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Breaking: Electoral College Chooses Donald Trump as President
The electors kept the faith:
Electoral College members across the nation voted to affirm President-elect Donald Trump’s victory on Monday, as liberal attempts to sway Republican electors to abandon Trump fizzled.
Republican electors stayed loyal to their candidate, keeping Trump well above the 270 electoral vote threshold needed to secure the nomination.
Texas’ 36 electoral votes for Trump pushed him over the edge at around 4:30 Central Time, even though two rogue electors’ defections deprived Trump of one of those votes. That gave Trump 295 total electoral votes.
The Republican-controlled Congress, a body even more unlikely to be swayed by pressure than the Electoral College, will certify the vote on Jan. 6.
Interesting sidenote:
Published in PoliticsMore Democratic electors are defecting than Republicans in the Electoral College vote so far.
Four Democratic electors in Washington state cast votes for candidates other than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who carried the state.
Democratic electors in Maine, Minnesota and Colorado have separately tried to cast votes for different candidates, but saw their ballots barred. Clinton carried all three states.
I am only bitterly disappointed that I must wait another four years for someone to cast a protest vote for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHrn0BN7784
Notable folks to get elector votes besides Trump & Clinton include:
That last bullet point isn’t a joke, though it is hilarious. It seems like all the celebrity pleas to “vote your conscience” were headed by more Democratic electors than Republicans.
Gross elitism. It is a testament to how little you think of the little guy, that you would have the elites dictate who is President.
I wasn’t pointing fingers at individual electors, though I could. My complaint was about the institutions involved in legitimizing these disasters.
Why bother having convention delegates, and debate commissions, and the Electoral College if they’re all they’re going to do is rubber stamp things? We have a republic. All these institutions we have exist to moderate the will of the masses.
Donald Trump’s elections has been one gigantic slow-motion car wreck. And every step along the way when people have tried to stop it they’ve been overruled by institutional momentum that favors the car wreck.
NeverTrump was standing on the side of reality. Trying to sweep away the will of the people at the last moment would prove to the Trump voters that, in fact, the “elites” that Never Trump et. al. claim do not exist, do.
The reactions to Trump are as much based on his manner as anything else. The fact that anyone would court the chaos that would have followed, says something about them.
The institutions involved are designed to promote a peaceful change in the office. They have done their job. If the new man in the office is bad, then they can be used to change it out. That is how it works in our Republic.
That’s fine. But we have a republic, the whole point of which is supposed to be to put the breaks on the popular will when it means destroying that liberalism that we both hold dear.
I think of the EC not as a steering wheel to turn the direction of the country, but rather an an emergency break to keep us all from careening off the cliff.
Yeah, because if there’s one thing that defines Fred Cole as a person, it’s elitism. It starts with my upper class background. Its evidenced by the several prestigious colleges I attended and the many high level degrees I’ve earned. And it continues to this day with the luxurious automobile I drive to my high powered day job where I make untold amounts of money.
If there’s two words that describe me, it’s “gross elitism.”
Yes. Those of us who claimed to oppose Trump on principle would do well to remember not to abandon those principles now that Trump has won.
Update: turns out Bernie did get one elector vote, from Hawaii. Congrats to him.
For Vice President:
5 Dem faithless electors from WA: 2 Elizabeth Warren, 1 Susan Collins, 1 Maria Cantwell, 1 Winona LaDuke (Green Party)
1 GOP faithless electors from TX: 1 Carly Fiorina
1 Dem faithless elector from Hawaii: Warren
So given the current circumstances, whom do you think the EC should have elected instead of Trump?
One of those principles was adherence to the Constitution. I do think that under our Constitution electors have the right to vote as they set fit, regardless of the popular vote in their state.
That said I think it would have been imprudent to reject Trump at this stage. But I see it as a debate over prudence rather than principles, in principle I agree with Fred that electors are not bound to rubber-stamp the choice of the people.
Obviously the Electors aren’t panicked like you are. Who is the better judge of reality? I think they are quite sane.
The prudent thing do do is to go with the people’s wishes. You don’t think so. I’m glad you and your ilk are not deciding for us masses what’s in our best interests.
