.

Maybe people in these different settings have different needs based on their surroundings. For example, if you live in a small apartment with very little storage, you can’t keep a lot in your pantry and refrigerator—and you probably don’t have a deep freeze in your garage (which you probably don't have). So you would have to shop for just a few items at a time, frequently. Or eat out a lot.

But if you have to drive half an hour to the larger grocery stores, you probably stock up once a week, have supplies on hand to make various recipes. And you probably eat at home more often than city dwellers do.

If you live in a suburban setting, you might do more shopping around, and your stocking up or eating out may have more to do with your family’s schedule than location of stores or home storage limits.

If you live in a city, public transportation is widely available, and you may be used to it. You may not even own a car, which is expensive to garage, expensive to park, and inconvenient to get around town in.

If you live in a rural area, you’re used to driving long distances for everything: food, school, entertainment, work. Having your own transportation is essential.

If you live in a suburb, your access to public transportation may be spotty. And getting where you need to go, among many directions and choices, is a lot more convenient—even essential—in your own vehicle. Plus, you can carry a lot more in a car, or maybe an SUV, than you can on a bus.

Whether it's causal or not, people in urban centers tend to think differently from people outside urban centers. And, because they're surrounded by so many people who think like them, they may think that is the only right way to think. They may not even question what they think.

If we go back 230 years, when the Founders worked out the Constitution, a main concern was that argument about population or state power. Why would a small state like Rhode Island go along with a plan that would forever give all the voice to a large state like Virginia? People in powerful, populated areas thought differently from those in smaller and/or less populated areas.

The Founders came up with a great compromise: two houses of representative government—one determined by population, the other determined by state.

The United States is not a democracy. And that’s a good thing. In a democracy, all you need is half the people plus one to want something, and that’s what you get. If half plus one decide you don’t deserve the money you earn—because of your beliefs, or your looks, or because that many people just dislike you—then they “legally” take your money. If half the people plus one decide people like you shouldn’t own property, or shouldn’t get certain educational opportunities, or some other freedom we take for granted, the mob rules, and you lose that freedom.

That's tyranny of the majority. Back then, the Founders knew better than to want mob rule democracy. Do we still know better?

After the last election, especially, there’s been a push to do away with the Electoral College, which is the representative way we actually choose our president. The Electoral College is based specifically on that compromise between power by population and power by the various states.

Here's Robert Reich insisting that, since the election didn’t go the way of the population majority, the results were wrong, and this should never be allowed to happen again, so he’s offering a plan to thwart the Electoral College without all the bother of amending the Constitution. It’s called National Popular Vote, or NPV. And it’s getting enough traction that you’d better be aware of it.

Let’s be clear. Rule by popular vote intentionally and forever disenfranchises voters everywhere but in the urban centers.

Look at those maps again. What you see is that, if we elected a president by population, the efficient way to campaign would be to win voters only in those most densely populated areas. Win those, and ignore the rest of the country. Always. And forever. Go ahead and ignore the needs and wants of the whole rest of the country, because you don’t need their votes.

Getting rid of the Electoral College—or any other scheme that grants power based solely on population—and you get the mob rule the Founders worked hard to prevent.Tyranny of the urban centers, we could call it.

PragerU has a brief video explaining why the Electoral College is a much better idea than the popular vote, and why NPV is such a bad idea:

Here’s one more graphic* to illustrate the value of the Electoral College to everyone outside the East Coast, the West Coast, Chicago, plus a few other cities.

______________________________________________________
* Found on Facebook. I don't know the original source.

Electorally Collegiate

We’re not a democracy. That seems to come as a surprise to some Americans. Democracy is rule—or tyranny—by majority. The axiom is that it’s two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for lunch.

What our founders designed was a constitutional republic. Democratic voting happens in parts of it—to choose our representatives, and directly choose many local leaders. But the federal government is limited, on purpose, so that coercive force, like fire, does the good it’s intended to do but does not go further and burn us free individuals to the ground.

Federal: relating to a type of organization that is made by joining together separate organizations or states

State: a politically unified people occupying a definite territory; a nation

When the thirteen original colonies declared independence from England, they were a loosely joined group of separate states (i.e., nations), a confederation. The document joining them, the Articles of Confederation, was weak and imperfect. That’s why, a few years later, representatives from these separate but confederated states worked out a new Constitution, “in order to form a more perfect union.”

