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Not everyone should vote

The Editor's opinion:
You should not vote if you are not a citizen of the United States.  You should not vote if you are a convicted felon.  You should not vote more than once, even if a federal judge says it's okay.  You should not vote if you are dependent on welfare programs of any kind, with the exception of Social Security benefits for which you have paid all your life.  You should not vote if you cannot read a ballot that is written in English.  You should not vote if you could not pass the basic civics test given to those applying for naturalization.  You should not vote if you get all your information about current events from social media on your smart phone.  You should not vote if you were driven to the polling place by someone you met for the first time on election day.  You should not vote in a presidential election if you are not expected to live past inauguration day.  You should not vote if you cannot readily identify yourself beyond a reasonable doubt (with a government-issued license or ID card).  You should not vote if you were registered to vote in a state mental hospital, or you currently reside in such a facility.  You should not vote if you are so confused that you don't know whether you are male or female.  You should not vote by mail or vote early unless you have a profound physical impairment that would keep you from voting in person on Election Day.  You should not vote if you think the government can pass a law that will prevent the climate from changing.  You should not vote if you do not have a permanent residence.  You should not vote if anyone has offered you money, food, cigarettes, or adult beverages for doing so.  And above all, you should not vote if you are dead, although many people apparently do.

Former US president Jimmy Carter, 100, casts vote.  Fifteen days after turning 100, former US president Jimmy Carter cast his vote in the US election on Wednesday, fulfilling an earlier declared wish to live long enough to back Kamala Harris in the poll.  The former Democratic leader "voted by mail," according to the Carter Center, the non-profit he founded after he left the White House in 1981 to pursue his vision of world diplomacy.  The centenarian — who left office under a cloud of unpopularity, but has seen his star rise ever since — took advantage of early voting in his home state of Georgia, where he is receiving hospice care.

The Editor says...
Jimmy Carter is almost indistinguishable from a cadaver.  He appeared in a video clip on his 100th birthday, and he showed no signs of life.  And it's safe to presume that his condition hasn't improved in the last 15 days.  He has been in a hospice for a year and a half.  But now, we are told he has voted for Kamala Harris!  A man who appears to be brain dead is in no condition to fill out a ballot.  This is what's known as "ballot harvesting," and it goes on in nursing homes all over the country.  And guess which party benefits.

RNC Urges Election Officials To Scrutinize Dem-Aligned Group Registering Patients To Vote in Hospitals.  The Republican National Committee on Tuesday sent letters to election officials in six swing states urging them to monitor Vot-ER, the nonprofit that helps doctors register their patients to vote, for possible violations of election law, according to copies of the letters obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.  Addressed to secretaries of state in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada, the letters argue that Vot-ER is "weaponizing the healthcare system" for partisan ends and "threatening ... election integrity" with its materials, which have been used to register patients in emergency rooms, substance abuse clinics, and even psychiatric hospitals.  "It is not difficult to imagine how a patient could feel pressured to register to vote or support a certain candidate to receive medical care," the letters say.

Meet the Little-Known Activist Group That Has Tens of Thousands of Doctors Registering Patients To Vote.  Many patients at the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, an 89-bed facility affiliated with Pennsylvania State University, suffer from schizophrenia, substance abuse, depression, or bipolar disorder.  They cannot complete the "activities of daily living," the hospital's inpatient clinic states.  Some are "suicidal, aggressive, or dangerous to themselves or others."  During their stay, which is often involuntary, patients participate in group counseling, learn strategies for stress management, have their medication adjusted, and interact with therapy animals.  They can also partake in a less orthodox therapeutic activity:  registering to vote.

Even Dems alarmed as illegal aliens, 11-year-olds allowed to vote on some Boston expenditures.  A new program in Boston will allow illegal aliens and kids as young as 11 to have a say on the way that the city spends millions of dollars.  In 2021, Bostonians voted to approve the establishment of the Office of Participatory Budgeting, and participatory budgeting means exactly what it says:  giving voters the opportunity to participate in the way a portion of the city's budget is spent.  This year, as part of far-left Democrat Mayor Michelle Wu's fiscal year 2025 budget proposal, that office's purpose will finally be put into practice.  By September, Wu and her team will compile a list of 15 community projects.  Then in January, voters will select — either online or in person — five of them to receive a portion of the $2 million allotted for OPB spending.  Though $2 million sounds like a lot of money, it's actually just a tiny fraction of the city's overall budget, which in 2024 was more than $4.2 billion.

The Editor says...
I presume that "None of the above — just refund the money to the taxpayers" is not one of the options.

House Democrats Pushing to Permit Migrants to Vote.  A few votes could change the course of history.  The Equal Representation Act questions whether illegal migrants should appear on the next US census in 2030, effectively granting them representation.  The 206 to 202 vote was passed on party lines, with ALL Democrats voting in favor of permitting illegal migrants to be counted as American citizens for redistricting purposes.  The repopulation theory is not a conspiracy.  The Democrats are losing the favor of the people rapidly, and the new world order is on the line because citizens simply will not vote for these extreme measures that ultimately weaken America. [...] Taxpaying citizens will be denied the right to have their vote counted if foreign aliens are counted no different from citizens.  They are aiming to distort our electoral maps, and it is no coincidence that illegals have been placed in every major US city.  The borders were deliberately left open for this ultimate goal.

Every day brings more evidence that it's time to repeal the 19th Amendment.  [Scroll down]  Feminists told women that they were just like men and should sleep around, focus every bit of their energy on corporate culture, and delay childbearing.  But, of course, that doesn't work.  Women get demoralized sleeping around, corporate culture doesn't suit their instincts and leaves them empty and alone in the end, and delayed child-rearing often leaves them infertile.  The reality is that, at the end of the day, your corporation will not end every call with "I love you," will not worry about you when you're sick, will not share joy and sorrows with you, will not present you with grandchildren, and will not worry about or care for you when you're too old to care for yourself.  That's what family does.  A family feeds into and responds to a woman's more openly emotional nature.  Modern young women not only reject these ideas, but they believe that their highest political goal is to keep it legal to kill their babies. [...] [Furthermore,] broken women who have been trained to hate men and fear intimate relationships are still going to yield to their emotional side and look for someone, or something, to support them:  [Tweet]

Report: Blue States [are] Automatically Registering Welfare Recipients to Vote.  Several blue states across the United States are automatically registering hundreds of thousands of residents to vote each year whenever they interact with state agencies, including welfare offices, a report from journalist John Fund details.  The report, issued by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, documents the Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) policy now imposed by 23 states and the District of Columbia.  All but three of these states are blue states controlled by Democrats.

Minnesotans celebrate new law restoring voting rights to felons.  At the Capri Theater in north Minneapolis Saturday, there was a celebration of a new state law.  A law that restores voting rights to Minnesotans who've served time in jail or prison.  "It's long overdue that we've corrected this injustice," declared Antonio Williams, of St. Paul.

Groups like AARP, ACLU push harder for Biden admin to increase immigrant, prison voting ahead of 2024.  Another so-called "conspiracy theory" appears to be coming true — this time, regarding voting and the 2024 elections.  A coalition comprised of more than 50 left-wing organizations — including AARP, the ACLU, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the League of Women Voters, and the NAACP — is pushing the Biden administration to increase voter registration and turnout among new immigrants and those who are currently in federal custody awaiting their trials ahead of the all-important 2024 elections.  The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights published a progress report titled "Strengthening Democracy," in which it calls on federal agencies to "work quickly to do everything they can" to make good on their commitments to President Biden's 2021 Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting, which the coalition describes as "a visionary EO that has the potential to make registration and voting more accessible for millions of Americans, including many communities historically excluded from the political process."

Maryland Democrat proposes law barring everyone under 25 from felony murder charges.  A Democratic delegate proposed a law in Maryland that would bar anyone under 25 years of age from being charged with felony murder.  Delegate Charlotte Crutchfield, a Democrat, made the proposition through the Youth Accountability and Safety Act, House Bill 1180, local news outlet WBFF reported.  A defendant in Maryland can be charged with felony murder if the person commits a murder during a felony crime, such as robbery.  Crutchfield and supporters of the bill say that the brain is not fully developed before age 25, so issuing so harsh a sentence is unfair.

The Editor says...
If your "brain is not fully developed," you should not vote.

The GOP will win by making voting harder for everyone.  I feel obliged to put to rest the absurd notion of making voting easier.  American citizenship is a pearl of great price.  Its voting privilege should be closely guarded.  It should not be farmed out to mail-in ballots where people who don't exist, people who are not citizens, imprisoned felons, and foreign nationals, all of whom seem eager to vote, can.  Worse, they are allowed to vote.  Voting in America should be made harder, not easier.

House Republicans move to forbid illegal aliens voting in DC.  The House of Representatives voted to overturn a D.C. law that would allow illegal aliens to vote in local elections.  In October 2022, the D.C. Council passed the "Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act," which gave legal non-citizens and illegal aliens the right to vote in the nation's capital.  The GOP-led House voted 260-173 to overturn the new law.  Forty-two Democrats joined the Republicans in opposing it.  [Video clip] [...] According to NBC News, approximately 50,000 residents in D.C. are non-citizens.

Censorship works only if you're dumb.  Much of today's hot topics involve Elon Musk disclosing details of Twitter's censorship of the New York Post article about Hunter Biden's laptop. [...] Apparently, the case being made is that the censorship of this article was done to impact the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden.  If that is indeed what occurred, this means that many American voters are low-I.Q., low info, easily impressionable cretins who have lost all ability to think for themselves without the influence of influencers.

The Voting Morons.  We now have two mentally damaged individuals in high office in this country, neither able to function as an independent adult.  How did they get there?  By being elected... with the addition of other means.  But it was the votes that created a situation where those "other means" could work.  In other words, the moron vote played a large role.  Tens of millions of voters who can't recognize a mentally crippled individual when they see one.  Who witness electoral cheating in front of their eyes as clearly as that of a three-card monte dealer but don't see it for what it is.  Who simply can't make the connection between the close of critical pipelines and gas costing six bucks at the pump.

Universal Suffrage in an Age of Rigged Elections.  It is insane to think that the average person — even if they are not a stoned college student — would have the requisite knowledge to make a legitimately informed decision about the fate of a nation or large region of a country.  This is not to say that average people aren't smart or that only a select few enlightened individuals possess a gnostic illumination that allows them to see how the government should act.  But it is just a fact that given the responsibilities we all have, and the time we all don't have, the complexities and inner workings of government systems are beyond the knowledge set of most people.  [Indeed], given the statistics on how much debt most people carry and how bad our society is at handling money, I would venture that most people struggle with the concept of balancing a checkbook, let alone a national budget.  Imagine a scene wherein the people who live in your neighborhood were consulted and given a vote as to how you should manage your money.  I like my neighbors, but there is no possible way I would ever think they had the necessary insight or moral authority to vote with other neighbors on whether I should put more money into a pension fund or pay off my car.  Yet, every few years we head to the ballot box and place our votes for politicians to manage the money that they take from us so that they can spend it on things we don't get to vote on.

Only American citizens should vote in American elections.  One of the greatest responsibilities Americans have is to participate in our representative government by exercising our ability to vote.  As an American citizen, casting a ballot is a civic duty and a unique privilege.  For naturalized citizens, this is a reward after tireless work, patience, and dedication put into the process of becoming a citizen.  Sadly, some on the Left are diminishing and disrespecting the hard work of naturalized citizens by expanding the privilege to vote in American elections to non-Americans.  By doing so, they are denigrating years of struggle that naturalized citizens go through simply to achieve political power.  They use words like "equity" and "voting rights" as a rouse to cover their raw political desires.  But in reality, they are giving unfair preference to individuals who have not made an effort or made the sacrifices to obtain American citizenship.  Clearly, some on the Left do not think very highly of American citizenship; otherwise, they would afford it the respect it deserves.  In states like Maryland, New York, and California, non-American citizens living there can vote in certain elections.  Other states like New Mexico have even introduced legislation allowing non-citizens to vote.  This is lunacy.  Non-Americans should not be allowed to vote in American elections — period.  Only American citizens should have that right.  Does the government of Mexico allow non-citizens to vote in its elections?  How about France or Germany?  Of course, they don't, nor should they.

Don't Be Fooled: 'Nonpartisan' Get-Out-The-Vote Efforts Always Benefit Democrats.  Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson has said his city will use a private grant to conduct door-to-door canvassing by the city's election officials to urge people to vote.  To many people, it would seem that nothing could be as innocuous as a simple "nonpartisan" get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort, even if it is financed by private grants to election officials.  It might sound fair enough, if the mayor's election staff takes no partisan position, and advocates for no particular candidates in their efforts, and given that election officials are required by law to operate in a nonpartisan fashion.  But as The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway tweeted at the time, "Zuckerberg-style targeted private financing — and collusion with supposedly non-partisan election administration — of GOTV operations in Democrat regions is a horrific attack on election integrity."

Most U.S. adults can't name the three branches of government, survey finds.  Less than half of Americans can name the three branches of the federal government — executive, legislative and judicial — according to an annual survey of civics knowledge conducted for the Constitution Day holiday on Saturday.  Respondents to the Annenberg Public Policy Center's survey also had little understanding of the impact of a Supreme Court ruling, and few could enumerate the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.  "My impression is that even in prestigious universities, maybe 30% of all students could pass the civics test required of incoming immigrants," said Joseph Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning constitutional historian.

If Teenagers Are Too Young to Purchase a Firearm, They're Definitely Too Young to Vote.  On July 5, 1971, then-President Richard Nixon signed the 26th Amendment into law, officially lowering the voting age in all U.S. elections from 21 to 18.  Finally, a movement that began in earnest after 18-year-olds not eligible to vote were drafted into service in World War II, then intensified with Korea and Vietnam, was constitutionally codified.  No more would our young people be demanded to serve their country while at the same time denied the right to have a voice in its political process. [...] Sadly, far too few of today's young people resemble their predecessors in grit, sacrifice, courage, honor, or any other of the character traits that would typically define the torch-bearers of a great civilization.  Instead of fighting meaningful battles and solving real issues that affect the future of humanity, these perpetually masked ninnies are 'fighting' to mutilate and brainwash children, abort as many unborn babies as possible, disarm law-abiding citizens, mandate a useless mRNA jab against a virus variant that is no longer circulating, and force you to wear a moist, bacteria-laden piece of cloth over your face in public anytime there's the slightest risk of someone getting the sniffles.  In today's world of abundance and governmental handouts, they clearly have entirely too much time on their hands.

New Poll on the Supreme Court Confirms Americans Are Absolute Dummies.  With a Senate hearing underway to consider confirming a new justice, that national treasure C-SPAN has commissioned another one of its timely polls on the Supreme Court. [...] Here's a sampling of the results from 1,011 Likely Voters, many of whom shouldn't be allowed to:
  •   44 percent of the voters don't know that the three branches of government are co-equal.
  •   Of the 44 percent who believe the branches are not equal, half (51 percent) think the Executive has the most power, a quarter (26 percent) believe the Legislative has the most clout, and an ignorant 23 percent think it's the Judiciary.
  •   Nearly half (46 percent) say the Supreme Court is a partisan institution.
  •   61 percent claim they are closely following Joe Biden's Court nominee.
  •   However, 72 percent of those same voters are lying.  They have no idea who the nominee is up for the confirmation.
  •   Also, fully 85 percent are unaware that the nominee is a black female judge.  Which means Joe Biden might not reap quite as much political credit as he figured when he simply ruled out all other kinds, colors, and genders of Americans in his secretive selection process.
  •   58 percent of the voters think this Senate confirmation process is not an "effective and fair tool" for approving Court nominees or they have no idea about it.

Why Not Fewer Voters?  [Scroll down]  Categorically disenfranchising felons has always been, in my view, the intelligent default position, with re-enfranchisement on a case-by-case basis.  It is likely that under such a practice some people who ought to be considered rehabilitated would be unjustly excluded.  But all eligibility requirements risk excluding somebody who might make a good voter, or a better voter than someone who is eligible.  There are plenty of very smart and responsible 16-year-olds who would make better voters than their dim and irresponsible older siblings or their parents.  That doesn't mean we should have 16-year-old voters — I'd be more inclined to raise the voting age to 30 — it means only that categorical decision-making by its nature does not account for certain individual differences.

Social Media Erupts Over Woman Who Focuses On Getting Her Dad To Vote For Biden While He Is Dying.  Social media erupted on Sunday over a TikTok video that was posted to Twitter showing a woman holding up note cards that explained how she got her terminally ill father, a supporter of President Donald Trump, to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.  [Numerous tweets]

Massachusetts changes rules to count DEAD people's votes this year, if they voted before they died.  New voting rules in Massachusetts will now allow ballots cast before Election Day to be counted even if the voter has died.  The state legislature has changed earlier voting rules due to the coronavirus pandemic and will now allow the inclusion of votes by anyone who died after casting an early ballot.  Any concerns about the temporary law and its impact on the total voting numbers were downplayed by Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin as "not a significant number of ballots."

The Editor says...
To reiterate, if you do not expect to live beyond Election Day, you should not vote.

Mayor Pete's Rainbow Army.  From day one, orientation day, when your son or daughter is asked which gender pronoun he or she prefers, young Americans are overwhelmed with obsessive, unrestrained, unhinged identity ideology.  They are force-fed a nonstop toxic diet of race, gender, and sexual identity.  Thus, in 2008, college students wanted Barack Obama to be president because, first and foremost, he's African American.  In 2016, college students wanted Hillary Clinton to be president because, first and foremost, she's a woman.  In 2020, college students want Pete Buttigieg to be president because, first and foremost, he's homosexual.  Race, gender, sexual orientation:  their trinity, their alpha and omega.

MA town launches experiment to give 16 year olds the vote.  If the state gives its approval, the town of Brookline, Massachusetts will gain a lot of new voters in the future.  At a town meeting last week, residents voted to extend the right to vote in municipal elections to 16 and 17-year-olds.  The vote wasn't even close either, with the measure passing by a two to one margin. [...] Are kids at the age of sixteen old enough to be considered adults?  Not if you ask the state government.  In fact, if you commit a crime, the state is currently looking at treating you as a juvenile until the age of 21.  Here are some other fun facts.  As of this year, you can't decide whether or not you should buy tobacco until you are 21.  Similarly, you can't buy a beer in the Bay State until you are 21.  You can't even get married until you're 18 without the permission of either your parents or a judge.

The Editor says...
If 16-year-olds are allowed to vote, they should also be tried as adults in criminal courts, potentially drafted, and held responsible for any contracts they sign.

Oregon Legislators Push To Lower Voting Age To 16.  In the never ending race to the bottom, Oregon state senator Shemia Fagan is introducing legislation that would lower the voting age in the state to 16.  Citing abortion and stripping away 2nd Amendment rights, Fagan introduced the legislation on Monday [2/18/2019], at the behest of doorbelling-for-democrats operation known as the Bus Project. [...] Not only are the democrats targeting more naive voters, but this is partially in response to the pushback against a massive gun grab bill, that was supposedly written by high schoolers.

The Editor says...
Anyone who has never held down a job should not vote.  Those who do not pay taxes should not vote.  Anyone whose most valued possession is his or her cell phone should not vote.  Anyone whose primary news source is Facebook should not vote.

Employment and the Vote.  Each election year liberal politicians brazenly and shamelessly make election promises telling the unemployed that if they put them in office, they will forcefully confiscate financial resources from working citizens and convert it into free stuff to give away. [...] Radical situations call for radical solutions.  Along with being a U.S. citizen, being employed should also be a prerequisite for gaining the right to vote.  In this way, only those who contribute to wealth control its application.