All those stump speeches and months of campaigning for a measly one vote? Color me unimpressed. Colin Powell sat at home writing snarky emails and he got 3 times as many votes, now that’s a man who knows how to campaign!
I know best, therefore my will should be imposed on the people.
That is what I am hearing and there is nothing more elitist than that. One does not need a pedegree.
That’s a fair point, but if that’s the way it’s going to work then that needs to be made clear before the primaries. As it is both parties made an agreement with the voters that they would abide by their wishes. To make a promise like that and then renege because the elites don’t like the outcome is, as I said before, dictatorial.
I suspect we’d get a much lower turnout overall if either party said, “Yeah, go ahead and vote. We’ll just ignore it if we don’t like the result.”
Please don’t try to put words in my mouth. You’re really bad at it.
Someone who isn’t grossly unfit to be president. The electors could’ve picked half a dozen candidates and the House could’ve sorted it out.
Nice clipping of the quote to change the context, but let me put the whole thing back so I can comment. As you can see, I followed up with “That is what I am hearing”.
You are coming across as an elitist. I am not the only one noticing. Clearly, either you don’t care how you come across, or you want to come across that way, and then react when people call you on it, in a negative manner. Or, you just don’t like reality and you want to whine about it. Or, you like being a contrarian just to get people mad.
Frankly, none of the above is very flattering, but, whatever floats your boat.
The outcome would be to tell nearly half the voters that their votes don’t matter. It would be the ultimate in an elitist outcome. And I am putting words into your mouth? You wanted this outcome. You are calling for this outcome. You want a handful of electors to defy the will of the people who voted in a republican election because Fred Cole does not like the outcome. That is what you are saying.
Own it if you dare. Not holding my breath.
That’s precisely why the NeverTrump movement failed during the primaries — those of us who opposed Trump were unable to unite around a single alternate candidate.
I think your stance would be more credible if you named a specific candidate you think the EC should have chosen in place of Trump.
Made clear by whom? The way the Electoral College works ought to be perfectly clear to anyone who has read the Constitution, and is the sort of thing we should be teaching in high school civics.
Sorry, but that’s just an excuse. Both parties sold their candidates to the people under the premise that they would honor their decision. It may be constitutionally valid, but it’s still dishonest and elitist.
No. It’s not because I don’t like the outcome. I didn’t like the outcome in 2012 either.
It’s because the outcome this time will be a disaster.
Very much not a Trump fan, but if we didn’t use the Electoral College to stop Obama, it makes no sense to use it to stop Trump. The electorate wanted Obama in 2012, and they want Trump now. Trump appealed to voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, etc. that were ignored by Hillary, and he won the support he needed to win fair and square. Did those Midwestern voters make a good decision? We’ll find out.
I voted for Evan McMullin, partly figuring that if Trump really flamed out before the Electoral College vote, McMullin could be a backup. Trump hasn’t flamed out. If it were up to me to appoint the President, I’d pick Ted Cruz, but it’s not up to me.
Of course they did, it was the political parties that invented the whole system of pledged delegates in the first place and thereby subverted the original intent of the Electoral College as a deliberative body.
The Republican Party is on the brink of gaining control of Congress, the White House, and if their luck holds the Supreme Court as well. Of course the electors voted for Trump, it’s very much in their party interests to do so, and I’m surprised that anyone seriously thought they might not.
Trump won, in large part by winning over those who viewed both candidates unfavorably. Both he and Clinton were massively unpopular at the time of the election. Would replacing Trump with Pence have taken us farther from the popular will or closer to it? When the general electorate has two unfit choices forced upon it by the two primary electorates it stands to reason that the electors should give more credence to the policies rather than the persons elevated by the 51 state electorates. If Clinton had won I would be making the same argument for Kaine.
Don’t get me wrong, republicanism can involve ignoring the people’s choice when necessary to preserve liberal institutions. In this instance though that was not necessary.
If by “we” you mean Republicans or conservatives, “we” were powerless to use the EC to stop Obama. The Democrats won the majority of electors, so it was entirely up to them. It would basically require a revolt within a candidate’s own party.