They did not give up being their own sovereign statehoods, but they united with the other states in a stronger union. It’s important to remember that it was states joining together, and not merely a few million unaffiliated individuals suddenly becoming a new single nation. The nature of America is that it is the United States (nations) of America.

One of the major debates in the Constitutional Congress related to insistence, mainly from the large states, that representation should be by population number and, on the other hand, the insistence, mainly from the smaller states, that representation should be by state. What was the incentive for a small state, like Delaware, to join the union if it was simply to be ruled by whatever bigger states, like Virginia, enacted?

The brilliant compromise of the Constitution was to divide the representative branch, the legislature, into two houses: one representing population number—the House--and one representing each state equally—the Senate. Until the 16^th Amendment, the two senators from each state were chosen by the state legislatures, rather than by direct election as they are today. The idea was that the House represented the interests of the people from their home district, and the Senate represented the state’s (nations) interests. Even with the change in how senators are elected, they are still supposed to represent their state’s interests while working together on federal issues.

Over time, with inadequate history and civics being taught, too many people think of the states as just provinces.

Province: any one of the large parts that some countries are divided into

America didn’t divide itself into provinces that it called states; states united together to form America. We’re all Americans, but we’re also members of our respective states. You might forget that in some states, but you don’t forget it here in Texas.

Now that we’re clear on what United States are, we can talk with a better understanding about the election—and specifically the Electoral College.

The 2016 Electoral College Map,
image found here

Direct election is what some (many) voters think they’re doing in a presidential election. But they’re not. They’re actually voting for a slate of electors from their state who have promised to vote for a particular candidate. It seems complicated, but its purpose is to preserve both the voice of the people and the voice of each state.

If the popular vote directly elected the president, the campaign would look very different. It would concentrate on areas with the highest populations—big cities mainly, like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Dallas. Add in Florida and DC area. Ignore the rest of the nation, because you can’t garner enough votes in any particular place to sway the election. Flyover country gets flown over.

So, the system allots electors per state based on population (1 per representative in the US House of Representatives) and state (2 senators per state). Each state decides how its electors will be chosen, but most give all the state’s electors to the vote winner in the state.

Without Electoral College illustration
by Ramirez for The Daily Signal

If the vote is decisive in the state, it’s possible not all the votes will be counted. Don’t cry foul. All the cast ballots on election day are counted. All early voting ballots are counted. It used to be that absentee ballots were only counted if the number could sway the election, but since ballot by mail has become more prevalent, those are usually included in the voting day tally. (That’s what showed up in my county’s tally within 24 hours of the polls closing.)

However, there are provisional ballots—paper ballots cast by people who are not showing up as registered but whose registration was turned in on time; those votes will be handled individually, and if they are valid, they will be counted eventually.  Sometimes these have to do with providing proof of residency or some other detail that didn’t happen in time to show up in the books, but the voter has five days in which to provide documentation. But most provisional ballots end up being people who went to the wrong polling place, because they moved and didn’t go to the place where they are still registered, or because they just showed up at the wrong place and don’t have time to go elsewhere. These votes are not valid and will not be counted.

Anyway, the final tally on these votes may not show up in the original tallies, or even official tallies within 24 hours. If they will not change the outcome, there’s a good chance no one will change the count later. In other words, the popular vote count, because it doesn’t matter, isn’t always the count of all valid (and only valid) votes.

There’s also voter fraud to think of. In the last election, the difference was an average of about 10 votes per precinct. I was a poll watcher at a heavily democrat precinct that ended up with 20 extra votes on the machine that weren’t included on the voter list—the handwritten list of each voter that signs the book, used to verify the count. If one party decided to add votes from non-voters at a rate of 10-20 per voting place, they could turn a national election. If there was a corrupt party not being watched in some state, they could purposely add hundreds or thousands of fraudulent votes. As it is, at least they can only affect no higher than the state level.

So the Electoral College is a protection against tyranny of the majority, against tyranny of urban over rural or suburban areas, against large states over small, against populous regions over sparsely populated regions, and against tyranny by voter fraud.

Rarely has the Electoral College chosen a different president than the popular vote. When it has done so, that means the election was close. And in a close election, we ought to be glad the decision was made with the input of all states and all regions, instead of just the most populous cities.

There’s been a fair amount of conversation about the Electoral College the past couple of weeks. It’s a good time to get more educated on the subject.