Skid Row voter fraud:  Prosecutors say homeless [people were] offered cash, cigarettes in exchange for hundreds of signatures.  An alleged voter fraud scheme in which Skid Row's homeless were being offered money and cigarettes in exchange for "false and forged signatures" on ballot petitions and registration documents has been uncovered in Los Angeles, prosecutors announced Tuesday.  The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office says it is charging nine people in total with felony counts related to the offenses, which are said to have happened during the 2016 and 2018 election cycles.  "The defendants are accused of engaging in the solicitation of hundreds of false and/or forged signatures on state ballot petitions and voter registration forms by allegedly offering homeless people $1 and/or cigarettes for their participation," a statement from the attorney's office reads.

Parkland school shooter registered to vote while in jail, outraging victim's father.  Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz became a registered Florida voter behind bars in Broward County outraging the father of one of his victims.  "He's a mass murderer, he's already confessed and he shouldn't have the right to vote," Andrew Pollack, 52, told Fox News Saturday [11/10/2018].

Washington, DC, could let 16-year-olds vote for president.  WTOP-FM reports the bill won 3-0 approval in the Judiciary and Public Safety committee Thursday [11/1/2018] and will get a final vote before the full council this month.  The 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizens 18 and older the right to vote, but scholars have said it doesn't prevent a state, or in this case, the nation's capital, from setting a lower age.

Stupid people should not vote!
Why college students don't vote absentee?  They don't know where to buy a postage stamp.  A Fairfax County focus group this summer found many college students who have gotten an absentee ballot simply fail to send it back because a U.S. Postal Service stamp seems to be a foreign concept to them.  "One thing that came up, which I had heard from my own kids but I thought they were just nerdy, was that the students will go through the process of applying for a mail-in absentee ballot, they will fill out the ballot, and then, they don't know where to get stamps," Lisa Connors with the Fairfax County Office of Public Affairs said.  "That seems to be like a hump that they can't get across."

The Election's Ominous Results.  Yes, it is good that Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, especially in light of revelations of her private email security breaches and pay-for-play administration of the State Department.  If true, she belongs in prison.  However, what is ominous is the number of voters who, despite all that was known of her crimes, still voted for her.  This is not a sign of a healthy American electorate.  It seems the same citizens who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 after his disastrous first four years voted for her.  Many people who go the polls in our generation are simply not thinking.  They are less informed and thoughtful citizens than idolaters.

Unfortunately, Most Voters Are 'Idiots'.  [M]ost people who go into the voting booth today will be primarily choosing a president based not on a reasoned, dispassionate assessment of which candidate will best serve the interests of the larger society.  Rather, they will be voting for the candidate who confirms them in their personal prejudices, limited perspectives, and self-centered desires.

Should "stupid" Americans be allowed to vote?  It was the "stupidity of the American voter," as Obamacare architect Gruber said, that Obama counted on, and it is that same voter that Hillary is counting on to get her to the White House.

Florida:  Taco Trucks Used to "Lure" Democrat Voters to Polls.  Video out of Florida shows the Clinton machine is busing people to the polls and luring them to vote using taco trucks.  Now we know what the DNC meant when they said they needed more "taco bowl outreach."  SEIU, which has endorsed Hillary Clinton, appears to be behind the scam.

California governor signs bill allowing felons to vote from their jail cells.  Convicted felons serving jail sentences in California county jails will now get to participate in an activity besides three meals a day and recreation time:  voting in elections.  Governor Jerry Brown signed new legislation into effect as part of a reform backers say will help prisoners transition back into society while still serving time for their crimes.  The bill he signed would let thousands of felons doing time in county jails to vote in California elections, the LA Times reported.

California Could Let Felons Behind Bars Vote, Despite What the State Constitution Says.  California Gov. Jerry Brown is considering whether to sign a bill that would allow tens of thousands of incarcerated felons to vote, while continuing to deny the vote to others.  The Legislature sent a bill to Brown's desk that would restore voting rights to an estimated 50,000 convicted felons who are behind bars in county jails, but not to felons who are serving their sentence in prisons.

'Mandatory voter registration' is a bad idea.  Mandatory Voter Registration — Progressives want to sign up everyone automatically without affirming citizenship or an opt-out.  What they call "automatic voter registration" is really "mandatory voter registration."  Here's why it's a bad idea:
  •   Not everyone wants to be registered to vote.  Forcing inclusion against their will is an act of a top-down, authoritarian government.
  •   It violates a citizen's basic free speech rights, such as expressing displeasure with the electoral process by not participating.  Then there's the issue of privacy — voter registration lists are publicly available.
  •   It opens the door for vote fraud, because it fills voter rolls with people who may have no intention of ever voting, or transients, or college students who would be able to vote again in their home districts.
  •   There is no reliable way to ensure that all registrants are actually U.S. citizens.  Some states now issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

Opposing viewpoint:
A Feasible Roadmap to Compulsory Voting.  In years with presidential elections, voter turnout peaks at just above 60 percent.  In off-year elections, turnout dips to 40 percent or less.  In November 2014, only 36 percent of eligible voters went to the polls — the lowest share in more than 70 years.  Participation this paltry calls into question the political system's legitimacy.  It also hints that election outcomes might be quite different if more people bothered to show up.

Mike Rowe:  Celebrities Only Encourage Their Fans To Vote So Liberals Will Get Elected.  Mike Rowe said he doesn't think celebrities would encourage "the masses" to vote if they thought it meant a conservative would get elected.  After a reader asked the 54-year-old host of "Dirty Jobs" to encourage his fans to vote in the presidential election this November, Rowe politely declined with a brutal response.

Fareed Zakaria calls for mandatory voting.  Demonstrating that no idea is so bad that it will lack adherents, CNN's most fatuous pundit advocated on air for mandatory voting.  Just what we need: another restriction on our freedom, the government telling us what we must do.  And what kind of votes will be cast?  Will they be knowledgeable electors, or merely casual drive-by votes in which a trivial factor or a vague impression, not powerful enough to impel a person to vote, now becomes the basis for a choice?  This spectacularly awful idea has only one merit for one party.  It would almost certainly assure that Democrats would establish a one-party state.

Violent Felons Are Trying to Get Their Gun Rights Back in Virginia.  As congressional Democrats spent the week pressing for the passage of new gun control legislation, violent felons in Virginia were able to take steps towards having their right to own a firearm restored thanks to action taken by the state's Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe.  When McAuliffe restored the voting rights for 206,000 felons in a move critics say was politically motivated, he also opened the door for those felons to have their right to own a firearm restored.  Previously, felons would individually have to petition the executive branch to have their civil rights restored.  Petitioners would have to fill out an application to the secretary of the commonwealth and submit a letter to the governor explaining why they deserve to have their rights restored.

The Editor says...
I can see where a state might restore a convicted felon's rights after a period of 15 or 20 years of good behavior, post-incarceration, but to forgive and forget as soon as his prison sentence is completed is reckless and highly premature.  The lasting stigma of a felony conviction is supposed to be part of its value as a deterrent.

We must weed out ignorant Americans from the electorate.  Never have so many people with so little knowledge made so many consequential decisions for the rest of us.  A person need only survey the inanity of the ongoing presidential race to comprehend that the most pressing problem facing the nation isn't Big Business, Big Labor, Big Media or even Big Money in politics.  It's you, the American voter.  And by weeding out millions of irresponsible voters who can't be bothered to learn the rudimentary workings of the Constitution, or their preferred candidate's proposals or even their history, we may be able to mitigate the recklessness of the electorate.

The Prison Vote.  The corrupt governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, announced the other day that ex-cons will be granted the vote just in time of the presidential election.  His assumption is that, identity politics being what it is, the ex-con vote will naturally flock to Hillary Clinton, supporting someone they see as their own.  There has always been an assumption that convicts, if given the chance, will vote for people like themselves.  That's the assumption.  The reality is something different.  Ex-cons tend not to vote at all.  Those who would be inclined to vote are those who have gone the other way with their lives, embracing religion or social advocacy to help ex-cons get on the right path.  It's a small club that will not make a difference in an election.

Gov. McAuliffe to Ex-Cons: 'I Want You Feeling Good About Yourself and Voting'.  Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) says he issued an executive order restoring the voting rights of convicted felons to say, "I want you feeling good about yourself and voting.  "I'm restoring voting rights, I'm not giving people back gun rights.  I'm not commuting anyone's sentence," McAuliffe told PBS NewsHour on Friday [4/22/2016].

Obama Criticizes Difficulty of Voting in U.S.: 'Australia Has Got Mandatory Voting'.  Speaking at the University of Chicago Law School yesterday [4/7/2016], President Barack Obama criticized what he described as the difficulty of voting in the United States of America.  "We really are the only advanced democracy on Earth that systematically and purposely makes it really hard for people to vote," he said.  "Maybe the single biggest change that we could make in our political process that would reduce some of the polarization, make people feel more invested, restore integrity to the system, would be just make sure everybody is voting," said Obama.  "Australia has got mandatory voting.  You start getting 70-80 percent voting rates, that's transformative."

The Editor says...
The president is lying when he says this country intentionally makes it difficult to vote.  Compulsory voting will not "make people feel more invested" any more than jury duty does.  Most Americans see jury duty as a chore, despite the government's efforts to make it look like a great honor (in the propaganda film shown to the jury pool when they arrive).  Nor is there any reason to believe that mandatory voting would "restore integrity to the system."  The Democrats could "restore integrity to the system" by supporting Voter-ID laws that keep dead people from voting, and by prosecuting voter fraud more vigorously.  Barack H. Obama, a/k/a Barry Soetoro, hates this country and wants to change it into something it has never been.  I want this country to be led by a President who will preserve and defend the Constitution, as well as our cultural traditions, and make America what it was before the Left ruined it.  We don't need laws that are "transformative."  If anything, we need fewer laws on the books and less transformation.

A Crisis in Civic Education.  At present, a majority of the four-year college graduates answering a multiple-choice survey were unable to identify the method for amending the Constitution or the process for presidential impeachment.  Nearly half failed to identify the correct term lengths for the houses of Congress.  Ten percent thought that Judith Sheindlin — "Judge Judy" — is on the Supreme Court.  A Crisis in Civic Education offers recommendations to colleges, alumni, foundations, and lawmakers to turn from civic illiteracy to vibrant, empowered participation in the nation's civic process.

Our Poorly Educated Electorate.  Nearly half of college graduates do not know the correct term lengths of Congress.  One-third of college graduates, and more than half of the general population, cannot identify the Bill of Rights as a group of constitutional amendments.  The results are grave, but they are not surprising considering the poor curricular quality in high-school and college education.  The Department of Education's National Assessment of Educational Progress has shown that virtually all eighth graders, and 75 percent of high-school seniors, are not proficient in civics.  The DOE has since dispensed with the high-school exam, but ACTA's recent surveys of college graduates show that eight years of education, from middle school to a bachelor's degree, matter little when it comes to proficient civic knowledge.  Of the more than 1,100 college and university curricula that ACTA studies annually, only 18 percent require a course in U.S. history or government.

Dumb, Dumber and Democrat.  Today, Loser-ism thrives as Bernie Sanders, the proud socialist who would have been considered a veritable whack job in previous times, promises his beguiled and oblivious audience free college, health care, housing; you name it.  Watching his audience of losers presents the best argument yet for voters being taxpayers at least 35 years old.  Here we are again with deranged youth swaying an election.  These are the same catastrophic mindless beings who helped win two terms for Barack Obama; the most destructive and divisive President in U.S. history.

Outgoing Kentucky governor restores voting rights for thousands of felons.  Kentucky already restores voting rights to some nonviolent convicted felons, but the felon must apply to the governor's office, which approves them on a case by case basis.

Forced voting follies.  [T]he notion that forcing people who don't care about politics to vote will make them more engaged and thoughtful citizens is ludicrous.  We force juvenile delinquents (now called "justice-involved youth" by the Obama administration) and other petty criminals to clean up trash in parks and alongside highways.  Is there any evidence this has made them more sincere environmentalists?  If we gave every student in the country straight A's, that would make all the education trend lines look prettier, but it wouldn't actually improve education.

Misinformed Electorate, Not Trump, Is Real Danger.  The media seem to think that participation in elections is a big deal.  [...] Despite many people who urge us all to vote, as a civic duty, the purpose of elections is not participation.  The purpose is to select individuals for offices, including president of the United States.  Whoever has that office has our lives, the lives of our loved ones and the fate of the entire nation in his or her hands. [...] If you want to fulfill your duty as a citizen, then you need to become an informed voter.  And if you are not informed, then the most patriotic thing you can do on Election Day is stay home.

Obama Unleashes His Pro-Criminal Agenda.  Because it needs their votes, the Left is pressing for the restoration of felons' voting rights.  Of course, a criminal record carries with it a degree of social stigma, as it should.  Removing or watering down that socially beneficial stigma reduces disincentives to commit crimes and hinders the marginalization of the antisocial.  Without stigma and social ostracism, society would eventually collapse.  This is fine by our malignantly narcissistic Marxist president who, seeing the law in capitalist America largely as an instrument of oppression, seeks to blunt and retrofit it.

Trolling For Voters: Dems Push Bill To Restore Voting Rights For Ex-Felons.  Democrats don't care about their rights, Democrats are just trolling anywhere they can for new voters for 2016 and beyond.

Bill would restore voting rights for ex-felons.  A Democratic bill unveiled this week would allow former convicted felons released from prison to vote in federal elections.  The measure would create a uniform federal standard applicable to ex-felons who are no longer in prison.  It would not apply to state elections.

The Editor says...
Except for the few who have been pardoned, there is no such thing as an ex-felon.

No Election Day for dummies.  When President Obama was elected president in 2008 on a promise to "transform" America, most voters didn't have a clue to what he meant, and he has transformed as much as he could get by with.  He's harder at work than ever.  One of his baddest bad ideas is mandatory voting.

Compulsory Voting is Unconstitutional.  President Obama recently praised the idea of "mandatory voting," saying it would be "transformative" and "completely change the political map in this country," showing again how unbound he feels by the limits imposed on the power of government by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  The president apparently does not believe that the right to speak, which is protected under the First Amendment, includes the right not to speak.  And there is no question that we are speaking when we make our choices in the ballot booth.  When we don't vote, we are again making a choice, a choice not to speak that also sends a political message.

Obama's Mandatory Voting Proposal: Typically Fascist at Heart.  Nothing our president, Barack Hussein Obama, does at this point in his benighted administration should come as a shock to anybody who heard him utter the words "fundamental transformation" back in late 2008, once he knew the McCain fix was in and the election was in the bag.  But his suggestion a few days ago that voting should be mandatory needs to be studied by all to see the pure essence of Obamaism — and then beware of it.  Like everything Obama and the Left propose, this crackpot idea is couched and masked in all the usual "progressive" disguises.  It's "fair," and about "equality."  When in fact it's neither of those things.

Obama retreats from mandatory voting push amid backlash.  The White House Thursday [3/19/2015] walked back President Obama's comments in favor of mandatory voting in the U.S.  "The president was not making a specific policy prescription for the United States," said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.  At a town-hall event in Cleveland on Wednesday [3/18/2015], Mr. Obama described compulsory voting as "a better strategy" in the short term than pushing for a Constitutional amendment to counter increased campaign spending in the U.S. since the Supreme Court's ruling in the "Citizens United" case.

Make Leadership, Not Voting, Mandatory.  Take two major ails of the U.S. political system:  1. Declining voter participation, particularly among young and minority voters who are most likely to feel disenfranchised.  2. An unhealthy approach to financing campaigns after Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that outlawed restrictions on political spending.  Obama's prescription?  Force everybody to vote.

The Editor says...
If you don't vote, you can feel "disenfranchised" all you want, but you have no room to complain.

Obama Urges Soviet-Style Voting Laws.  Forcing Americans to vote under threat of legal penalty would help to fundamentally transform America, President Obama told a town hall-style meeting in Cleveland yesterday [3/18/2015].  It is the latest radical leveling scheme that flows from the president's totalitarian impulses.  It is also consistent with his support for "Net Neutrality," which is a form of censorship and his opposition to the landmark Citizens United decision that affirmed a conservative activist group's constitutionally guaranteed right to make a movie critical of Hillary Clinton.  It is an assault on American democracy itself because one of the ways that people express themselves politically is to stay home on Election Day.  Compelled speech is not free speech.

Mandatory Voting? Is Obama Kidding, Or Just Plain Dumb?  This isn't a new concept.  Liberals have been pushing the idea of forcing people to the polls for years as a way to increase turnout.  What's surprising is that Obama would grab on to this sophomoric idea.  Just making voting mandatory, for example, won't guarantee high participation rates.  Turnouts in mandatory voting countries vary widely, from as low as 47% to as high as 90%.  And participation has been dropping steadily since the 1980s in countries with and without compulsory voting laws.  A 2014 study found that "compulsory voting laws fail to correlate with a statistically significant boost in turnout" in several countries.

Welcome To Obama And Hillary's Fun Camp.  The White House appears to be walking back President Barack Obama's call for mandatory voting.  "The president was not making a specific policy prescription for the United States," press secretary Josh Earnest was quoted as saying.  Well, he did stop short of a "specific policy prescription."  But somehow when he transitioned from "I don't think I've ever said this publicly, but I'm going to go ahead and say it now" to "In Australia and some other countries, there's mandatory voting," it didn't sound like he was just sharing a tidbit he learned from pub trivia.

Why Mandatory Voting Is a Bad Idea.  President Obama thinks that forcing us to vote might be a good idea.  That he could favor punishing people for not voting — which means taking their money by force and imprisoning them if they resist — is unsurprising.  The essence of government is violence — aggressive, not defensive, force.  Government is not usually described in such unrefined terms, but consider its most basic power:  taxation.  If you can't refuse the tax collector with impunity, you are a victim of robbery.  It doesn't matter that government claims to render "services" if you don't want them.

Obama calls for mandatory voting in U.S..  President Obama, whose party was trounced in last year's midterm election due to poor turnout among Democrats, endorsed the idea of mandatory voting Wednesday [3/18/2015].  "It would be transformative if everybody voted," Mr. Obama said during a town-hall event in Cleveland.  "That would counteract [campaign] money more than anything.  If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country."  Mr. Obama raised the subject during a discussion of curbing the influence of campaign donations in U.S. elections.  The president said he had never discussed the idea publicly before, but said Australia and some other countries have compulsory voting.

The Editor says...
Which countries enforce mandatory voting?  Lists can be found here and here.

Should non-citizens in the U.S. vote?  As of Jan. 1, 2012, an estimated 13.3 million lawful permanent residents lived in the United States, and 8.8 million of them were eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship but had not done so.  In California, 2.48 million out of 3.4 million green-card holders were eligible to apply but chose not to.  And, of course, not all non-citizens residing in this country are "lawful."  An estimated 11 million people live here without permission, though President Obama recently took action to defer the deportation of as many as half of them.

Brown signs package of bills to encourage voting.  Months after statewide voter turnout hit a historic low of 25% in this year's primary election, Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday [9/26/2014] signed eight bills aimed at getting more Californians to participate in the political process.

Liberals as Low Information Voters.  For several years now we have heard much of the plague of "low information voters" — those legions of the supposedly ignorant who walk, clueless on the issues, into our polling places, casting their votes for candidates the details of whose programs are as familiar to them as quantum mechanics.  But we may have a more significant problem. [...] I'm talking about the workaday liberal, the well-educated professionals who are our friends, relatives and neighbors.  They are, increasingly, low information voters, living in willful or perhaps willed blindness.

