I read it and am aware. Again, it's nothing but ceremony. The vote is cast on December 14th and counted the same day. If no candidate reaches 270, the House and Senate are called upon for an emergency session, and the House elects the President, the Senate elects the Vice President. This is fact, feel free to look it up.

That challenges can be made in January are immaterial, for the most part. Once the vote is cast on December 14th, the winner is given all transition powers according to the US Constitution. If Biden wins on the 14th, and Trump attempts to "block" transition team authority, then we are faced with illegal and unconstitutional action on behalf of the President, which brings up a host of other issues.

As I said, you need to look at the entire process.

At what point does it become illegitimate? If state legislatures decided to vote for Mondale instead of Reagan in 1984, do you think the American people should be fine with that? I think you can abuse the system from a legal perspective but really fuck with the underpinnings of this country.

"The American People" do not determine how states cast their electoral votes for President. That power resides upon each individual State.

And unless the state has a law mandating a specific vote it's up to the individual electors

Agreed. Hence how hostile some PaRDians get over the mere mention of "faithless electors".

Most states forbid electors from voting contrary to the popular vote of that state.

Here's the thing though, if no state had a law against bribing the electors and then Donald Trump just straight-up bribed to the electors to vote for him that would be totally legal and legitimate based on the criteria you gave.

Not everything legal is legitimate, the way we do things has certain assumptions built into it that aren't expressly written into the law. I like the idea of that the votes cast on Election Day matter not just the electoral votes. Even though the process officially Works through the electoral votes we have a massive campaign with tens of billions of dollars being spent for a reason, it's not just for show.

When you ignore this in your analysis of what is and isn't a legitimate tactic you end up coming off like a 13 year old who just had their first civics class.

That is exactly the point that everyone is making when they say that Biden won the election. Lol. Thanks for making my point there, chief.

The majority (33) do, that is correct. Still a lot of states with a lot of power held in the hands of their electors though.



Neither Trump nor the RNC could afford to bribe electors. Dems spent over double what the Republicans did this campaign cycle. They're the rich ones who can afford the bribes.

The fact is though, it is 100% illegal to bribe an elector. That's literal election fraud and is a federal felony. It's enough to deseat a sitting President AND remove a President-Elect's candidacy.

Perhaps you should go back to your first civics class prior to making such flimsy examples.

This post was edited by InsaneBobb on Nov 11 2020 10:26pm

Frankly i have zero issue with a mass faithless electors strategy being called a coup. And luckily i don't think that can or will happen.