I suggest this PragerU video:

Then there are these additional brief video explanations:

·         Mark Kaye, "Why the Electoral College Sux!"

·         Larry Arnn interview, and opinion piece he wrote in the Wall Street Journal November 14, “The Electoral College Is Anything but Outdated”

·         The Day I Found Out video, "Why Does the United States Use the Electoral College and Not a Popular Vote to Decide the President?"

And if you’d like to learn a little more in depth, I recommend a book I read about a decade ago that has been updated in 2012: Enlightened Democracy: the Case for the Electoral College, by Tara Ross, the presenter on the PragerU video.

It keeps happening that, when we look at what our founders thought through, they did a remarkable job of working out how to get just the right amount of government, with limits to safeguard our liberties. They deserve something much better than an ageist assumption that they’re outdated. Chances are they thought it through and came up with a brilliant idea.

Longshots and Likely Outcomes

The date that has been looming on our calendars for so very long is upon us. And then life changes. And we don’t know what our country will look like the day after.

Found on Facebook,
credited to TheFreeThoughtProject.com 

I don’t know what is going to happen. But I thought it wouldn’t hurt to look at some of the least likely outcomes, and then look at what we can probably expect.

No One Gets 270 Electoral Votes

The 270 number is half of the country’s electoral votes. If the two major candidates are close, and a third candidate gets some electoral votes (wins in at least one state). Then no one automatically gets declared the winner. If this happens, then a weird rule takes over: the US Congress chooses the president.

This isn’t an impossibility. For the first time in half a century, a third candidate might possibly win a state’s electors. The most likely is independent candidate Evan McMullin, who has a chance of winning Utah, where he’s within the margin of error in the latest polls. (He was up by several points in some polls the week the audio came out of Trump from ten years ago claiming he’d sexually assaulted women with impunity.)

A less likely possibility would be Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson winning New Mexico, where he served as governor.

If it came to this standoff, so Congress has the historic opportunity to decide the presidency, what would they do? I think the assumption has to be that they would favor the candidate of their party, which is Republican.

Evan McMullin worked as a policy advisor to Congress. He is known there, particularly by Republicans. McMullin has been a conservative Republican all along, and is only running as an independent for the election—in contrast to Donald Trump, who is running as a Republican only for the election and has never been a conservative. Since the two main candidates are both strongly disliked by a majority of the country, it’s not inconceivable that there would be a sense of relief that we could choose someone else. So it’s not out of the question that Congress could elect McMullin. 

But it’s still unlikely. Pressure from the electorate would sound deafening. Many would fear to do anything except vote for their party’s nominee--unless something even more horrible comes out about Trump, like a sudden sexual assault arrest or some other provable accusation leading to prison.

The Electoral College Rebels

Contrary to popular belief, we don’t directly elect the president. We elect representatives of our state’s votes. This design was to protect the votes of all, rather than to allow large urban centers or particular regions from having all the say. Check out the Prager U video, if you need to review (here and here).

One of the less likely purposes for the electoral college is to address the scenario that the popularly elected president turns out to be unacceptable (new information comes out of criminal activity or moral turpitude). The electors wouldn’t be forced to vote for such a dirtbag; they could change their vote.

During the past week, this started to look like a possible outcome if Hillary got indicted between election day and the electoral college vote on December 19. Over the weekend FBI Director Comey came out again to say he didn’t recommend prosecuting Hillary Clinton for her multiple breaches of national security. In the meantime, a Democrat elector from Washington State has promised not to vote for her, regardless of the popular vote outcome.

Since her known crimes so far have failed to bring even an indictment, despite all the aides pleading the 5^th (i.e., admitting wrongdoing), and because the corruption in the entire Department of Justice is led by the current administration, who is ideologically aligned with her, we can’t expect truth and accuracy. The likelihood of more electors stepping up and refusing to vote for this criminal is low, alas.

One of the Main Candidates Becomes President

This is indeed the likely outcome. I’m not sitting on the edge of my seat, anxious to know which of them that will be. My guess is that it will be Hillary Clinton—the most corrupt, most socialist, most unsuitable candidate ever to step into the Oval Office.