Judicial Watch, AEF Challenge Obama Admin For States' Right To Block Noncitizen Voters.  Judicial Watch has launched a nationwide effort to support election integrity.  That effort continued this week, as we once again joined forces with the Allied Educational Foundation (AEF) to file an amicus curiae brief with the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in support of Arizona's and Kansas's efforts to add proof of citizenship requirements to a federal voter registration form.  What is behind this legal challenge to the common-sense effort to make sure all votes cast are legitimate?  A leftist radical special interest group?  Well, yes and no.  It's the Federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), run by leftists in the Obama administration, which is appealing a lower court order requiring the EAC to allow the states to add the proof of citizenship requirements.

The Movement to Give the Vote to Non-Citizens Begins.  The New York state legislature is currently reviewing a bill to give the right to vote to nearly three million non-citizens.  The New York City Council is simultaneously reviewing similar legislation to allow non-citizens the right to vote in local elections.  There is a good chance that the legislation will pass.  This is, no surprisingly, supported by progressive New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.  Non-citizens can already vote in municipal elections in several cities in New York, Maryland, and Illinois.  San Francisco has been pushing this idea for years, and it is only a matter of time until it passes there.

New York Dem: It's time to give the vote to illegal aliens.  Daily Caller tells us it's the first bill of its kind in the nation; giving adults here illegally the opportunity to vote in state and local elections.  The legislation is being introduced by state Sen. Guestavo Rivera and is designed to "integrate illegal immigrants, who are estranged from participation in civic, economic and political life."  What could go wrong?

New York Dem: Illegals Should Have The Right To Vote.  New York state Sen. Guestavo Rivera wants to pass legislation to give illegal immigrants the right to vote in local and state elections, Reuters reports.  In terms of the broad benefits available to non-citizens, this bill is the first of its kind in America.  The main objective of the New York Is Home Act, according to Rivera, is to integrate illegal immigrants, who are estranged from participation in civic, economic and political life.  The legislation not only gives illegal immigrants the right to vote, but establishes a kind of second-tiered citizenship on a state level, in which illegal immigrants can apply for tuition assistance, health insurance and driver's and professional licenses, among other benefits.

In D.C. mayor's race, Vincent Gray has secret weapon: Support of growing ex-prisoner vote.  Above an official portrait of Mayor Vincent C. Gray, crisp silver lettering spells out a welcome to one of the shiniest new places in D.C. government — the Office on Returning Citizen Affairs. [...] The bustling facility is designed solely for convicted criminals, a center for training, job placement, housing services and other programs for a slice of the population growing by thousands each year.  Ex-offenders account for at least one in 10 D.C. residents and perhaps many more.

DOJ Argues to Court Against Rules to Prevent Foreigners From Voting.  Justice Department lawyer Bradley Heard was in court today trying to stop Kansas from ensuring that only citizens register to vote.  Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, relying on a United States Supreme Court opinion of last year, asked the federal Election Assistance Commission to permit him to ensure that only citizens were registering to vote.  The Election Assistance Commission said no, so Kris Kobach went to federal court.  Enter Eric Holder's Justice Department, as usual, opposing election integrity measures.

Holder's Felon Re-Enfranchisement [is] A Ruse To Unlock 2 Mil Dem Votes.  The Obama administration isn't satisfied with locking in votes for Democrats by giving amnesty to illegal immigrants.  Now it's also trying to unlock ex-con's votes through felon re-enfranchisement.

Holder: State Laws That Bar Felons From Voting Are 'Too Unjust to Tolerate'.  Three days after announcing that the U.S. Justice Department will recognize same-sex marriages in all legal matters, even in states that forbid it, Attorney General Eric Holder took a swipe at states that don't allow felons to vote.  "In many states, felony disenfranchisement laws are still on the books.  And the current scope of these policies is not only too significant to ignore — it is also too unjust to tolerate," Holder told a criminal justice forum at Georgetown University Law Center.

Holder: Repeal laws restricting voting by ex-felons.  Attorney General Eric Holder is calling Tuesday for the repeal of state laws that restrict the voting rights of millions of former prison inmates.  In a speech to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights at Georgetown University Law Center, Holder said it is "time to fundamentally re-think laws that permanently disenfranchise people who are no longer under federal or state supervision.''

Jail survey: Nearly three quarters of felons register as Democrats.  The authors, professors from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University, found that in some states, felons register Democratic by more than six-to-one.  In New York, for example, 61.5 percent of convicts are Democrats, just 9 percent Republican.  They also cited a study that found 73 percent of convicts who turn out for presidential elections would vote Democrat.  But despite recent moves in states to notify convicts that they can vote again, the study finds little evidence that they do, undercutting Democratic efforts to get them to the polls.

Study: Most Convicts Vote Democrat.  A scholarly study newly released in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science has revealed that most convicts in jail register as Democrats.  The study stated, "Democrats would benefit from additional ex-felon participation."  The professors who authored the study came from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University.

Va. ramps up restoration of voting rights to some felons.  Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) could restore the voting rights of 10,000 non-violent felons by the end of his administration — nearly twice the number he has granted in 3½ years in office, administration officials said Monday.  With no statewide felon database and no electronic records before 1995, the administration faces an uphill battle over the next six months to locate the thousands of former, non-violent felons scattered across the commonwealth.

If you vote for someone who is in prison and cannot represent you in Congress, you are a fool.
Democrat Robin Kelly wins special Illinois House election, but what about prison?  Despite the endorsement of President Obama, Robin Kelly easily won election Tuesday night [4/9/2013] in a special House election to represent Illinois' troubled Second Congressional District.  The sprawling urban-suburban district, containing Chicago's ugly South Side, was formerly represented by Jesse Jackson Jr., who like a number of Illinois politicians will be residing in a federal penitentiary for a while.

The Watercooler — Let's Allow Felons to Vote.  One of the primary reasons I battle depression and discouragement related to political matters is because of the state I live in — California.  The state that I have watched self-destruct from — by today's standards — a relatively conservative state that gave us Ronald Reagan and that used to be the standard bearer in quality education, to being the laughing stock of the nation as we have allowed the Dems to gain a super-majority in both chambers in Sacramento.  Well, now we are only starting to see the foolishness that a super-majority of Dems can fabricate as they tamper with legislation to — among other things — change election protocol.

Why Obamacare Offers Voter Registration: Because it has always has been a vote-buying scheme.  During the past week conservatives have been all atwitter, as it were, about a development that shouldn't have surprised anyone with the slightest familiarity with the Obama administration or the Democrat party.  It seems that the online application drafted by HHS for those who wish to buy health coverage through Obamacare's insurance exchanges asks applicants if they would like to register to vote, and facilitates that process if the answer is "yes."  Conservatives are outraged that "reform" is being used to bolster the roles of registered Democrats.

Wrong Battle, Wrong Enemy.  Here is the problem:  low-information voters are a big chunk of the electorate, especially in the Democratic Party, but the Republican Party isn't free of them either.  These are the voters who could not tell you if the national debt is $16 million or $16 trillion.  They don't know anything about the criticisms of how our government handled Benghazi.  Ben Ghazi?  Isn't he an actor?  Fast & Furious is a movie, not a scandal.  They know that gay marriage is a good thing because all their favorite actors and musicians think it is so cool!  And "assault weapons" are those guns they see in movies, firing hundreds of rounds a minute.

Low-Info Voters Just Not Interested In Politics.  How many times have you tried to have a serious conversation about current events only to have your listeners say, "I'm not interested in politics"?  These are the low-info voters that the Republicans have never been able to communicate with but the Democrats know exactly how to reach them.  That is why they concentrate their connections in the mainstream media and Hollywood and why these voters know more about the Kardashians than what the fiscal cliff means to the economy or where Benghazi is.

Low Information Voter Thoughts.  We have weekends off, thanks to unions.  If enough people join unions, we can get the other five days off.

Illegal aliens are illegal voters.

Illegal Aliens can vote in some US cities.  The U.S. Constitution grants voting rights only to American citizens.  However, in Montgomery County, Maryland, six cities (Garrett Park, Takoma Park, Somerset, Chevy Chase, Martin's Additions and Barnesville) allow illegal aliens to vote in local elections.

Purging illegal aliens from voter rolls isn't easy.  President Clinton signed the motor-voter legislation into law, hailing it for increasing voter participation by simplifying registration.  But many states do not verify citizenship when residents apply for licenses, which allows noncitizens to get on voting rolls.

[Thanks a lot, Bill.]

The illegal alien swing vote:  Why is it that we can't protect our elections from people who have no right to vote, no right to be here, and no right to undermine our safety or sovereignty?

Let immigrants vote?  No!  Our Constitution begins "We the people of the United States" not "We the inhabitants" or "We the taxpayers" or "We the consumers."  Our political institutions therefore ought to be reserved for the American people — citizens either by birth or by choice, joined in the common goal of forming a more perfect union.

No history, no study, no debate.  The Associated Press and various newspapers reported this month that the University of California at Los Angeles' Chicano Studies Research Center released a "study" that recommended allowing California's 4.6 million non-citizens to vote in local elections.  But there was no study.  There was no new research or in-depth information.

Brief introduction:
The same people who complain that Wyoming and Idaho have the same number of Senators as California and New York are now pushing for statehood for the District of Columbia, population 702,455.  The Democrats are gaming the system while they pretend to detest it.

Overview:
The 'Burn It Down!' Democrats.  In our system, the states matter.  Under the Democrats' vision, some states matter:  California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio, which, without the institutions of federalism, have among them the numbers and the power to effectively dominate the rest of the country.  At the time of the Founding, the people of the smaller states did not desire to enter into a union in which they and their interests would be dominated by the larger ones.  The people of the smaller states still do not wish to be politically dominated by the larger ones.  For that reason, the interests of the states as such — not mere aggregates of voters — are taken into consideration.  The Senate, as originally organized, existed to preserve the interests of the states as such against the opportunism and predation of the more populous House of Representatives — and against the ambitions of the executive, too. [...] The Electoral College ensures that the citizens in the less popular states are not reduced to serfdom by the greater numbers (and greater wealth) of the people in the more populous states.

The Electoral College Is Vital.  The key to the nation's success has been federalism.  Put simply, we are not the United STATE.  We are the United STATES.  That 'S' makes all the difference.  We are really a layered collection of fifty laboratories in which each state may pursue policies it deems best suited for its culture, geography, business environment, demographics, etc.

Voting against mob rule.  Most of the Founders were scholarly, erudite men.  Our founders were not only writers but readers of the great teachers of bygone eras.  Not only did they search the Bible, but the classic works of teachers and students of Grecian and Roman governmental innovation.
  •   Nowhere in the Bible is authorization for man to enjoy the right to govern himself through majority rule.
  •   The most infamous vote for justice (or injustice) was in the ballot to save Barabbas over saving God himself.
  •   The execution of Christ is one of history's most significant examples of "mob rule."
  •   When humanity received the Ten Commandments, there was no vote on its legitimacy
As they were writing the Constitution and its Amendments, the writings of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were fresh in the founder's minds.  In reading their work, no Constitutional amendments uses the phrase "right to vote."  Not in the original text nor the Bill of Rights.

Oh, by the Way, Trump Has Officially Won the Electoral College Vote.  It may seem somewhat anti-climactic, given that the outcome of the presidential race was clear in the wee hours of November 6, but Tuesday was the day the Electoral College formally met and cast their votes for the president and vice president, pursuant to 3 U.S. Code § 7.  The certified slates of electors for each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective states, beginning with Maryland and continuing through to Hawaii.  [Tweet]  And while it was Pennsylvania that made Trump's victory a certainty on Election Night (despite the fact that it took a while longer for some states to get their final tallies sorted — looking at you, California and Arizona), it was Texas that won the day for Trump on Tuesday.

Senate Democrats File Bill to Eliminate the Electoral College — They Need to Read the Constitution.  We are indeed fortunate to live in the United States, a nation that is governed by what has to be the wisest, most carefully crafted governing document that exists in the world today — the United States Consitution.  Every act that the national government is authorized to take on our behalf, every role, and every requirement for every elected official, is documented therein.  This includes elections, most particularly the method we use to elect the chief executive — the President of the United States.  As the country is a constitutional republic consisting of 50 sovereign states, each state holds its own election for a slate of electors, who meet to elect the president.  This is colloquially known as the Electoral College.  The slate of electors is expected to vote for the presidential candidate who won the state's elections, and by and large, that's what happens, barring the occasional "faithless elector."  Our elected representatives' roles are defined by the Constitution, and they take an oath to uphold that Constitution.  That being the case, it would be nice if some of them would read it; then we wouldn't be subjected to egregious stupidity like this:  [Tweet]

Two Factors That Cheated Trump Out Of Even More Electoral Votes.  There is no doubt that President-elect Donald Trump has won a sweeping victory, becoming only the second U.S. president to be elected to a second, non-consecutive term in one of the most remarkable political comeback stories in American history.  But his victory in the Electoral College would've been even bigger if two factors hadn't cheated him out of the additional votes he should have received.  Why do I say this?  Because of the jarring errors the Census Bureau admitted it made in its population numbers for multiple states, and its unfair inclusion of aliens in the population used for congressional apportionment.  That inclusion dilutes the votes of U.S. citizens, distorting representation in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the Electoral College.

This Election Shows Why The Electoral College Is A Genius Idea.  If we didn't have an Electoral College, we would still be waiting to learn who the next president is.  But wait, you say, Trump won the popular vote this time around, right?  Not so fast.  As of this writing, Trump is ahead by 3.7 million votes, but there are still more than 8 million votes to be counted — almost 5 million of which are in deep blue California.  If Harris managed to capture 72% of those remaining votes — a highly unlikely scenario to be sure — she'd have more votes than Trump.  Meanwhile, the opportunity to cheat would be enormous, and it would be far easier to do so.  With the Electoral College, if you want to steal an election you have to pick which states you can flip, and concentrate your efforts there.  That makes it much harder — but not impossible — to mask widespread cheating.  If the presidency were decided by popular vote, a nationwide voter fraud campaign could easily secure the necessary votes without leaving any obvious signs.

The Plot to Manage Democracy.  The shift to legal warfare was foreshadowed in the lead-up to the 2020 race.  One notable case involves the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), an election initiative launched in 2019 under the auspices of a different group, Protect Democracy, founded by a team of lawyers who had served as White House counsels under Obama.  The project, explained one of its founders, Ian Bassin, grew "out of concern that the Trump administration may seek to manipulate" the 2020 election.  The initiative gathered roughly 100 influential people, including leading Democratic officials, like Hillary Clinton's campaign chief John Podesta, and members of the media and NGO world, to wargame potential scenarios resulting from a contested election.  In one scenario, Podesta, playing the role of Joe Biden, refused to accept a Trump election victory and threatened to seize control over several West Coast states and secede from the rest of the country unless congressional Republicans agreed to demands, including the elimination of the Electoral College.  The move was sufficiently egregious to provoke criticism from other participants in the wargame.  And yet, according to the TIP report on the event, Podesta's secession gambit, far from a flight of personal fancy, was carried out "with advice from President Obama."

Tim Walz strikes a blow against democracy.  Tim Walz's calls for elimination of the Electoral College are just another attempt by Democrats to remove the guardrails that protect our country and the presidency.  The founding fathers knew that there was no more important part of setting up our system of government than the method of electing the chief magistrate of the United States.  As Alexander Hamilton noted in Federalist 68, the method they came up with "is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents." [...] It is an oversimplification to state that the Electoral College is designed only to prevent larger states from controlling smaller states' choice of president.  The actual goal of the Electoral College is to insulate the selection of the president from undue domestic and foreign influence by placing his selection in the hands of temporary direct representatives of the people of each state, rather than one political body.  The founding fathers felt this was desirable "to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder."

Conservatives Must Preserve The Electoral College.  Just the other day, Tim Walz stated explicitly that America needs to end the Electoral College.  Although the campaign quickly walked this back, the reality is that he was speaking for most Democrats.  That's why it's important for us to understand why the Electoral College matters and should continue.  Equality under the law is the bulwark of any free democratic nation that operates under the rule of law and values liberty and justice for all.  This includes making the value of votes as equal as possible across a vast country.  The U.S. Constitution's Framers brought this concept as close to perfection as possible.  They accomplished this by creating a democratic republic, not a pure democracy.  They were not so naïve as to think one person with one vote was enough to protect individual rights or that every vote would, by itself, carry equal weight.  The Electoral College was their answer, for it prevents majority one-party rule and protects the individual rights of the minority better than pure democracy.

Walz silent on support for eliminating Electoral College after Harris camp says it doesn't back ban.  Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, remained silent Thursday on whether he still supports eliminating the Electoral College, after the Harris campaign insisted his position did not reflect that of the campaign's.  "I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go.  We need a national popular vote," Walz said Tuesday during a campaign fundraiser at the home of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom.  Walz made similar comments at an earlier fundraiser in Seattle, as well.  While running for president in 2019, Harris said she was "open" to the idea of abolishing the Electoral College.  However, according to campaign officials pressed on the issue following Walz's remarks, eliminating the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote is not an official position of Harris' current campaign.

Tim Walz Says the 'Electoral College Needs to Go'.  Minnesota governor Tim Walz on Tuesday reiterated his support for abolishing the Electoral College and switching to a national popular vote as the sole means of electing presidents and their running mates.  While campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris on the West Coast, Walz suggested at two different fundraisers that he would prefer to focus on winning votes across the country rather than concentrate on key battleground states that could sway the upcoming presidential election as they have done in the past.  "I think all of us know the Electoral College needs to go.  We need, we need national popular vote, but that's not the world we live in," the Democratic vice-presidential nominee told donors in California governor Gavin Newsom's Sacramento home.  "So we need to win Beaver County, Pennsylvania.  We need to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania, win.  We need to be in western Wisconsin and win.  We need to be in Reno, Nevada, and win."

Tim Walz Kneecaps the Campaign Again With New Comments About Electoral College.  How many times have we heard the lie from Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, as well as Democrats and media, that former President Donald Trump is somehow a "threat to democracy" or a threat to the Constitution?  [Advertisement]  Indeed, Harris lied about Trump again during the bizarre interview with Howard Stern, where she, perhaps the weakest presidential candidate we have yet to see, also claimed that Trump was too weak to stand for the American people.  The guy who was shot in the ear and stood up, in the face of possible bullets, for the people.  It isn't Trump using lawfare against political opponents, trying to get them kicked off ballots, censor speech, or undermine the Supreme Court.  If one becomes president or vice president, you have to swear to uphold the Constitution.  But while Kamala's Stern interview was airing on Tuesday, guess what her running mate was doing on the same day?  Calling for the end of the Electoral College.

