An Article by Thom Hartmann
No One Has Ever Been Dangerous to America as Trump Germany didn't realize how dangerously close they were to dictatorship until it was too late. It can happen here. We've been ...
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Sometimes I hate being right.
Donald Trump is campaigning in Blue states right now, including California, Colorado, and New York. It has pundits scratching their heads: is it just all about his ego? Is he crazy? Or crazy like a fox?
I'd argue the latter: that this is part of a strategy to legally seize the White House after he's lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote, much like Republican Rutherford B. Hayes did in the election of 1876.
Eight months before the 2020 election, I wrote a largely-ridiculed article for Alternet.org predicting that Trump would lose the election but would then use multiple phony slates of swing-state electors to try to get the Electoral College count thrown to the House of Representatives where, under the 12th Amendment, the Republican majority would crown him president.
I noted that I'd first heard of the plan that month from a Republican insider I knew from my days living and doing my radio/TV program from Washington, DC.
And, as we all now know, that's pretty much exactly what happened.
Fortunately, Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi stopped Trump and his merry band of corrupt lawyers and lawmakers (including Mike Johnson, who led the effort in the House) from executing the plan, but not before five civilians and three police officers lay dead because Trump incited a violent attack on the Capitol in his final, desperate attempt to pull it off.
Now we know, I believe, why Donald Trump thinks it's so important to call out the military around election day this year. He expects millions of Americans to be in the streets because his plan is for the House, Republicans in the states, and the Supreme Court to hand him the presidency regardless of the election's outcome.
Last Friday, my SiriusXM colleague Michelangelo Signor ile mentioned to me (on his program) that a prominent rightwing hate radio host had claimed Trump is campaigning in Blue states right now so he can help out down-ballot House members in those states. According to that host, it's all about holding the House so when the time comes for the election to be certified Republicans will be able to deny that still-necessary certification and vote Trump in themselves.
Which is giving me a terrible sense of de'j vu. At the risk of again playing the reluctant role of Cassandra, here are some examples of how Trump and the GOP could try to steal the White House this winter, regardless of how the vote turns out. And how Republicans are today telegraphing this very outcome.
Article II (the Executive Branch), Section I, Clause 2 of the Constitution (and the 12th Amendment, which revises it) gives solely to the legislatures of the states the power to control the electors who will decide the presidential election.
It does not say -- and there is no federal law that says -- that the people of the states shall vote for their choice of president and then that vote shall be reflected in the states' electoral votes. It's entirely up to each state's legislature (without any input from the governor).
"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors-- is how it appears in Article II of the Constitution.
As Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote in the 2000 Bush v Goredecision when the US Supreme Court overturned the Florida Supreme Court's order for a recount that would have given the election to Al Gore:
"The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States" [T]he state legislature's power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself, which indeed was the manner used by state legislatures in several States for many years after the framing of our Constitution."
Every state's legislature generally directs all their electors to vote for the candidate who won the majority in the state (Maine and Nebraska are the exception, allowing for split decisions), a system we call "winner takes all," but, as Rehnquist noted, a state's legislature (its combined house or assembly and senate) can, by simple majority vote, direct its electors to vote for any candidate they want, even over the objection of their governor.
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