Found on Facebook,
credited to Being Libertarian

Here’s one more longshot: those rumors about her ill health turn out to be true, and she becomes incapable of carrying out her duties as president. That would leave us with a vice-president stepping up. Tim Kaine is probably not better in policy, but it would be hard to be as corrupt as she is, so that would be considered a slight improvement. Also, because he would be unelected, Congress might be willing to stand up to him, we could hope.

There is a pair of Daily News Editorials—one laying out the case against Trump, followed by one laying out the case against Hillary. 

There’s enough accuracy in both that it brings to mind the battle of wits scene from The Princess Bride. Vizzini lists the reasons “I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you,” and then lists the reasons “I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.” Clearly either choice was deadly, as Vizzini shortly learned the hard way.

But, since one of the two choices will be foisted on us, what happens from Wednesday on?

Four years ago, the morning after a disappointing election, which made me feel that America was lost, this scripture came to mind:

Philippians 4:8

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

I’ve been trying to do that since. 

There are—and will be—things that are just wrong, that seem intolerable, things which should not be tolerated. But we cannot live our lives in outrage. We need to live. We can live as best we can, as most of humankind has had to do, without the blessing of the freedom, prosperity, and civilization we know we are missing. Whatever our circumstances, we can still live good lives.

Rising Sun Chair, Independence Hall

My Facebook friend Shawn Rogers wrote this prediction this morning:

My final election prediction: This election will end. The sun will come up on Wednesday, and again on Thursday. The consequences won't be as horrible as the losing side thinks they will be. And the results won't be as fantastic as the winning side thinks they will be. We'll have new political battles to fight. But life will go on. Families will go on. Faith will go on. Joy, hope, and happiness will still be within reach.

I think that we need a hopeful approach, for ourselves, our families, and our communities, even when w have less hope for our country as a whole. We need to live in gratitude, so that we can be guided to do what is best to do with our lives.

A couple of weeks I read an outsider’s perspective I thought was helpful. This is from Dan Hannan, a British conservative MEP:

Each presidential campaign thrives on fear of the other. Trump’s supporters tell us that Clinton’s judicial nominations will fundamentally transform America, tilting the balance toward authoritarianism. Clinton’s supporters retort that Trump is a quasi-fascist.

Both sides misunderstand, or affect to misunderstand, the Constitution. The United States was designed precisely to contain the ambitions of its rulers. Jefferson and Hamilton had seen arbitrary rule first-hand, and were determined to ensure that even the most Caligulan leader could not create an autocracy. We might almost say that they had Trump, or someone very like Trump, in mind when they drew up the rules.

Despite what Pelosi says, it is the Republican nominee who, in the unlikely event of his election, would be likely to face impeachment. There would be scant sympathy for President Trump in either House, and he seems to have as little concern for constitutional propriety as he has for telling the truth. Indeed, the only truly persuasive argument for electing him is the “Vote Trump, Get Pence” line.

What, though, of Clinton? … Is there not a danger that, by unbalancing the Supreme Court, she would transform the United States into an altogether more nannying and dirigiste nation?

Again, the Founders had her number. Barring some truly extraordinary electoral bouleversement, [Hillary] will not have a free hand in her first two years; nor, given the usual pattern of mid-term elections, is that likely to change in the second two years.

American liberty is too deeply rooted to be wrecked by a couple of judges. Take the most commonly voiced concern among conservatives. Suppose that a Clinton-made Supreme Court overturned the Heller verdict—that is, the ruling that interprets the Second Amendment as meaning that an individual can own and carry weapons.

The day after such a reversal would look just like the day before it. No state constitution would be amended. No legislation would be mandated at either federal or state level.

That’s what checks and balances mean: No president, no Supreme Court, has absolute power. The system, you might say, works….

I've never known Americans to be as gloomy about politics as now. And, looking at the two main candidates, I sympathize. But I can't bring myself to share in their pessimism. The United States has lasted for as long as it has, through foreign wars and civil strife, because the Constitution is bigger than any politician….

America [is] the wealthiest and the freest, because its system of government elevates the individual over the collective.

No single president, however demented, can undo the work of two-and-a-half centuries. That’s the true meaning of American exceptionalism.

It may be that he is right. It may be that, even with the most dire predictions, our lives will still go on, for the most part as before, albeit with more weight upon our shoulders as we go about the work of living.

But we can go on living. We’re still in a land of great freedom and prosperity, compared to most of world history. And we must enjoy whatever good we have, so that we know not to let that good be taken.