Constitutional Illiterates Howard Dean, MSNBC Host Display Their Ignorance on the Electoral College.  There are some moments in politics where you watch a candidate giving a speech, answering a point in a debate, or doing something dumb in general — and realize that you just saw a political career end.  In 2004, we saw one of those moments; I remember commenting to my wife at the time, "You just saw his career end, right there."  Turns out I was right; Howard Dean ended up dropping out of the 2004 Democratic primary after winning one state in the vote — his own Vermont, now best known for the daffy old Bolshevik, Bernie Sanders.  [Video clip]  But Dean wasn't content to just go quietly into the night.  He may not be screaming anymore — at least not in public — but he's not making any more sense than he did then.  During a recent appearance on MSNBC's "The Beat" with host Ari Melber, Dean revealed how little he knows about the founding principles of our republic — and so did the host:  [Tweet with video clip]

How Pure Democracy Fails.  Fiddling with the Constitution to limit existing state rights in favor of pure majority rule should be rejected.  Yet, there's a movement afoot to do just that.  It really isn't all that new.  An earlier example of this movement culminated in 1913 with the ratification of the 17th Amendment.  The primary changes the 17th Amendment made to the Constitution was to provide for the direct popular election of U.S. senators, a function originally reserved only for the state's legislatures.  As a result, the ability of less-populated states to exercise their co-equal rights was eroded.  Presently, a push is gaining momentum to circumvent the Electoral College, in favor of a national popular vote.  Changing how Senate seats are assigned to states is also being advocated.  A "census-based" system like the one used for determining the number of seats in the House of Representatives, thereby, giving more populated states more seats and votes in the Senate.

The media and other Democrats couldn't care less about the little guy.  Small states get two Senators and one representative no matter how small their population is.  This gives them some say in how the government and country runs.  Otherwise, it would be much easier to move to having one state have way too much control of the rest of us.  Democrats can't stand the thought that small states have a say in who gets elected.  They essentially want to stack the vote just like they want to stack the Supreme Court.  It is pathetic that illegals are included when they allocate Congressional seats instead of just counting citizens but that still isn't enough of an advantage for Democrats.  California currently has 54 electoral votes.  Seven small states have three each for a total of 21.  Six other states have four for a total of 24.  So, California has nine more votes than the smallest thirteen states and that is just not a big enough advantage for Democrats.  They want to destroy the electoral college because they just can't rig elections as easily when it exists.

Obamala Is Open to Destroying the Electoral College.  In March 2019, Kamala Harris, who was dubbed the "female Obama," said she was open to discussing eliminating the Electoral College.  She didn't seem to understand it's constitutionally mandated so a handful of heavily populated states don't get to decide the president.  It would silence smaller states.  "I'm open to the discussion," Harris said in an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.  "There's no question that the popular vote has been diminished in terms of making the final decision about who's the president of the United States, and we need to deal with that, so I'm open to the discussion."  It would take a constitutional amendment.  States that have winner-takes-all within the state, like New York and California, deprive millions of votes.  In the last gubernatorial election, Long Island, Upstate, and Staten Island voted for Lee Zeldin, but Manhattan got to decide because of the millions who lived there.  Many people live there illegally.

Former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt on the Electoral College: 'We've Gotta Work Around It'.  Democrats have gotten a bit of an energy bump since Joe Biden's State of the Union Speech on Thursday.  But in the back smoky rooms of the Democrat National Committee, they have to know that Joe Biden spells bad news for their chances in 2024.  Whether Joe slept all day on Thursday or it was something else that got him to appear that focused and rejuvenated could be up for debate.  But what is certain is that the Democrats are nervous.  Part of what makes them nervous is third-party candidates, but they also may have their sights set on something else that could be a problem for them in November.  [Tweet]  For those not old enough to remember, former Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO) was the House Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995.

The Anti-Democratic Democratic Left.  At various times since the 2017 Trump inauguration, Democratic activists have sought to neuter the 235-year-old Electoral College by circumventing it through the so-called "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact."  The effort would force electors to reflect the national rather than their own states' votes.  Earlier, following the 2016 election, the Left organized a concentrated effort — saturating the media with ads featuring Hollywood celebrities — to convince electors to reject the popular vote counts in their states that Trump had won, and instead to become "faithless electors" and swing the election to Hillary Clinton.

The Editor says...
Rare double-italicization in original.  If I learned only one thing in 9th-grade English, and that may be the case, I learned that a word in the middle of an already-italicized phrase can be doubly italicized by putting it back into non-italicized letters.  This was taught when italicized words only appeared in books and newspapers, as none of us had ever seen a computer, and I doubt if anybody in town had an IBM Selectric with the separate italics type ball.  Anyway I remember learning this handy tip in 1967, but I think this is the first time I've seen a word double-italicized.

The impact of noncitizens on the Electoral College.  Noncitizens have significantly impacted our elections for decades, in more ways than one.  Let's start with the impact of noncitizens on the Electoral College.  The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that noncitizens constitute 6.5 percent of the U.S. population.  If that estimate is correct, we can calculate exactly how many of the electoral votes are assigned to that illegal element of our population.  The number is 29.  Who gets those 29 electoral votes?  Primarily, they are awarded to certain Democrat "sanctuary" states and to border states.  Those include Arizona, California, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Texas, and the State of Washington, along with Washington, D.C. Of course, with Biden's open border policy, the 29 noncitizen electors will rise sharply after the next Census.  In a close election, those noncitizen "electors" could change the presidential election results.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact vs. Equal Protection.  Fifteen states have passed similar legislation known as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC).  The compact will require each member state to award its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the greatest number of popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.  Within each of those states, the compact will have no binding legal effect until any number of states whose sum equals 270 electoral votes enacts the legislation.  The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment invalidates the NPVIC because the compact treats similarly situated voters of separate jurisdictions differently when both cast votes for presidential electors in winner-take-all jurisdictions.  Specifically, the NPVIC conditions the weight accorded a vote in one jurisdiction exclusively on the cumulative votes of all other jurisdictions to effect more political relevance to certain states.

Bipartisan Group of Democrat and RINO Senators Come to Agreement on Electoral Count Act.  The Electoral Count Act is a proposed United States federal law that adjusts the procedures set out in the US Constitution for the counting of electoral votes following a presidential election.  The Act was first enacted by Congress in 1887, ten years after the disputed 1876 presidential election, in which several states submitted competing slates of electors and a divided Congress was unable to resolve the deadlock for weeks.

Former VP Mike Pence rejects Trump claim he could have intervened in 2020 election, calls it 'un-American'.  Former Vice President Mike Pence delivered a speech in Florida Friday and pushed back against claims from former President Trump and his supporters that he had the ability to use his power to contest the 2020 presidential election.  "There are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, I possessed unilateral authority to reject electoral college votes," Pence said in the speech to the Federalist Society.  "And this week, our former president said I had the right to overturn the election.  President Trump is wrong... I had no right to overturn the election."  Pence continued, "Frankly there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president."

The Uniquely Dangerous Movement to End the Electoral College.  Over the years we have witnessed a reliable pattern develop in American politics:  When the Left loses, instead of changing its arguments or its candidates it opts to change the rules.  When Democrats lost the White House and President Trump filled three vacancies on the Supreme Court, they called for packing the Court.  When they failed to win a large enough majority to advance their radical agenda in the Senate, they called for abolishing the filibuster.  And perhaps most insidiously, after losing presidential elections, they have set their sights on scrapping the Electoral College. [...] Just nine states — including the liberal bastions of New York, Illinois, and California — make up more than 50 percent of our population.  The NPVIC [National Popular Vote Interstate Compact] would strip away the voices of Oklahomans, North Dakotans, Alaskans, Arizonans, and many others.  Some Democrats see this as a feature of the plan, not a bug.

Our Quadrennial National Convention:  The Electoral College.  America has sponsored a constitutionally authorized national convention every four years since the founding of the Republic.  All these conventions have done their jobs and honored their assigned agendas.  Alarmists who claim a federal amendments convention would rage uncontrolled should remember the success of our quadrennial national conventions.  We call them, collectively, the Electoral College.  This column explores the place of the Electoral College in the constitutional structure.  It also examines some of its lesser-known characteristics.

If red states don't reform Electoral College, it's mob rule in America.  We all witnessed the shocking moment on Election Day when Arizona instantly turned blue, for the second time in 76 years.  The way Arizona voted in the presidential election was determined solely by Phoenix.  Phoenix voted blue, so the Electoral College went blue.  In other words, every red county in Arizona had zero say in who was to become president, simply because the urban population officially overcame the rural population.  Once this happens, it's blue forever.  Take California as an example, or the state of Oregon.  Both are ruled by their cities, while both have enormous swaths of unrepresented conservative regions.  This is the fate of every red state in the nation, most alarmingly in deep red states adjacent to deep blue states.  Idaho will be the next flipped election.  Just like Phoenix once was, Boise is now the fastest growing city in the nation.  Where are Boise's immigrants coming from?  California.

The House impeachment brief endangers freedom of speech.  The brief filed by the House managers advocating for the conviction and disqualification of citizen Donald Trump contains an attack on freedom of speech for all Americans.  It declares that "the First Amendment does not apply at all to impeachment proceedings," despite the express language of the First Amendment that prohibits Congress from making any law, or presumably taking other action, that curbs freedom of speech.  The brief is based on a flawed reading of history and the role of freedom of speech in governance.  Its section on freedom of speech begins with a sentence which reveals its fundamental error as it claims that the "First Amendment exists to promote our democratic system."  This idea surely would have surprised the framers of the First Amendment, who believed in freedom of speech but not so much in democracy.  The framers of our constitutional system thought they were building a republic with limited suffrage and many checks on democracy in the United States.  The Electoral College, as it was conceived by the framers, was anything but democratic.

How Democrats are sneakily destroying the Electoral College.  Add the Electoral College to the list of American institutions that the Democrats have destroyed (along with education, media, entertainment, Silicon Valley, sports, big cities, the justice system, the family, the FBI-CIA, the Supreme Court, etc.).  By manufacturing massive fraudulent vote counts in the big cities they control, Democrats invalidate suburban and rural votes in key battleground states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona.  Elections simply become who can produce the most votes, which is most easily accomplished in large Democrat-run cities like Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee.  The Democrat machines that control those cities can effortlessly run up large vote counts for Democrats without fear of being found out by manipulating the voting rules and by manufacturing ballots.  Local Democrat judges "on the payroll" look the other way, while Big Media leads in the cover-up with information blackouts.  Large Democrat donors, Silicon Valley bigwigs, and geopolitical rivals like China bankroll the operation.  By relying on big city votes to swing the national elections, our electoral system degenerates into a de facto direct voting structure, thus invalidating the Electoral College and violating the Constitution.

Reducing the Consequences of Fraud in National Elections.  The Electoral College's design is that each state casts its votes for president and vice president based on the outcomes of elections within that state in a manner that the state's legislature directs.  Each state is afforded the number of votes equal to the whole number of senators and representatives for the state, with the District of Colombia also receiving three total votes.  Because each state has two senators and at least one representative, a feature of the Electoral College is that it provides those least populous states with three votes, whereas an allotment based strictly on their population would only allow them one electoral vote.  Because of this attribute, there are times when the popular vote breaks for one candidate and the electoral vote for the other.  Some consider this an undesirable artifact of an outdated election system and propose eliminating the Electoral College, replacing it with a national popular vote.  Within the current Electoral College, fraud in one location is limited in its effect on the national outcome.  The only electoral votes affected are from that state where the fraud occurred.  The votes from other states are unaffected.  This is an essential feature of the Electoral College — it provides a firebreak against the consequences of fraud.

What are the new SCOTUS justices thinking?  The reason for the Electoral College was to ensure that a few highly populated states could not always control election of the president.  If that were the case, the founding fathers reasoned that presidents would be elected who were beholden only to those states, and the other states would suffer because of it, through biased regulations or taxation.  If this fraudulent election is allowed to stand, then Joe Biden will be beholden to only a few corrupt politicians in four or five states, not even to people in the states themselves.  In the future, those who committed this fraud will only refine their tactics to make them more difficult to discover...and election fraud will become pervasive and permanent.

Hillary Clinton calls for Electoral College to be abolished after casting 1st vote in NY for Biden.  After casting her vote for Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris on Monday [12/14/2020], Hillary Clinton called for the abolition of the Electoral College.  She said the country should select the president based on the winner of the popular vote.  Clinton won the popular vote in her race against President Donald Trump in 2016.

WaPo's Editorial Board:  It's Time to End Election Protections for Rural America.  The Washington Post on Sunday penned an editorial calling for the elimination of the Electoral College.  According to the editorial board, it's time for America to be covered by the majority without the protections for the minority. [...] Without even trying, WaPo made the case for why the Electoral College is important.  Our Founding Fathers worried about a majority rule without a protection for the minority.  People in California and New York shouldn't matter more than those in Montana, Kentucky or Iowa.  Those who live in "flyover" shouldn't have their voices squashed because they live in areas that are rural and not densely populated.

If you think the Lefties hate the Electoral College now, just imagine this:
'Faithless electors' present scenario that could keep Trump in White House.  Remember "faithless electors" — those almost mythical rogues who Hillary Clinton fans once desperately hoped could save them from a victorious Donald Trump four years ago?  Well, there is still such a thing as faithless electors, they are still an incredible longshot, and Trump fans too can now place the very slimmest of hopes in them.

In defense of the Electoral College.  In the last twenty years, Democrats have twice lost presidential elections when the Electoral College has "trumped" the popular vote, leading to Republican victories.  First came George W. Bush's presidential victory over Al Gore in 2000, then Trump's shocker over Hillary Clinton in 2016.  Thus, radical Democrats demand the abolition of the Electoral College.  "It's undemocratic," they say.  "The will of the people should rule," they cry.  Yes, it's undemocratic, which, believe it or not, is an exceptionally good thing.  That's because the United States is not, and never has been a "democracy."

The Electoral College Produces Legitimate and Fair Outcomes.  By and large, we have bipartisan vigilance and the Electoral College System to thank for the viability of our Constitutional Republic.  Unlike local races, presidential elections and the Electoral College are decentralized.  They're comprised of 51 smaller elections adjoined into one, with local, state, and federal checks on accountability.  That doesn't mean fraud doesn't ever occur.  It's real, it happens in all 50 states, and it's something we must take seriously — especially when considering that, in 2016, a 40,000 or less margin determined the outcome of three key swing states.  Lawmakers need to take extra steps to crack down on fraud, particularly in problem states like California and Pennsylvania.  But in any potential periods of uncertainty — particularly in this absentee ballot-heavy election — we should show patience and confidence that the current system will work.  Rather than labeling the Electoral College as bad, we should devote our energy to quickly rooting out the fraud while holding our election officials and representatives to a high standard of transparency.

The Electoral College did more in 2016 than you might think.  As the attacks on the Electoral College continue, we can see how important the Electoral College is from the 2016 presidential election results.  Many observers have noted that Clinton's margin in California was greater than her plurality nationwide.  Many observers have also argued that without the Electoral College, a couple or a few large states would dominate elections.  What few if any have noticed is that in 2016, the Electoral College prevented 3 out of 3,141 counties with about 5% of the electorate and population from picking the president.

Weeks Before Election, Schiff Says He'd Support 'Doing Away With Electoral College'.  California Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff revealed over the weekend that he would "favor doing away with the Electoral College system."  During an appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher," Schiff made a slew of controversial comments about the election and Electoral College.  California Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff revealed over the weekend that he would "favor doing away with the Electoral College system."  During an appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher," Schiff made a slew of controversial comments about the election and Electoral College.  "I think we're better off focusing on discrete amendments to the Constitution to overturn Citizens United and make sure that we can have elections untampered or uninfluenced by excessive expenditures and dark money," Schiff said.

Adam Schiff Calls for Electoral College to Be Abolished.  Anti-Trump Democrat Rep. Adam Schuff (D-CA) has called for the Electoral College to be abolished during a new interview.  On Friday night [10/9/2020], Schiff, head of the House Intelligence Committee, told HBO host Bill Maher that the U.S. Constitution "needs fundamental change."  The conversation saw both agreeing the Electoral College should be eliminated from the American election system.  Schiff said that he supports a rewrite of the U.S. Constitution and amendments that would abolish the Electoral College.

The Electoral College as Affirmative Action:  Urban privilege and the marginalized pastoral.  In the effort to promote the interests of Americans who have been "historically marginalized," one group that is often overlooked is rural people. [...] Perhaps the primary way that rural people are marginalized, though, is by the cultural attitudes that pervade mainstream American life.  Most television shows take place in urban settings.  In fact, most media reflects the values of urban society — mobility, independence, secularism, novelty, titillation, cosmopolitanism, eclecticism, and liberation (particularly liberation from tradition).  By contrast, rural life, which tends to value rootedness, cooperation, faith, restraint, continuity, localism, unity, and tradition, is poorly represented.  The ceaseless cultural advertisement of urban values blinds urban youth to the mere existence of alternative values, even as it seduces rural youth and encourages them to view rural life as backwards, antiquated, and inferior.  Many of those country kids grow up and leave for the big city, just like I did.

In defense of the Electoral College.  Though often lost in the debate over the Electoral College, Article II in our Constitution created a system in which the people of each state actually vote for a slate of electors representing each presidential candidate.  The presidential candidate whose slate wins the popular vote in each state then gets to cast its ballots to elect the president.  Each state gets electoral votes equaling the number of representatives and senators.  That is why the only number that truly matters on Election Day is the number of electoral votes each candidate will receive when the electors meet and vote over a month later.  While the national popular vote total tends to correlate with the outcome of the Electoral College, it sometimes does not, largely due to a few large non-politically diverse states voting so heavily for the Democratic candidate that it puts the losing candidate ahead in the national popular vote.  When this happens, the losers predictably scream 'foul', but their complaint illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Founding Fathers did to ensure that every state and their people got a say in who became president.

Dismantling the Electoral College Means Destroying America.  Democrats plan to end the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court with radical judges.  These changes would give the left license to radically transform the nation.  There is, however, another threat they've dusted off ahead of the Nov. 3rd election that — if executed — wouldn't just be transformative, but totally destructive.  They want to abolish the Electoral College.  Destroying this institution will mean the end of national campaigning (and the engagement, negotiation, and localized promises that go along with it). What politician will ever again stump in Kenosha or Breckenridge?  What will a vote get you in Idaho or Montana?  It will mean fewer crucial checks on voter fraud.  It will mean tyranny by the coastal hives; by California technocrats and by Wall Street corporatists.  It will mean a nation highly susceptible to one-party rule and inevitably totalitarianism, which, if still called America, would be America in name only.

The Dems Plan to Steal the Presidency.  [Scroll down]  Apart from having Antifa intimidate at the polls, the Biden Campaign has hired hundreds of lawyers to supposedly prevent Trump from stealing the election, but who, in reality, are intended to muck up with legal technicalities and lawsuits what is looking more and more to be a Trump landslide.  At least until they "find in someone's trunk" or manufacture enough votes to turn the election.  Republicans have always seemed remarkably flaccid in their response to these "lost" and "found" votes always being cast for the Democrat. [...] In addition, look for the fabled "October Surprise."  For instance, the NY attorney general will probably attempt to charge Trump with some imaginary crime before election day.  It is common knowledge a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich, and there is no bigger ham than Trump — all they need do is make the sandwich.  If they have problems vote-harvesting enough votes to steal the election, Dems will, as they did in 2016, roll out media heads, celebrities, and prominent Democrats to convince members of the Electoral College not to award their votes to Trump.  This time they will coerce through doxing, violence, economic intimidation, tweetstorm, and social media ostracism to impel electors to award their votes to Biden.

Democrats Are Waging War Against Tradition And The Constitution.  Several of the 2020 Democratic primary candidates favored the abolishment of the Electoral College.  Or, as once-confident candidate Elizabeth Warren put it, "I plan to be the last American president to be elected by the Electoral College."  Furor over the Electoral College among the left arose from the 2000 and 2016 elections.  Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, respectively, won the popular votes.  But, like three earlier presidents, they lost the Electoral College voting — and with it the presidency.  The Founding Fathers saw a purpose in the Electoral College.  It ensured that small, rural states would retain importance in national elections.  The Electoral College lessened the chance of voting fraud affecting the outcome of a national vote by compartmentalizing the outcome among the various states.  It usually turns the presidential election into a contest between two major parties that alone have the resources to campaign nationwide.

A Supremely Interesting Decision.  Last week, the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that states have the power to bind their state presidential electors to vote for the state popular vote winner. [...] This was an issue that went all the way to the Supreme Court because there were several electors in the 2016 election that even though they were bound to vote for Hillary Clinton, they actually changed their vote and voted for Colin Powell instead.  And they did so really because they wanted to convince Republican electors in other states to ditch their obligation to cast their electoral vote for Donald Trump and basically cause a little bit of a rebellion in the electoral college.  [Podcast transcript]

The Big Test of Electoral College Is Yet To Come.  Now that the Supreme Court has vouchsafed the power of a state to require its presidential electors to vote in line with their state's popular vote, a new question glimmers in the constitutional mist:  Could a state require its electors to vote against the wishes of the state's own voters?  That might seem a ridiculous question.  Feature, though, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.  It's a workaround designed to commit the states to use the Electoral College to deliver the presidency to the winner of the national popular vote.  It's the first thing that came to mind when the Supreme Court today unanimously concluded that states have the power to punish faithless electors.  Most justices credited the language in Article 2, which grants states the power to appoint electors.  The key phrase is that each state shall appoint its electors "in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct."

Unanimous SCOTUS to Electoral College:  Keep the faith — or else.  Today's [7/6/2020] unanimous decision on so-called "faithless electors" is less surprising than some might think.  The Supreme Court earlier had settled the argument over whether states could require electors to follow the popular vote in presidential elections.  Today, they ruled that punishing electors for refusing to comply passes constitutional muster as well.

SCOTUS rules that 'faithless electors' must vote for popular-vote winner.  The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday [7/6/2020] that the 538 people who cast the actual votes for president in December as members of the Electoral College must vote the way the laws of their state direct.  The high court ruled unanimously against advocates who were attempting to change the Electoral College and shift the country toward a nationwide popular voting system for the presidency.  SCOTUS ruled that presidential electors must vote as their state requires them to, which in most states means voting for the candidate who won the popular vote in the state.

Supreme Court Seems Ready to Allow Crackdown on 'Faithless' Presidential Electors.  The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard two cases asking whether members of the Electoral College are bound by laws requiring them to support the winner of the popular vote in their state.  Wednesday's [5/13/2020] cases involve six electors who were fined or disqualified because they voted for candidates of their own choosing in 2016, instead of abiding by the result of the vote in their state.  The justices seemed ready to say that laws punishing so-called faithless electors are constitutionally permissible.  Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia have such laws.

The National Popular Vote Compact is halfway there in Virginia.  In November 2019, Virginia voters sowed the wind when they handed the entire state government over to Democrats.  They began to reap the whirlwind when the new government launched a full-scale war against Virginians' Second Amendment rights.  It was exciting when myriad counties declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries.  That excitement, however, did not alter the fact that a Democrat government was going on the rampage.  The next step in this rampage broke on Tuesday [2/11/2020], when the Virginia House of Delegates voted to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact ("NPVIC"), an attempted end-run around the Electoral College.  A little background explains why this is such a pernicious idea, one intended to give Democrats a permanent grip on the White House.

Supreme Court to hear 'faithless elector' case ahead of 2020 presidential election.  The Supreme Court said Friday [1/17/2020] it will hear a case over whether presidential electors have to vote in accordance with their states' popular vote in the Electoral College.  The court said it would take up the case of Chiafalo v.  State of Washington, where three so-called "faithless electors" who were fined after voting in 2016 for Colin Powell are challenging whether a state can bind an elector to select the state's popular vote winner.  In the faithless elector case, advocates for the court's intervention say the issue needs urgent resolution in an era of intense political polarization and the prospect of a razor-thin margin in a presidential election, although so-called faithless electors have been a footnote so far in American history.  The justices will hear arguments in April and should issue a decision by late June.

America Must Confront The Enemy From Within.  We are witnessing a full-fledged attack on the Electoral College to rig our elections once and for all to always go Marxist.  In fact, eventually, they will find a way to do away with elections altogether in the name of 'fairness'.  Between that and opening our borders to unfettered invasion, the left has a plan to control this country and rewrite our Constitution once and for all.  They have rigged election after election and won't stand for anyone on the right winning.  That inspired this attempted soft coup against Trump.  The left literally rigged getting the House of Representatives back and again, we did nothing to stop them.

The New Nihilists:  Political Nihilism and the Progressive Movement in America.  In spite of [Obama's] efforts, Hillary lost, and President Trump began unwinding Obama's legacy.  In the end, Obama's above-the-fray, laissez-faire approach to leadership was a mistake — a mistake that today's progressives will not repeat.  They are the new nihilists, activists openly calling for the destruction of America's existing social and political institutions so that new, progressive ones can arise from the rubble.  No more electoral college, no more borders, no more constitutional restrictions is their cry, and all the Democratic Party's presidential hopefuls say amen.

The End of the Electoral College Is Closer Than You Think.  When Al Gore won the national popular vote in 2000, but lost the election, he was the first to do so in over 100 years.  Following this loss, California millionaire John Koza came up with a plan to reinvent the rules of the game.  Koza proposed an "end run" that would allow states to circumvent the Constitution without amending it.  Rather than state electors making their decisions based on their state's composition, states would instead give way to the most populous cities.

California Dems Flood Colorado With Cash Ahead of National Popular Vote Referendum.  California Democrats have been cutting six-figure checks to promote the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV) in Colorado ahead of a referendum vote in the state next November.  The NPV would change how the Electoral College operates without amending the Constitution.  It pledges a state's Electoral College votes to the candidate receiving the most votes nationwide in a presidential election.  The Colorado political committee Yes on National Popular Vote has collected just under $750,000 since its creation in late July.  Over 98 percent of that money is from California donors, most of which is courtesy of a $500,000 donation from Stephen Silberstein, a board member of the National Popular Vote nonprofit that has driven the movement for more than a decade.

Democrats using impeachment to consolidate power.  Democrats have been hell-bent on abolishing the electoral college since at least 2005, when Democratic representative from Texas Gene Green first proposed the constitutional amendment.  Lately, those calls have been amplified by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who claims that the electoral college is racist, and presidential loser Hillary Clinton, who didn't mince words when she called for it to be "eliminated."  This coupled with the fact that Democrats are staunchly opposed to voter ID or even a citizenship question on next year's Census means strategically entrenching power in a few major cities, stealing the popular vote every single time.

Integrity No, the Electoral College Isn't "Electoral Affirmative Action" for Rural States.  Attacks on the electoral college are nothing new, but there's no question that it's been under heavier fire than usual lately.  Presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and Beto O'Rourke have all said they want to scrap it.  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has repeatedly tweeted against it as well.  "Every vote should be = in America, no matter who you are and where you come from," she said.  Ocasio-Cortez went on to argue that the electoral college allows smaller, rural states outsized influence over the presidential election process, claiming it is akin to "electoral affirmative action."  But how much does the electoral college really advantage smaller states?

[The] Supreme Court [has been] asked to decide if Electoral College voters are bound to the state's winner.  If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the appeal of the so-called "faithless electors," it could thrust the justices into yet another high-passion political fight in the heat of the 2020 presidential election.  It comes as some predict that the volatile political atmosphere and disputes over redistricting could further emphasize the role of the Electoral College in the upcoming election.  "The issue is undeniably important:  presidential elections in the Electoral College will be increasingly close, and could literally turn upon whether electors have a constitutionally protected discretion," Lawrence Lessig, a lawyer for the so-called "faithless electors," told the justices in court papers.

If Not the Hand of Providence, Then Timeless Political Principles.  Should our 232-year-old United States Constitution still be binding?  For the last few years, progressives increasingly have begun to answer with an emphatic "No!" The most visible such criticism of our fundamental law is the attack on the Electoral College, which provides for indirect election of the president by electors who, if the truth be told, represent the states far better than the popular vote of the people.  Progressives believe that democracy demands a majority of the popular vote select the president, rather than a majority of the Electoral College, which latter body, after all, reflects political subdivisions and geographical areas as much as it does the will of the majority.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg calls eliminating Electoral College more 'theoretical than real'.  Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg characterized calls for eliminating the Electoral College as more "theoretical than real."  The justice commented on the proposed changes to the U.S. Constitution that some progressive lawmakers have been pushing during an appearance Monday at the University of Chicago, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.  "It's largely a dream because our Constitution is ... hard to amend," Justice Ginsburg said.  "I know that from experience."

AOC to Small States:  Drop Dead.  The left has a hot new cause: getting rid of the Electoral College.  And if the left succeeds in doing away with that venerable institution, its next target, the U.S. Senate, will fall like a dried apple.  As is so often the case with leftist causes these days; the spearhead is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York; being social-media-savvy and telegenic, she's the star of the progressive A-Team.

Barbra Streisand:  The Electoral College 'an Assault on Our Democratic Principles'.  Speaking to The Washington Post for an article on what the U.S. Constitution represents to herself as well as other progressive figures such as Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Streisand described the system as "antiquated" and advocated replacing it with a system that allows the winner of the popular vote to win the election.

FEC chairwoman questions legitimacy of Trump's election, Electoral College.  The chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission has raised new concerns about the legitimacy of elections like that of President Trump, who lost the popular vote but won an Electoral College victory.  Ellen Weintraub, who has stepped up criticism of Trump's claims of voter fraud, said she is worried that Americans will lose faith in elections where the Electoral College and not the popular vote rules.  Appearing on MSNBC, she said that when she explains the U.S. system to foreign observers, they appear confused.  Weintraub said she explains that typically a presidential candidate wins both the electoral and popular vote "and everyone's happy."

The National Popular Vote Con Job.  TShe latest attempt by the Democrats to avoid the exigencies of the Electoral College is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). They have been selling this scheme as a conservative compromise between progressives who would abolish the "obsolete" institution outright and reactionaries who wish to preserve an "inequitable and racist" provision of the Constitution.  In reality, NPVIC is just another effort to endow the heavily-populated, Democrat-dominated regions of the country with even more political power than they already wield.  Fortunately, it is doomed to failure.

Federal Court Deals Serious Blow To The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.  On Tuesday [8/20/2019], the Denver-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled that the Colorado secretary of state violated the Constitution when he removed an Electoral College delegate who had chosen to vote for John Kasich instead of Hillary Clinton.  The secretary of state nullified the vote of the delegate and installed a new delegate who voted in accordance with the popular vote of the state of Colorado.

Challenge to Colorado national popular vote law will be on 2020 ballot.  Voters in Colorado will do something next year that hasn't been done in more than 100 years:  Decide on repealing a law passed by the general assembly and signed by the governor[.]  The secretary of state's office announced Thursday the repeal of the national popular vote law has made the November 2020 ballot after opponents of joining the national popular vote compact gathered enough valid signatures.

Time to confront the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.  It is truly time to effectively confront and oppose the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), which is nothing less than an attempted end run around the constitutionally established operations of the Electoral College embedded by America's Founders in Article II of the United States Constitution.  The NPVIC is largely funded and promoted by wealthy, politically leftist donors primarily living in and around large cities on the West and East Coasts of the United States.  Because the Electoral College is an integral part of the Constitution, the proper and perhaps only valid legal course of action to change the operations of the college is through the amendment process allowed and stipulated in Article V of the Constitution.

Beginning of US Slavery.  [Scroll down]  The U.S. Constitution is replete with anti-majority rule, undemocratic provisions.  One provision, heavily criticized, is the Electoral College.  In their wisdom, the framers gave us the Electoral College so that in presidential elections, heavily populated states could not run roughshod over sparsely populated states.  In order to amend the Constitution, it requires a two-thirds vote of both Houses, or two-thirds of state legislatures, to propose an amendment, and requires three-fourths of state legislatures for ratification.  Part of the reason for having a bicameral Congress is that it places another obstacle to majority rule.  Fifty-one senators can block the wishes of 435 representatives and 49 senators.  The president, with a veto, can thwart the will of all 535 members of Congress.  It takes a two-thirds vote, not just a majority, of both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto.

Ocasio-Cortez Returns to Twitter to Slam Electoral College:  GOP 'Scared' of Popular Vote.  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who has been noticeably absent from Twitter for the majority of the week, returned on Friday [8/23/2019] in a Twitter thread, ranting about the Electoral College and accusing the GOP of being "scared" of a popular vote because "they *know* they aren't the majority."  While Ocasio-Cortez has been relatively silent on social media over the past week, she made waves after posting a video on Instagram Monday, mocking the Electoral College, and by consequence, Middle America's voice.

The National Popular Vote Bandwagon.  The sudden and palpable distaste for the Electoral College appears to be motivated by the festering anger of two stinging electoral defeats for the Democrats in 2000 and 2016, not by a sincere desire to improve our great Republic in a bipartisan way.  The counterfactual proof of this claim is the insight that if George W. Bush and Donald Trump had won the national popular vote but had lost the Electoral College, the Democrats today undoubtedly would be singing the praises of the Electoral College as a necessary check on mob rule.  The movement conveniently glosses over the fact that the Electoral College merely reflects how states send representatives and senators to Washington.  Even small states with only one representative have two senators, but the movement is not proposing to abolish the Senate.  Our Republic was founded on semi-autonomous states that do most of the heavy lifting for day-to-day governance (police, schools, courts, roads, etc.) and therefore need a voice at the federal table to avoid having a few large states control all the small states.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:  Electoral College a racist 'scam' that 'has to go'.  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says the Electoral College is a racist "scam" that should be abolished.  The Democratic congresswoman posted an Instagram story Monday that started with her driving along a deserted highway and joking about how many votes there are in rural America.  "We're coming to you live from the Electoral College," Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said, National Review reported.  "Many votes here, as you can see.  Very efficient way to choose leadership of the country.  I mean I can't think of any other way, can you?"

Ocasio-Cortez: The Electoral College Is a 'Scam'.  Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) on Monday called the U.S. Electoral College "a scam" that negatively affects minorities.  "We're coming to you live from the Electoral College," the New York Democrat said in a video on Instagram, which featured her driving along a sparsely populated highway in what appears to be a desert somewhere in the western part of the country.  "Many votes here, as you can see.  Very efficient way to choose leadership of the country.  I mean I can't think of any other way, can you?"

Federal Court Rules Electoral College Members [are] Not Bound by [the] Popular Vote.  The 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled Tuesday that the presidential electors can cast their vote for the presidential candidate of their own choice and are not bound by the popular vote in their states.  A panel of federal judges ruled 2-1 saying that Colorado was wrong in 2016 to force an elector to vote for Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College.

Court rules Electoral College members aren't bound by popular vote.  A U.S. appeals court in Denver said Electoral College members can vote for the presidential candidate of their choice and aren't bound by the popular vote in their states.

Many journalists don't understand the Electoral College.  [Scroll down]  The lesson for voters who want their votes to be important is this.  Make your state purple, not red or blue.  Candidates don't waste time campaigning in California or Texas, because those states are already in the bag.  But they do campaign in Ohio and Florida, because those states can go either way.  Your state can be purple by being receptive to candidates from the other tribe.  A purple state is a close state, and the votes in a close state are important.

Maine and Nevada Show Why the Electoral College Helps Small States, Not Red States.  The National Popular Vote compact, which is an agreement between states, requires a participating state to award all of its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes across the nation, not to the candidate who actually won the vote in that state.  In other words, states are agreeing to ignore what the majority of voters in their state decides when it comes to who they believe should be president.  This interstate compact has been sold to state governments as a means to abolish what supporters wrongly claim is the "outmoded, undemocratic Electoral College."  What is "undemocratic" is an agreement that means that even if every single voter in a state voted against a presidential candidate who won the national popular vote, the state would still have to give all its electoral votes to that candidate.

2020 Democrat Candidates' 21 Most Insanely Scary Proposals.  [#12] Abolish the Electoral College:  So far, Warren, Harris, O'Rourke, Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Booker, and Gillibrand want the electoral college banished.  Joe Biden has remained silent.  Abolishing the electoral college shifts all political power to the population centers of America, the deep blue cities, and renders most red states absolutely powerless in the choice of president.

End-run on Electoral College gains, but Americans don't like it.  It doesn't really matter how you or other Americans feel about substituting the presidential popular vote total for the Electoral College with a constitutional amendment.  It's not going to happen.  Live with it.

The One-Two Punch to Knock Out Electoral Democracy.  If you thought, or hoped, that the brave (or nobly self-interested) Democratic Governor of Nevada, Steve Sisolak had done in the push for a National Popular Vote by vetoing the bill, think again. [...] The scheme, of course, is an effort to change the Constitution without the bother of securing the consent of three-fourths of the states that the Article V Amendment procedure requires.  It is also of questionable validity without the consent of Congress.  While the Supreme Court might rule against allowing an interstate compact to go into effect without the prior Congressional consent that the Constitution's Article I section 10 requires for states to enter into interstate compacts, it also might not.  And since the National Popular Vote folks think they can change the Constitution while flouting the rules for changing the Constitution, they might feel equally free to ignore whatever the Supreme Court tells them the Constitution requires.  And whatever can or cannot get through today's Congress is no guarantee that some future Congress might not find the National Popular Vote acceptable while ignoring the pesky requirement of prior Congressional consent.

Stealing the 2020 Election:  How it Could Happen.  Why would workers toil for hours to change individual ballots?  The same result was achieved in 2016 when only two people were persuaded to change their votes.  These two people, who were totally anonymous and unelected, nullified hundreds of thousands of lawfully cast ballots as they succumbed to a secret campaign of intimidation and persuasion in the weeks after the 2016 presidential election. Politico noted that activists publicly doxxed personal contact information for many electors — "and it's been used to bury them with massive email campaigns."  Famous actors made a public appeal to the electors to nullify American votes using out-of-context quotes from the Federalist Papers.  Sharon Geise, an elector from Mesa, Arizona, estimated 8,000 emails flooded her inbox in the days leading up to the official Electoral College vote in the 2016 presidential election.  The four electors from Idaho reported harassing phone calls from activists pressuring them to nullify the ballots cast for Donald Trump.

NBC Pushes Liberal Dream to Abolish Electoral College.  As NBC Nightly News continued its monotonous drumbeat on Thursday to elevate liberal policy positions ahead of the Democratic debate they were holding, the network gave the megaphone to South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg in order to push for abolishing the Electoral College.  Correspondent Harry Smith let Buttigieg freely suggest the country had to "strengthen American democracy" because we were supposedly in an era of deteriorating voting rights.  In reality, his "Big Idea" would damage the framework our founders put in place to protect the people from tyranny.

Mark Levin:  Smaller States Are Destroying Power, Vote of Their State by Supporting Nat'l Popular Vote.  On his nationally syndicated radio talk show "The Mark Levin Show" on Tuesday [6/11/2019], host Mark Levin warned that smaller states are destroying the power, the vote in their state by supporting the national popular vote.  "And then you have these idiots in these smaller states that go along with it," stated Mark Levin.  "They don't even realize that they're giving up their own autonomy.  It's incredible.  They're destroying the power of their state, the vote in their state."

Waterloo for the National Popular Vote movement?  AT readers don't need to be introduced to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, the desperation measure concocted by the Democrats in an effort to make an end run around the Electoral College by pledging states to abide by the popular vote.  Fourteen states, along with D.C., have so far passed the compact. [...] That was where it stood until the week before last, when on May 30 Gov. Steve Sisolak of Nevada vetoed the bill, which had been passed by the state senate nine days before.  This action may very well break the momentum of the march to 270, marking the high tide of the Democrat's latest attempt to subvert representative democracy.

A Future You Don't Want.  While you were sleeping, the Democrats (abetted by some deviant Republicans) have been working on a plan that would destroy the diversity of the American political system and bring the nation to the brink of civil war.  The plan is called The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and tens of millions of dollars have already been spent over several decades trying to implement it.  Fourteen blue states and the District of Columbia have already joined the Compact, which means they are 70% on the way to making their proposal the law of the land.  The Democrats' plan is designed to eliminate the influence of the Electoral College in choosing the nation's president no doubt because while Hillary won the popular vote she failed win necessary votes in the Electoral College.

[The] Illegal Alien Invasion [is] Part Of [the] Left's Plan to Control [the] Electoral College.  Following the loss of the 2016 election, Democrats are scrambling to make sure they control the electoral college the next time round.  Illegal aliens could be a big part of their plan.  [Video clip]

Wreck the Electoral College, Destroy the Country.  While you were sleeping, the Democrats (abetted by some deviant Republicans) have been working on a plan that would destroy the diversity of the American political system and bring the nation to the brink of civil war.  The plan is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and tens of millions of dollars have already been spent over several decades trying to implement it.  Fourteen blue states and the District of Columbia have already joined the Compact, which means they are 70% on the way to making their proposal the law of the land.  The Democrats' plan is designed to eliminate the influence of the Electoral College in choosing the nation's president, no doubt because while Hillary won the popular vote she failed win necessary votes in the Electoral College.  Eliminating the influence of the Electoral College would end the diversity now embodied in the federal system with its division of powers between Washington and the fifty states.  The fact that a party which presents itself as a defender of diversity should be leading the charge to eliminate the nation's most powerful source of diversity should be all that is required to understand the threat their agenda poses to what has been the nation's constitutional way of life for 232 years.

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak Vetoes National Popular Vote Bill.  Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) on Thursday [5/30/2019] vetoed a bill which would have pledged the state's six electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote for President of the United States.  Assembly Bill 186, which recently passed the Senate on a 12-8 vote, would have seen Nevada join with 14 other states in an agreement to vote for the winner of the popular vote.  The Assembly had voted in favor of the measure 23-17.

How Democrats Are Trying To Steal The Next Election.  Democrats are clearly very worried about President Donald Trump sailing to re-election, so much so they're coming up with every scheme in the book to reduce his chances of winning.  Several blue states have not only passed bills that would keep President Trump off the ballot if he doesn't release his tax returns, but some states are also pledging to give their Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote, among other things.  [Video clip]

Democrats' National Popular Vote Scheme.  In Nevada last week, the state senate approved National Popular Vote legislation.  The NPV would render the electoral college irrelevant by requiring electors to vote for the national vote-winner instead of the candidate capturing the most votes in their states.  Ross finds the basic structure of the NPV to be dishonest.  The Constitution provides that America's state-by-state presidential election system cannot be changed without the consent of three-quarters (38) of the states.  The NPV, Ross notes, "seeks an end run around this process.  It wants states to sign a simple interstate compact instead."  In that deal, states agree to give their presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the outcome within a state's borders.  The compact kicks in when states holding 270 electors have signed on.

Moving Closer to Mob Rule:  No Choice, No Voice.  The Electoral College system is under attack as never before.  With Nevada about to join the other fourteen states in joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, we are moving closer to both the possibility of mob rule and, unfortunately, a terrible confrontation.  Democrats were stunned by their loss in 2016.  They were sure they had the election won months before it took place.  People were chosen, plans were made.  But, it didn't happen.  The states chose differently:  by people, by region, by interests, by values.  It was designed that way.  It was constructed to give voice to every state's burdens, every state's concerns.  The Electoral College was devised to give every state a voice in choosing the President of the United States, the only national election.  A pure democracy does none of that.

Rural Americans would be serfs if we abolished the Electoral College.  Should rural and small-town Americans be reduced to serfdom?  The American Founders didn't think so.  This is one reason why they created checks and balances, including the Electoral College.  Today that system is threatened by a proposal called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, or NPV.  Rural America produces almost all our country's food, as well as raw materials like metals, cotton and timber.  Energy, fossil fuels but also alternatives like wind and solar come mostly from rural areas.  In other words, the material inputs of modern life flow out of rural communities and into cities.  This is fine, so long as the exchange is voluntary — rural people choose to sell their goods and services, receive a fair price, and have their freedom protected under law.  But history shows that city dwellers have a nasty habit of taking advantage of their country cousins.

Nevada passes National Popular Vote bill in bid to upend Electoral College.  The Nevada Senate approved Tuesday [5/21/2019] a National Popular Vote bill on a party-line vote, sending the legislation aimed at upending the Electoral College to the governor.  Assembly Bill 186, which passed the Senate on a 12-8 vote, would bring Nevada into the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement between participating states to cast their electoral votes for the winner of the popular vote.  If signed as expected by Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, Nevada would become the 16th jurisdiction to join the compact, along with 14 states and the District of Columbia.  The compact would take effect after states totaling 270 electoral votes, and with Nevada, the total would reach 195.

Somewhat related:
New effort launches to democratically elect the vice president in 2020.  There's a national push for voters to elect the U.S. vice presidentseparately from the president.  Vice.run, is a campaign that seeks to create a separate and independent ballot line for the vice president in 2020. The group is trying to collect — from all 50 states — voter signatures and pledges in support of the separate vice president election.  "An independently-elected vice president would give American voters a new level of direct control over who serves in the White House," Vice.run says on its website.

The Editor says...
Fractionalized governments are unstable.  Maybe that's the point.

It's Not Trump Derangement Syndrome.  The derangement we are facing is not Orange Man Bad; it is America Bad.  The Democrats don't believe in our two-party system anymore. [...] Democrats hate our electoral system as unjust because it doesn't deliver to them guaranteed victory.  All their efforts towards 2020 will be focused on changing our election laws and norms.  They don't want the electoral college, which guards against domination of the country by politically narrow urban population centers.

How to Defeat the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.  It is obvious why liberals, whose political philosophy and preferences are anathema to much of the nation, would want to do this.  Eliminating the Electoral College means Democratic presidential candidates never having to say they're sorry to, or consider the opinions and values of, those ignorant, gun-totin', Bible-thumpin' rubes in flyover country.  That it would also destroy our federal system, transforming the 50 independent states into satraps of an all-powerful federal government is icing on the cake.  But if there is one thing on which liberals and conservatives can agree, it is that, the odds of convincing enough smaller states to cut off their own electoral [power] lies somewhere between zero and zilch.

Unraveling Three Key Russian Collusion Hoax Plot Lines.  There were three principle plotlines advanced to reverse the election.  The first was the Hillary Clinton campaign's brazen effort to sway the Electoral College.  The campaign pushed initially for an "intelligence briefing" of the electors that we can reasonably suspect would have included the now-disproven dossier.  Clinton's allies also engaged in a comprehensive campaign to harass electors by inundating with them thousands of emails, phone calls, and videos.  Death threats were reported.  This plot failed when an anonymous bureaucrat balked at declassifying the dossier's contents in December 2016.  Even so, two electors representing hundreds of thousands of votes did indeed succumb to the pressure.

Electoral College scheme:  Grounds for civil war?  In their bid to establish dictatorial, totalitarian, socialist rule in the United States, Democrats all over the country are pushing a plainly anti-constitutional scheme to erase the constitutional method for electing the president of the United States. [...] The states have no lawmaking power to alter the authority of electors chosen by the people.  States can regulate the manner of choosing the electors, but they cannot dictate the terms of their vote, as if the electors themselves do not exist.  Such legislation is not a law; it is an act of rebellion against the duly constituted government of the United States.  If they pretend to claim power as a result of this anti-constitutional scheme, their rebellion will properly be the signal for civil war.

Sudden liberal opposition to [the] Electoral College [is] not about democracy, but about power.  As they did after losing George W. Bush's 2000 election by a majority of the Electoral College but not the popular vote, Democrats attack the Constitution's method for selecting the president as fundamentally undemocratic. [...] But the Electoral College's exaggeration of the power of the states is not some bizarre mistake or a constitutional version of the appendix.  The Framers specifically designed the Electoral College to dilute democracy and favor the states.  Democrats who disagree are at war with the federalism that the Framers hardwired throughout the Constitution itself.

Oregon set to join 'compact' of states that would award electors to winner of national popular vote.  Oregon is on the way to joining a group of states looking to overhaul the Electoral College system.  In a 17-12 vote, the Oregon Senate passed a bill that would award Oregon's seven electoral votes to the winner of the U.S. popular vote instead of the candidate who won the state.  It now goes to the state House, which has passed it several times already, and then head to Gov. Kate Brown, who says she supports it.

Gillibrand: 'I Support Getting Rid of the Electoral College'.  Friday, 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) voiced her support of eliminating the Electoral College, something many Democrats have supported since President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The Left's Most Serious Attack On Federalism.  Much of the Left's current wish list — the Green New Deal, reparations — is fantasy.  Those proposals are purely for political effect, and aren't going anywhere.  But there is an important exception:  there is a serious risk that the Left will succeed in effectively abolishing the Electoral College.  That will never be done via constitutional amendment, of course.  The small states, a majority, won't vote for it.  But liberals are promoting an Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote.

Four Question for Those Who Oppose the Electoral College.  [#2] If you reject the notion of disproportional representation, do you reject the institution of the U.S. Senate?  Certain opponents of the electoral college accept the notion of our republican system but take umbrage at the disproportionate representation that contributes to the way in which states' electoral votes are determined.  The electoral college allots votes based on the number of a state's federal legislative representatives, meaning the disproportionate representation of the Senate creates a system where certain voters have relatively less or more power than others.  Those who oppose the electoral college must therefore also oppose the representative scheme of the Senate and would look to rework or eliminate this institution.

The Wise Purpose of the Electoral College.  The Electoral College system — especially the original system before it was altered by the 12th Amendment in 1804 — was part of a republican system of government designed by the founders to secure the liberty of the individual:  "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" (Declaration of Independence).  It was the design of the Founders to create a government that would "secure these rights" and thus preserve our liberty.  They recognized that a popular government — a democracy — would soon enough begin to subject freedom and rights to a popular vote: here a little, there a little; lie upon lie; pretext upon pretext.  With that, freedom would gradually be minimalized, eroded, discarded, and replaced by equality.  But it would a dreary, regulated equality of limitations, deprivations, and misery.  Ultimately, it would become a fearful tyranny.  That's why James Madison warned that the democracies of history "have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths" (Federalist #10).

Proposed Voting Changes Are About Power, Not Principles.  From 2017 on, Trump has sought systematically to dismantle the progressive agenda that had been established by his predecessor, Barack Obama — often in controversial and unapologetic style.  The furor over the 2016 Clinton loss and the new Trump agenda, the fear that Trump could be re-elected and anger about the Electoral College have mobilized progressives to demand changes to the hallowed traditions of electing presidents.  The Electoral College was designed in part to ensure that candidates at least visited the small and often rural states of America.  The generation of the Founding Fathers did not want elections to rest solely with larger urban populations.  The Electoral College balances out the popular vote.

Here Are 4 Egregious Ways the Left Wants to Transform American Politics.  The Electoral College can be a convoluted way to pick a president, but that's by design.  The Framers rightly feared the tendency of pure democracy to descend into mob rule and run roughshod over the rights of disfavored minorities, so they created a Constitution chock-full of anti-majoritarian safeguards.  That includes an Electoral College that can — though seldom does — seat a president who loses the popular vote.  There is a method to that madness.  The nation is a diverse place, and voters living in rural Indiana quite likely have a different set of issues and concerns than do voters living in downtown San Francisco.  The Electoral College gives greater weight to the former group, encouraging campaigns to focus on assembling broad coalitions that span regions and interests.  The alternative — election by pure popular vote — flips the tables.  If pure turnout is the end goal, candidates will inevitably focus their efforts on the biggest states — California, for example — and major urban centers like Chicago and New York City.

Who's Bankrolling the National Popular Vote Movement.  The nonprofit organization building a coalition of states that favor choosing the president by popular vote promotes itself as nonpartisan, but is financed by millions of dollars from left-leaning groups.  Some of the leaders of the movement are prominent Republicans, and most of the funding for the nonprofit, National Popular Vote Inc., has come from a wealthy Democrat and a billionaire independent.  However, many large, liberal organizations back the movement, according to the Capital Research Center, a conservative investigative think tank that monitors nonprofits.  It gathered donor information on National Popular Vote Inc. using a commercial database.

The Catastrophic Ramifications of Abolishing the Electoral College.  There is a well-founded saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  If that is the case, socialism is definitely the epitome of insanity, in that it has been tried over and over and always arrives at the same result — utter failure.  It's a system that watches as its government grows so bloated with bureaucracies to watch the other bureaucracies, while administering everything from food distribution to doctor visits, with the legislative element passing ridiculous laws and promising more and more benefits until there are no more lines of credit, the tax base has maxed out, the party is over and the government is forced to take further action to control riots and demonstrations.  Socialism in its purest form always morphs into totalitarianism.

Colorado Group Hopes to Overturn National Popular Vote Bill at Ballot Box.  A small group of Colorado citizens is hoping to overturn a bill passed earlier this year joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV), a workaround to implement a major shift to the Electoral College without amending the Constitution but which detractors argue is unconstitutional.  Although 12 states and the District of Columbia have already passed NPV legislation, the effort could create one of the first times a citizenry will vote on the idea, and could make the state a proxy in the ongoing debate over the Electoral College as more Democratic presidential candidates are campaigning on abolishing the constitutionally created institution.  Colorado's constitution allows citizens to reject laws passed by the state general assembly with a ballot referendum, a challenge that's been eagerly accepted by Mayor Don Wilson (R.) of Monument, a small suburb just north of Colorado Springs.

The Electoral College and Slavery:  A Reality Check.  In the wake of Hillary Clinton's 2016 loss to Donald Trump, we have been subjected to increasingly shrill calls from the left to abolish the Electoral College.  Several Democratic presidential candidates, including Elizabeth Warren, have added their voices to this dissonant chorus.  But their arguments suggest that the framers were wise to be wary of the mischief caused by unscrupulous politicians who play on the emotions of the voters.  An exquisitely apposite example of such demagoguery is the claim that the Electoral College itself is a relic of slavery.  This was recently repeated by Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN) [...]

The old college try.  No, the Electoral College isn't a plot.  Yes, it is needed.  Without it, the recount in the 2000 election could have gone on forever.  Without it, we could never have founded the union, as the small states would have never accepted the loss of their power.  Without it, candidates could win by running up numbers among their own backers, whereas now it takes a diverse coalition with backing both deep and wide.  This isn't to say that we haven't seen oddities, such as for instance in 2016.  Never had two candidates been so disliked and dishonest, never were votes cast with such apprehension, and never had the gap between the electoral vote and the popular vote been so wide and so glaring, or so entirely caused by one state.

Restoring States' Rights to Presidential Elections.  Colorado has bought into the popular vote mythology in presidential elections and the need to nationalize the process of electing presidents.  Although wrong-headed, the right of the Colorado Legislature to make these changes is constitutional.  Republicans ought to use the power of those state governments they control to enact real reform by providing that the electoral votes of the state be cast by the state Legislature directly and not by voters choosing those electors. [...] Control of both houses of the Legislature and the governor is required to pass a law reverting power to the state Legislature to cast the electoral votes of a state, but once that becomes the law, only control of the state Legislature would be required to cast the state's electoral votes in all future elections.

Abolishing the Electoral College Would Be a Mistake.  Senator Elizabeth Warren has reignited the debate over the Electoral College — she wants to get rid of it, naturally.  I say "reignited" because this is a very old argument. [...] Arguments against it tend to boil down to two gripes:  It's very old-fashioned, and it's undemocratic.

Castro: 'Do Away With' the Electoral College.  Julian Castro joined a bevy of other 2020 Democrats on Wednesday [3/20/2019] by calling for the abolition of the electoral college.  Castro, who previously served as mayor of San Antonio and secretary of housing and urban development in the Obama administration, told BuzzFeed News he supported efforts to "do away with" the institution.  The admission makes Castro the latest candidate vying for the Democratic presidential nomination to endorse eliminating the electoral college.  Such an idea has been increasingly discussed in liberal circles since the 2016 election.  In that race, Hillary Clinton lost the presidency to Donald Trump, despite winning the popular vote.

Abolishing the Electoral College Is Unconstitutional and Wrong.  In theory, a democracy or a constitutional republic makes major decisions based on the desires of the majority of the people.  Indeed, it was rule by a generally elite minority, rather than the majority, that was the basis for the founding of our country.  However, our forefathers also recognized that the United States of America, while honoring rule by the majority, also realized that individual states must have basic rights and a should have a voice in presidential elections.

No, the Electoral College Is Not a 'Shadow of Slavery's Power'.  "There you go again," Ronald Reagan famously joked in 1980 when President Jimmy Carter painted an inaccurate picture of one of his policies.  Perhaps he'd say the same of those who are distorting the history of the Electoral College today.  New York's newest congresswoman, Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has been quick to jump onto this bandwagon, recently labeling the Electoral College a "shadow of slavery's power on America."  Others have called it a "living symbol of America's original sin," an "antiquated relic of slavery," or even a "pro-slavery compromise."  Mere hours into the new Congress, a bill was introduced to eliminate this "outdated" system.  Such a view of the Electoral College's roots threatens to become conventional wisdom, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Why Democrats want to abolish Electoral College, pack Supreme Court.  Elizabeth Warren wants to get rid of the Electoral College. [...] She argued that presidential nominees no longer campaign in places like California and Massachusetts because they're not swing states, instead focusing on battlegrounds that are up for grabs.  That's true, but if you abolished the college tomorrow, candidates would camp out in such megastates as New York, California, Florida, and Texas in an effort to run up their popular vote totals.  The college forces them to move around the country, especially to smaller states whose handful of electoral votes could tip the balance.

What you need to know about abolishing the Electoral College.  Amid a number of proposals pushed by 2020 Democratic presidential candidates trying to stand out in a crowded field comes an idea that totally doesn't scream "sore loser" at all: abolishing the Electoral College.  During a CNN town hall on Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said, "My view is that every vote matters.  And the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting, and that means get rid of the Electoral College."  But the disdain you're seeing from Democrats to get rid of a system that's been a thorn in their side is a sentiment that was once held by some Republicans, namely President Trump.

The Enemy Within.  We are at the point where the Democrats feel safe in openly ignoring the Constitution and the Rule of Law when it suits them in furthering their totalitarian ideological agenda.  A very glaring and dangerous example is the move by some 13 Democrat dominated states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state, and the District of Columbia — to ignore the Electoral College and elect the president by popular vote.

Elizabeth Warren wants to abolish the Electoral College.  Presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren on Monday night [3/18/2019] called for abolishing the Electoral College.  The Massachusetts Democrat said during a town hall on CNN that she would back a plan to scrap the process and move the country to a national popular vote.  "My view is that every vote matters," Warren said to applause.  "And the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting and that means get rid of the Electoral College — and every vote counts."  The electoral process, she said, effectively disenfranchises voters in states dominated by one party.

The Editor says...
Hmmm.  "States dominated by one party."  Like California?

New Colorado law will give state's electoral college votes to national popular vote winner.  Colorado could be part of voting history next general election day, joining 11 other states looking to ensure that their electoral college votes echo the will of the American majority to elect the next president.  Gov. Jared Polis signed a law Friday that would allot the state's electoral college votes to whichever candidate won the national popular vote.  The Washington Post previously reported the law's signing.

Far Left Anti-Electoral College Plan Building Momentum.  Democrats have long opposed the Electoral College because with overwhelming margins of victory in high-population states like California they could dominate future presidential elections based on the popular vote, so they have concocted a plan to try to bypass the constitutional amendment process by constructing a multi-state compact to allocate their Electoral votes according to the popular vote.  [Hans] von Spakovsky says the movement going on in all 50 states is sponsored by the National Popular Vote, an advocacy group in California, that claims they can get rid of the Electoral College's effects by having the states agree to a state compact.

Race to the electoral bottom.  Colorado is poised to become the 13th signatory to the National Popular Vote initiative, adding to the eleven states plus the District of Colombia that have already signed on to this interstate compact, whereby the electoral votes from these states would be cast in favor of whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote.  This bill would take effect when enough states sign on to add up to at least 270 electoral votes.  The addition of Colorado's electors will bring that total to 181, or about two thirds there.  We may be a few short years away from fundamentally transforming how we elect our presidents.

Eric Holder calls for an end to the electoral college: 'It's undemocratic'.  Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who is considering a 2020 presidential bid, called Tuesday to abolish the electoral college, saying it's a "vestige of the past."  "It's undemocratic, forces candidates to ignore majority of the voters and campaign in a small number of states.  The presidency is our one national office and should be decided - directly - by the voters," Mr. Holder said on Twitter.  The potential Democratic presidential candidate issued the tweet while linking to an article from The Washington Post that notes nearly a dozen traditionally blue states have passed legislation to circumvent the electoral college.

Dems shooting themselves in the foot with Electoral College compact.  Despite the Dems' wish, the [Electoral] College won't be abolished.  That would require an amendment to the Constitution.  The odds of that happening are 0.00 percent.  Here's their fallback idea.  The states would enter into a "compact" that would work something like a multiparty contract.  They would each agree that they would cast their respective College votes for the candidate that wins the national popular vote.  If all the states entered into this compact, and if it survived Constitutional challenges, then the winner of the popular vote would thereby win all the electoral votes.  Every election would be a 538-to-0 decision in the College.  But in the real world, not all states will enter into this compact.

Reevaluating the Electoral College.  Since Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election with 2.9 million more votes than Donald Trump, and Al Gore lost the 2000 election despite outpacing George Bush by half a million votes, little has had a greater effect on the presidency in modern times than the institution of the Electoral College.  At the founding of the United States, there was plenty of controversy regarding the means by which the president would be elected.  Many thought that Congress should elect the president directly, although others feared that such an establishment would give Congress a tyrannical degree of power.  James Madison worried extensively about a true democratic election, fearing that the masses would vote to elect men who would encroach on the constitutional rights of other citizens in the name of the public good (an eerie thought in light of Senator Bernie Sanders' recent announcement of his second presidential bid).

The Hijacking of a Presidential Election.  [Scroll down]  Some progressives think we should junk the Electoral College and elect presidents with the popular vote.  Other progressives think we should rejigger the College and allocate its votes in a way that is closer to the popular vote.  But if one believes in federalism, the above data argues just the opposite.  We can't have the preferences of two populous coastal states being imposed on the other 48 states merely because they have some tiny majority.  That's especially so when those two states are so very different from the rest of the country.  Let California have its tent cities, its free healthcare for illegal aliens, and its San Francisco values, but leave us "hicks" in the heartland alone.

The Electoral College Power Grab.  [Scroll down]  The only principle at work here is partisan advantage.  Consider how the Democrats have behaved concerning the alleged plague of gerrymandering.  Every time the Democrats have won a majority in the House — every single time, as far back as we have records — they have over-performed their percentage vote, sometimes by astonishing amounts.  Between 1966 and 1970, the Democrats' share of the aggregate House popular vote would have entitled them to majorities of 11, seven, and 39 seats.  Their actual majorities were 61, 51, and 75.  There was no movement among Republicans to move Congress to a system of proportional representation.  Suddenly, when the Republicans outperform their aggregate popular vote, and by far lower margins, it's a crime against humanity.

Conservatives Unite Against H.R. 1, 'Ultimate Fantasy of the Left'.  Over 150 conservative leaders nationwide released a "Memo to the Movement" from the Conservative Action Project on Monday, declaring that they are opposed to the Democrats' kick-off legislation H.R. 1, which would profoundly shift elections toward liberal candidates and open the door to rampant voter fraud, calling Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bill "the ultimate fantasy of the left."  "Conservatives are united in opposing H.R. 1, the attempt by House Democrats to fundamentally undermine the American electoral system," the Memo begins.

Election Reform Fraud:  Democrats' Plan Would End American Democracy As We Know It.  The media have already started a drumbeat in favor of the first major legislation proposed by the new Democratic Congress, the so-called "For The People Act Of 2019."  It is, in fact, a dangerous piece of legislation that, if enacted, would end American democracy as it has existed for over over 240 years.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [and] other Dems want you to embrace a socialist agenda.  [#4] Abolishing the electoral college:  Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., introduced legislation to create a constitutional amendment that would eliminate the electoral college system and replace it with a model based entirely on the outcome of the national popular vote.  (Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore (2000) and Hillary Clinton (2016) both won the popular vote but lost the presidential election because their challengers won more electoral college votes.)  The electoral college system for electing presidents is an essential part of our federalist system of government and was a key component to the passage of the Constitution in 1787.  The electoral college enhances the power of voters in smaller states.  Without the electoral college, voters in a handful of highly populated states would have significantly more power to determine the outcome of every presidential election, which is exactly what Democrats want.  About three in 10 votes cast in the 2016 election occurred in just seven Democratic-leaning states:  California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Virginia and Washington State.  If the electoral college is abolished, voters in much of the Midwest, South and Mountain West regions — especially in rural areas — will be ignored in future presidential elections.

The Electoral College Must Remain.  Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., recently introduced a proposed constitutional amendment that would eliminate the Electoral College.  This was obviously done in response to the fact that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election despite winning nearly 3 million more votes than President Trump.  According to Cohen, the Electoral College is outdated and distorting. [...] Cohen's position is clearly partisan, will almost certainly fail, and will face stiff resistance from many smaller states.

Get Rid Of The Electoral College?  It Would Lead To The Break-Up Of America, Or Worse.  The first acts of a new Congress usually hold great significance.  They set a tenor, a tone, for what is to come.  If so, Americans should be very worried about the new Democrat-led Congress.  One of the first acts of business last Thursday [1/3/2019], mere hours after the new Congress was sworn in, came from Tennessee Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen, as reported by The Daily Caller.  His big idea:  amend the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College.

House Dem Wants to Eliminate Electoral College.  A Democratic member of the House introduced Constitutional amendments Thursday that would eliminate the Electoral College and limit presidential powers concerning pardons.  Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., submitted the measures hours after the new Congress was installed.  One of them would erase the Electoral College, which is outlined in Article II of the Constitution.

If We're Going To Have Smart Government, Kids Must Learn Civics.  Waleed Shahid, a former advisor to New York Congressional Candidate and Democratic Socialist heartthrob Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said the Senate is not democratic enough because less populous states receive the same representation as high-population states.  But this is the very point of the Senate.  Without equal representation in one house of Congress, large states would be able to run roughshod over smaller states.  Yet this fact is continually ignored by civically-illiterate citizens eager to support their points of frustration against Trump's agenda.  And Shahid wasn't alone in his sentiment about the Electoral College.  Hordes of American citizens decried its unfairness following the election, and it has become unmistakably clear that yesterday's bored high school government student morphed into today's angry voter.

Dem Rep Proposes Constitutional Amendment to Eliminate 'Outdated Electoral College'.  Rep. Steve Cohen (D., Tenn) on Thursday proposed a Constitutional amendment to eliminate the "outdated Electoral College," saying he believes the individual who wins the popular vote deserves to win the election.  A press release from Cohen's office listed the two amendments the congressman was introducing, including the elimination of the Electoral College and an amendment that would limit presidential pardon power.  "In two presidential elections since 2000, including the most recent one in which Hillary Clinton won 2.8 million more votes than her opponent, the winner of the popular vote did not win the election because of the distorting effect of the outdated Electoral College," said Cohen's press release.

The Riots In France Perfectly Illustrate Why We Need The Electoral College.  The debate over the Electoral College comes up constantly during American elections, including the midterms last month, with many on the left calling for a popular vote instead.  The process of electoral delegates voting for one particular party even if the popular vote of their state had only a slim majority makes the presidential elections seem generally unfair.  Under the electoral system, lower-population states have outsized influence, higher-population states have somewhat limited influence, and swing states enjoy all the attention.  With a popular vote, so the thinking goes, each citizen would have a voice, and the president and his administration would consequently have more legitimacy and better serve the American population.

Abolish the Senate and Electoral College?  Why Not Tear Up the Constitution?  Former Congressman John Dingell, Jr., a partisan Democrat whose immediate family has controlled the same seat in the House of Representatives for 86 years, has some suggestions for fixing Congress.  We should abolish the Senate and the Electoral College because they're undemocratic, "despite the constitutional hurdles of doing so."  In 2015, Dingell retired from the U.S. House seat he's held since 1955, the seat he inherited from his father, John Dingell, Sr., who first won it in 1932.  The seat has passed to John Jr.'s much-younger wife, Rep. Debbie Dingell, who was just re-elected in November.

Trump:  The Last President?  Trump's victory did expose part of the genius of the founding fathers.  Despite the popular vote being in favor of Clinton, Trump concentrated on and won the Electoral College.  The Electoral College isn't a genius move because Trump won — the Electoral College was a guarantee of the essential promise of the Constitution to the States that the small states wouldn't get dragged around like a St. Bernard's chew toy, but it also provided a trap against voter fraud and a mechanism for nearly instant legitimacy of the elected President.  In order to cheat on a national election, you'd have to cheat in state after state after state.  Cheating in New York City or even statewide in Texas alone won't do elect a fraudulent President.  And while it's uncommon it's not unheard of:  Trump is the fifth President to be elected by winning the Electoral College without winning the popular vote.

The Left Trashes the Constitution:  Sacking the Senate.  The Democrats' trashing of the Constitution did not end with the Kavanaugh confirmation battle but now rambles on with their denunciations of the fundamental institutions of American republican government.  They will continue their attack on the electoral process with their disparagement of the Electoral College.  Next up, we hear rumblings about the supposed "undemocratic" nature of the Senate.  Can anyone imagine the winner of the World Series being determined by which team scored the most runs in seven games, and not who won the most games?  Then it would no longer be baseball.  Scrapping the Electoral College would have the same effect — it would transform not just the election but also campaigns and the conception of the voter and citizen — all for the worse.

The Electoral College Debate.  Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seeking to represent New York's 14th Congressional District, has called for the abolition of the Electoral College.  Her argument came on the heels of the Senate's confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.  She was lamenting the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, nominated by George W. Bush, and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, nominated by Donald Trump, were court appointments made by presidents who lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College vote.  Hillary Clinton has long been a critic of the Electoral College.  Just recently, she wrote in The Atlantic, "You won't be surprised to hear that I passionately believe it's time to abolish the Electoral College."

Change the rules?  Why the Left is slamming the Senate and Electoral College.  Liberals who are unhappy with the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh are starting to complain that the Senate itself is undemocratic.  Liberals who are unhappy with Donald Trump as president are starting to complain that the way he was elected is undemocratic. [...] I just don't think it's a winning argument to say that the problem is these institutions, and rules that have been in place for more than 225 years, rather than the failure to prevail in debates and win elections.

Far-Left Democrat Ocasio-Cortez Calls To Abolish Electoral College.  Far-left Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is ramping-up attacks against the constitution.  The Democrat hopeful took to Twitter over the weekend to slam the electoral college as a "shadow of slavery's power."

Michael Moore: 'Electoral College — Get Rid of It, Democrats!'  "I'm just saying that the majority of Americans are very liberal," liberal activist Michael Moore asserted on Thursday night [6/28/2018] in an appearance on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."

The Editor says...
The Colbert program is taped at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City (according to Wikipedia) and the majority of the people in New York City may be "very Liberal," but that doesn't mean the rest of the country agrees.

Hillary Clinton Knocks Electoral College, Calls It An 'Odd System'.  Hillary Clinton, who beat Donald Trump in the popular vote, continued her attack on the Electoral College on Friday, calling it an "odd system" and not in keeping with the idea of "one person, one vote."  "I know this is another really obvious thing to say.  Vote in every election, not just presidential elections," Clinton said at Harvard University, in a clip from NTK Network. [...] While Clinton finds the Electoral College system "a little troubling," she admitted it's the system we have.

Clinton Bashes 'Troubling' Electoral College as 'Odd System'.  Hillary Clinton continued to attack the Electoral College system used to elect U.S. presidents on Friday, calling it an "odd system" and contrary to the idea of "one person, one vote."  "I know this is another really obvious thing to say.  Vote in every election, not just presidential elections," Clinton said at Harvard University, in a clip flagged by NTK Network.  "You know, it is maddening because one of the panelists said we get the government that we vote for.  Now, we have this odd system with the Electoral College."

Connecticut Subverts the Electoral College, Rejecting Its Own History.  Opponents of the Electoral College achieved an important victory last weekend when Connecticut's legislature passed the so-called National Popular Vote compact. [...] Most Americans have never heard of the National Popular Vote compact, but it is shockingly close to causing a major political and legal firestorm.  It is a clever scheme to change how we elect the president without the bother of having to pass a constitutional amendment.  States that approve this legislation enter a simple compact with one another.  Each participating state agrees to allocate its electors to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of how its own citizens voted.  The compact goes into effect when states holding 270 electoral votes (enough to win the presidency) have agreed to the plan.  With Connecticut's vote, 11 states and the District of Columbia have now approved the measure, giving the compact a total of 172 electors.  It needs only 98 more to reach the 270 mark.

The Left's End-Run Around the Constitution.  This week, my state of Connecticut hopped aboard the "Resistance" bandwagon, loaded up a gun made by one of the many firearms manufacturers who have been driven from the state, and shot itself in the foot.  It did so by officially signing on to an unconstitutional enormity called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an ingenious mechanism for disenfranchising residents of small states in order to nullify the Electoral College, and make them feel good about their own suicide.

Progressive Activists Look to Courts to Undermine the Electoral College.  Having failed to generate enough support to abolish the Electoral College through a constitutional amendment, the institution's detractors are now looking to the courts to upend it.  A new lawsuit, spearheaded by Harvard University law professor Lawrence Lessig and filed in four states, charges that the "winner-take-all" element of how states divvy up their Electoral College votes is unconstitutional.  The District of Columbia and 48 states use this winner-take-all system.  The only exceptions are Maine and Nebraska, which use a proportional allocation of votes.

Lawsuits challenge Electoral College system in four U.S. states.  Critics complain that the Electoral College system allows a candidate to win a presidential election despite losing the nationwide popular vote.  In 2016, Trump won the Electoral College vote while Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots.  In the 2000 election, then-Vice President Al Gore, the Democrat, got the most votes but Republican George W. Bush won the presidency.  The lawsuits contend that system denies citizens their constitutional right to an equal vote by discarding votes for candidates who lose in a state and magnifying the votes of those who win there.  Among those leading the litigation is David Boies, a prominent lawyer who represented Gore in the U.S. Supreme Court case that settled the disputed 2000 election in favor of Bush.

Constitutional Ignorance — Perhaps Contempt.  Many people whine that using the Electoral College instead of the popular vote and majority rule is undemocratic.  I'd say that they are absolutely right.  Not deciding who will be the president by majority rule is not democracy.  But the Founding Fathers went to great lengths to ensure that we were a republic and not a democracy.  In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution or any other of our founding documents.

The Electoral College Works, Leave It Alone.  How could the concerns of those little pipsqueak states matter when the massive voting blocs of the Upper West Side and West Hollywood and Nob Hill and the South Side of Chicago are saying, "You people go back to your bass boats and your cattle ranches and your plaid work shirts and let us run the country as we see fit."  The founders never intended 100 percent popular voting except at the lowest levels of government, town halls and city councils, where everyone knows one another.  Anything beyond that, they wanted some kind of check on the passions of the mob, so that nobody got railroaded just because they were too small to defend themselves.  In other words, the Electoral College is set up to defend minorities.  That's why Wyoming gets three votes out of 538.  This one half of one percent apparently outrages the East Coast Brahmans who would prefer to ignore the small-government radicals from Laramie and Casper who keep rabble-rousing for causes like better management of the wolf population and more equitable policies for grazing livestock on federal land.

Getting the Facts Straight on the Electoral College.  The most misunderstood institution in our constitutional government is the Electoral College.  Most recently, the Chair of the Democratic National Committee claimed that "the Electoral College is not in the Constitution."  Others on the right of the political spectrum claim that the process by which the members of the Electoral College are selected is our "founders' vision for our Republic" and constitutionally mandated.  Both are dead wrong.  Let's begin with the actual words of the Constitution:  "Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the state may be entitled in Congress..."  That's all the Constitution says about how the members of the Electoral College are to be selected.  There is other language in the Constitution about the EC beyond this one clause, but it is all administrative process language about the House contingent election, not selecting the electors.  All decisions about the method of selecting members of the Electoral College is left to the states.

DNC Chairman Tom Perez: 'The Electoral College is not a creation of the Constitution'.  Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said during a lecture Tuesday the Electoral College isn't "a creation of the Constitution."  Perez made the comment while speaking at Indiana University Law School's Sixth Annual Birch Bayh Lecture.  "The Electoral College is not a creation of the Constitution.  It doesn't have to be there," he said.  "There's a national popular vote compact in which a number of states have passed a bill that says we will allocate our vote, our electoral votes, to the person who wins the national popular vote once other states totaling 270 electoral votes do the same."

Top Democrat Wrongly Asserts Electoral College Isn't in Constitution.  The head of the national Democratic Party incorrectly said the Electoral College is not "a creation of the Constitution."  In a lecture at Indiana University Law School, Tom Perez, a lawyer who is chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said the Electoral College "doesn't have to be there" and asserted that the national popular vote should be the principal standard.  "The Electoral College is not a creation of the Constitution.  It doesn't have to be there," said Perez, who was secretary of labor during President Barack Obama's second term and is a former assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights.

Still bruised from Clinton loss, left takes aim at Electoral College in court.  A liberal-led push to overhaul the Electoral College could be moving from the op-ed pages to the courtroom, as a Harvard professor who flirted with a dark-horse Democratic presidential bid last year vows litigation to change the system.  Criticism of the Electoral College was resurgent in the wake of Hillary Clinton's 2016 loss.  Clinton recently said she wants the system "eliminated." The latest effort isn't aimed at dismantling the structure entirely — but rather, the winner-take-all system used by 48 states in awarding electors, which ends up focusing presidential races on a handful of battlegrounds.  "With a winner-take-all, most of America is ignored," professor Lawrence Lessig said in previewing his legal case — which, like any challenge to the Electoral College, faces a steep uphill climb.

Sore Loser Hillary Broke Campaign Promise Without Winning.  Like the Senate, the Tenth Amendment, and the existence of state governments, the Electoral College reminds us that we live in the United States.  These free and independent states, as the Declaration of Independence put it, elect a president, as the Constitution decreed it.  CNN, in their ostensibly straight news account on Clinton's remarks, described the Electoral College as "arcane."

Hillary Clinton:  Time to abolish the Electoral College.  Hillary Clinton told CNN on Wednesday that it is time to abolish the Electoral College, part of a sweeping interview where the former Democratic nominee sought to explain why she lost the 2016 election.  Clinton, in the interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, displayed her animus for fired FBI Director James Comey, reflected on her love for the people — namely former President Bill Clinton — who helped her get through the crushing loss and blasted the arcane election body that she believes helped Donald Trump win the presidency.  "I think it needs to be eliminated," Clinton said of the Electoral College.

The Editor says...
Who cares what she wants anymore?  She's a loser!  She is not an elected official of any kind.

Jesse Jackson:  Electoral college must be abolished.  The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Sunday [8/20/2017] gave a strong endorsement to the movement for removing monuments to leaders of the Confederacy and called for the electoral college to be abolished.  Speaking at the Islamic Center of Southern California, Jackson blamed the electoral college system, giving disproportionate influence to less populated states, for the 2000 and 2016 loss of Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore and Hillary Clinton despite their winning the popular vote.

Five festering problems the Democrats cynically ignore.  [#5] The connection between illegal immigration and California's electoral power:  California declared itself a sanctuary state and now houses a quarter of the nation's illegal immigrants.  The elected officials at all levels of that state government will openly defy any attempts to enforce existing federal law that could reduce the number of illegal immigrants.  The massive presence of illegals distorts our representative system.  There are at least 4 million illegals in California.  It requires a special liberal variety of naïvité to believe that none of them votes.  Even if none does, they are all counted in the census, which determines congressional representation and some federal funding allocations.  If only citizens were counted, California would have five fewer congressional seats and electoral votes.  Those seats would go to, for example, Ohio (2), Michigan, and Pennsylvania.  The Democrats who've declared California a sanctuary state know exactly what they are doing.

Trump Gores a Sacred Cow, and Liberals Lament.  Ours is not a direct democracy.  The president is not elected by a direct vote of the people.  The Electoral College stands between the people and the president because most of the Founders feared the masses and wanted an institution in place as a balance against their numbers.  Our "checks and balances" system includes this check against the people themselves.  Essentially, it is the first and final check to protect us from ourselves.

Ginsburg wants to change the Electoral College.  Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she wants to change the Electoral College.  Asked at Stanford University on Monday night about what she would like to change, Ginsburg exclaimed, "the Electoral College!" She also decried partisanship and lamented the death penalty during her appearance at Stanford, according to the Mercury News.  "If I were queen, there would be no death penalty," Ginsburg said.

National Popular Vote Compact Threatens Republic.  "The Electoral College is a vestige, it's a carryover from an earlier vision of how our federal government was going to work that put a lot of premium on states."  That is what former "constitutional law professor" and now-former U.S. President Barack Obama told reporters at a press conference on December 16, 2016.  The president's remarks echoed those shared by a great many Americans outraged at how, despite "officially" losing the national popular vote to Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump won the presidential election because of the Electoral College.  In a day and age when presidents from both political parties, and other elected officials across the political spectrum, perpetually refer to the United States as a democracy, with millions more being taught the same in public schools and colleges across the country, it comes as no surprise that many millions of voters feel disenfranchised.

McConnell had to talk Trump out of trying to abolish the Electoral College.  Now this, from the Wall Street Journal, is amusing.  President Trump apparently told congressional leaders in a recent White House meeting that he wanted to abolish the Electoral College, but was talked out of it by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

New York Times Quietly Runs Stunning Correction On Editorial Attacking Electoral College.  The New York Times quietly issued a major correction to an editorial attacking the electoral college in December, admitting it has in fact defended the electoral college at a time when it was politically expedient for Democrats.  The paper ran the editorial calling for an end to the electoral college in December, when Democrats were harping on the fact that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton beat President Donald Trump in the popular vote, and calling for reforms to make the system more "fair."  Obviously seeking to avoid the editorial position as politically motivated, the editorial emphasized what turned out to be a false claim that the paper has opposed the electoral college system for 80 years.

Girl Scouts and the War on Trump.  To a large and vocal minority on the left, Trump isn't just the guy who shouldn't have won; his presidency is illegitimate.  We needn't waste time debunking arguments that back up this assertion.  If you don't like the Electoral College, take it up with James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, not Trump.  And as despicable as Moscow's tactics were, it's ridiculous to assert that leaked emails saying almost nothing about Hillary Clinton herself had more of an impact on public opinion than the Democratic candidate's credibility problems.  Trump isn't going to be a normal president anymore than he was a normal candidate, but none of that takes away the legitimacy that his 306 Electoral College votes conferred upon him.

Obama Still Doesn't Get America.  For Obama, the US Constitution is just an obstacle to be circumvented or simply ignored.  A few weeks ago he told us that the Electoral College is "outdated" apparently because the American States are now largely under the thumb of the Feds.  The Electoral College was originally designed to give States a voice in the election of the Chief Executive of the nation.  My interpretation of his casual put-down was this:  The States used to be the major unit of governance in America, subordinate only to the US Constitution.  But today the power-hungry left has succeeded in slicing our people by race, by gender, by class, by favorite sexual objects, and now by religion — if one considers Islam as mainly a religion rather than as a theology of conquest.  (It is both).  In Obama's mind, maybe the Electoral College should represent his favorite demographics:  blacks, liberal whites, gays and lesbians, and so on.  Those artificial "identity blocks" are what he really cares about.

Biden gavels down die-hard Clinton loving Democrats who launch futile protests against the electoral vote.  Democrats were shut down in their final, futile attempt to protest President-elect Donald Trump's electoral college win — and this time it was Vice President Joe Biden wielding procedure against them.  Congress met in a Joint Session Friday to certify the electoral college, which met in December in state capitols across the country.  'It is over,' Biden said at one point, after shutting down an array of Democrats who tried to force a debate on the certification of the vote.

Durbin: More States Should Sign on to End Run Around Electoral College.  Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) vowed last week to spend the new year and new Congress pushing for a "one person, one vote" scrapping of the electoral college.  Durbin acknowledges this won't come easily with a Republican House, Senate and White House, so he's hoping a state-by-state workaround does the trick.

The failed electoral-college rebellion bodes ill for future elections.  The last-ditch effort by some Democrats to thwart a Donald Trump presidency ended in a fizzle on December 19th.  The 538 members of the electoral college — the body that officially elects America's chief executive, as ordained by Article II of the constitution — handed the real-estate magnate 304 votes, two shy of the total he was projected to win after the people voted on November 8th but a comfortable 34 votes more than the 270 he needed to win a majority.  Mr Trump is set to be inaugurated as America's 45th president on January 20th.  The ill-fated Hail Mary was lobbed by a number of liberal intellectuals, including Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor and short-lived 2016 presidential candidate.

Surprise! Electoral college 'rebels' who wanted to stop Trump Were in touch with Clinton campaign.  Senior advisors to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign kept in touch by phone and email with a driver of the ill-fated, last-ditch effort to dump Donald Trump at the electoral college.  The advisors kept tabs on Colorado elector Micheal Baca, who was helping try to persuade Republican members of the Electoral College to vote against Trump.  The effort ultimately flamed out, although a handful of Clinton electors ultimately ended up voting for other people.  Baca himself is facing prosecution for his decision to cast his vote for Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich rather than Clinton, notwithstanding a state law directing him to back Clinton and the oath he swore.

Sore Loser Theater:  Washington Post Pushes To End Electoral College.  They just can't move on.  Can't let go.  Though, let's face it, the Washington Post's EJ Dionne is a bit late to this pity party.  On the other hand, Democrats will surely be whining about the Electoral College for years to come.  If they can still whine about Al Gore losing to George Bush legally in Florida 2000, well, they can whine about Hillary losing the election fair and square for at least till the next election.

Clinton Quietly Supported Electors That Didn't Vote For Her.  Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's staff supported the "Hamilton Electors" and their potential coup behind the scenes, the same group that voted against her in the Electoral College, according to a Thursday report from Politico.  Clinton staffers Jennifer Palmieri and Jake Sullivan never officially endorsed the movement, but email records obtained by Politico show that the aides discussed strategy with the electors by email, text, and phone conversations weeks in advance of the Dec. 19 vote of the Electoral College nationwide.  Even though the Clinton camp was willing to discuss strategy, some of the electors think the effort could have been more successful if they were willing to help publicly.

Electoral College Defectors Maintained Contact With Hillary Campaign.  Well, look at this!  Politico has revealed that those in the electoral college who wanted to cause a ruckus on Monday kept in close contact with Hillary Clinton's top aides Jake Sullivan and Jennifer Palmieri. [...] They only needed 37 of the 306 Republicans within the college to defect.  Their efforts died, though, and in fact did the exact opposite.  Hillary lost more electors on Monday than Donald Trump.  [Micheal] Baca kept his word to Palmieri, but not to the state of Colorado.  Baca voted for Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich moments after he took an oath to vote for Hillary Clinton.  Electors at the Colorado capitol booed and shouted at him for defecting.  Baca now faces prosecution.

Exclusive: Clinton aides kept tabs on anti-Trump elector gambit.  Hillary Clinton's top advisers never publicly backed an effort by Democrats on the Electoral College to block Donald Trump's election.  When it failed on Monday [12/19/2016], one aide mocked it as an unserious "coup" attempt.  But a batch of correspondence obtained by POLITICO shows members of Clinton's inner circle — including senior aides Jake Sullivan and Jennifer Palmieri — were in touch for weeks with one of the effort's organizers as they mounted their ill-fated strategy.  And despite repeated requests for guidance, Clinton's team did not wave them off.

Meet the Dems who want to abolish the Electoral College.  Democrats in both the House and Senate have introduced legislation aimed at building pressure to scrap the centuries-old system, and replace it with a simple popular vote.  Under the change, Clinton would have become the 45th president of the United States, since she won about 3 million more votes than Trump.  Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., proposed a resolution to amend the Constitution to end the Electoral College, and dozens of House Democrats are supporting three separate House resolutions that would do the same thing.  Some Democrats have indicated support for the idea, even if they haven't yet joined the legislation.

Faithless, Senseless Electors.  Faith Spotted Eagle is a Yankton Sioux Nation protester of the Dakota Access Pipeline.  Without ever running for president, she is now one of two women in American history to win an Electoral College vote for president.  (In 1972, Tonie Nathan won one vote for vice president, and Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin received plenty in their respective years.)  My view on Hillary Clinton is pretty clear, but she went out and earned 228 electoral votes this year.  She got shortchanged, and so did Trump.  Neither Kasich nor Ron Paul qualified as write-in candidates in Texas this year, meaning they received no votes.  Powell, Spotted Eagle, and Paul didn't even run for president this year; Kasich explicitly said he didn't want faithless electors to vote for him.  Please explain to me what's good and noble and inspiring about these faithless electors making a big show about how they just can't go along with everyone else's decision and their previous pledges, and how different and special they are compared to everyone else.

After Claiming They Were Always Against Electoral College, New York Times Backtracks.  As if the New York Times didn't already issue enough corrections, they did it again Wednesday [12/21/2016].  After publishing a long-winded rant in Tuesday's paper calling for the electoral college system to be abolished, the editorial board was forced to apologize for making inaccurate claims about the paper's historical stance on the electoral college.  The original article entitled, "Time to End the Electoral College," was just as bad as it sounds.  The article was full of false claims, from claiming the electoral college was built on slavery, to claiming that voters in California and New York get less representation than voters in Texas and Idaho.  On top of that, apparently, the paper can't even get their own history right.

Defeated Democrats' new attack line:  The Electoral College is racist.  Democrats still mourning the outcome of last month's election have added a new step to their grieving process: leveling charges of racism against those who support the constitutional method of electing the president.  In keeping with the process stipulated in the Twelfth Amendment, 538 electors representing all 50 states gathered on Monday [12/19/2016] to cast their ballots for the 45th president.  The result — that Donald Trump will officially enter the Oval Office on Jan. 20 — was affirmed by the Electoral College, an institution the Left is now casting as racist and anti-Democratic.

The Electoral College is actually awesome.  That "faithless elector" project wound up backfiring on Clinton supporters and Trump opponents.  While activists predicted a significant drain of support from Trump — activist attorney Larry Lessig claimed that nearly two dozen electors had contacted his organization for potential legal support — only two electors changed their vote from Trump, both in Texas.  Meanwhile, Clinton lost five electors from three different states, which had the net effect of increasing Trump's margin of victory from 74 electoral votes to 77 (306-232 to 304-227).  Now that electors have fulfilled their roles almost entirely as written, Trump opponents have shifted away from casting the Electoral College as a last bulwark against the bad choices of the voters, and back to a historical anachronism that defeats the purpose of democracy.  While electors gathered to cast their votes and it became clear that the faithless-elector project had laid an egg, The New York Times editorial board demanded an end to the Electoral College.

Use the Electoral College Properly or Lose It.  An elector's job is not to inspire disappointed activists.  It's to maintain public trust in the electoral system.

Final tally shows Trump lost popular vote by 2.8 million — but he beat Clinton by 3 million votes outside of California and New York.  Final vote tallies from the November 8 election show that Democrat Hillary Clinton out-polled President-elect Donald Trump by 2.8 million votes while losing the contest by a wide margin in the all-important Electoral College.  Her upper hand with voters, however, came down to performances in New York and California that were far stronger than necessary.

Townhall: Michael Moore's bribe to get electors to switch votes a felony.  In a desperate effort to get GOP electors to switch their votes, wealthy filmmaker Michael Moore offered to pay whatever fines might be leveled against the electors by their states.  But, Christine Rousselle noted at Townhall, that bribe is actually a felony.  "As pointed out by political comedian Tim Young, Moore's offer to pay the fine for voting for someone other than Trump is a violation of 52 USC 10307 (c), and is punishable with up to five years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine," Rousselle said.

Former DOJ Lawyer:  Threatening Electors Is 'Political Terrorism'.  Despite intimidation and even death threats received by Republican members of the Electoral College, President-elect Donald Trump still received enough votes Monday to become the nation's next president.  However, should the Department of Justice be investigating these threats?  One former DOJ official thinks so.  Joining "Fox & Friends" Tuesday, J. Christian Adams called these death threats "political terrorism" punishable as federal crimes.

Electoral College vote goes down in history as most rebellious ever with seven ignoring their oaths and most of them abandoning Clinton — not Trump.  Tuesday's Electoral College balloting produced more 'faithless electors' than any other presidential election in history, but the rebels mostly fled from Hillary Clinton's column, not Donald Trump's.  When the dust settled, five electors had abandoned the Democratic candidate and just two ditched the Republican victor.

NY Times calls for end to Electoral College.  The New York Times is calling for an end to the Electoral College.  Americans would prefer by overwhelming majorities to elect a president using a popular vote system, the newspaper's editorial board said in a piece published Monday.  "They understand, on a gut level, the basic fairness of awarding the nation's highest office on the same basis as every other elected office — to the person who gets the most votes," the editorial said.

The Electoral College Stopped California From Picking Our Next President.  That's A Good Thing.  I was born in California, raised in California, and went to public school in California until I graduated High School.  I love California.  I also believe that the Electoral College did its job and prevented California from being the  kingmaker queenmaker in 2016.  You're likely familiar with the argument that the Electoral College is designed to put a check on direct democracy and prevent bigger population centers — like coastal urban cities — from having too much influence over the country.  That's why, though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, she lost the election.

Why won't mainstream media mention all the death and economic threats aimed at Trump Electors?  Here are some of the news coverage of the death threats received by electors who are voting for Trump.  I can't find these stories in places such as the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and USA Today.

Four Washington state electors break ranks and don't vote for Clinton.  Hillary Clinton won the state's popular vote, but three of 12 members of the Electoral College voted for Colin Powell, a former secretary of state; and one voted for Faith Spotted Eagle, a Native American elder from South Dakota.

Democrats Need To Win Elections, Not Flip Electors.  At the risk of engaging in a hit-and-run argument, I wanted to go on record to say that I think this is a bad idea.  My reasons are best encapsulated in this tweetstorm by the political scientist Matt Glassman, who notes that there is a strong precedent toward electors abiding by the vote in their states.  Other than a few one-off cases like Leach, the historical norm has been that electors stick with the voters' choice unless the candidate died, as in the case of Greeley or the losing vice presidential candidate James S. Sherman in 1912.

A Historic Number of Electors Defected, and Most Were Supposed to Vote for Clinton.  The Electoral College on Monday [12/19/2016] voted for Donald J. Trump to win the presidency.  Seven electors, the most ever, voted for someone other than their party's nominee.

Kellyanne Conway:  Electors' concern over Russian hacking allegations is 'nonsense'.  Earlier this month, the CIA concluded in a secret assessment that Russia meddled in the election to help Trump win the presidency.  FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. agreed with the CIA's assessment.  The reports have prompted some electoral voters to call for an intelligence briefing on the extent of any Russian interference before the electoral college vote on Monday [12/19/2016].  John Podesta, former chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign, has publicly supported those electors' demands.

So much for Clinton's rebellion.  Donald Trump has officially crossed the 270-vote mark to win the Electoral College as plans for a shock rebellion vote crumbled.  Electors from Texas casted their ballots at around 10.30 pm GMT (17.30 EST) to confirm Trump's momentous win.  Despite calls from a number of electors urging for other Electoral College members to vote against Trump, just two 'faithless' Republican electors voted against the Republican candidate — while four deserted defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Hawaii 'faithless elector' breaks law to cast dissenting vote.  Hawaii's four electors cast their votes for president Monday at the state Capitol building, and one broke the law.  Elector David Mulinix cast his vote for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders rather than Hillary Clinton, who won the presidential election in Hawaii.  Hawaii law requires electors to vote for the winner of the popular vote in the presidential election.

Carlson Blasts Efforts to Flip GOP Electors: 'They Don't Believe in Democracy'.  With the electors of the Electoral College set to convene in state capitals across the country Monday [12/19/2016] to make the results of the presidential election official, many are calling on Republican electors to go against President-elect Donald Trump.  On "Fox & Friends" this morning, Tucker Carlson said any electors who go against the public vote are betraying their pledge and their commitment to democracy.

Electoral college formally elects Donald Trump as president.  The denouement of the 2016 election came on Monday, as electors in all 50 states and the District of Columbia formally elected Donald Trump as president of the United States.  An effort by anti-Trump activists, who had urged electors to back efforts led by celebrities and academics to cast their ballots at variance with election results to keep Trump from reaching the necessary 270 electoral votes, came to practically nothing.  With counts still ongoing in California and Texas, the number of electoral college members who attempted to cast a protest vote was likely to reach at least nine.  In some state capitals, proceedings were met with protests.

Donald Trump wins Electoral College as attempts to cause rebellion turn to farce with Democrats deserting Hillary.  Donald Trump officially crossed the line to 270 electoral votes with electors in Texas casting a ballot for the Republican shortly before 5:30 p.m.  EST.  Calls for Trump to be voted down by members of the Electoral College were roundly ignored on Monday — with only two 'faithless' Republican electors rejecting the president-elect and four deserting Democrat Hillary Clinton.  Several more electors tried to ditch the Democratic loser, in an effort to pressure Republicans into doing the same and selecting a more moderate GOP president.

It Is a Beautiful Day:  The 2016 Election Ends.  [Scroll down]  No, see, when you pledge, 'I will do X," and then turn around and say, 'on second thought, now that it's too late to replace me, I have decided I will not do X,' then most people define that as being faithless, or a betrayal of other's faith placed in you.  The seriously under-covered aspect of today is how many foolhardy Democratic electors may decide to not vote for Hillary Clinton in a long-shot hope that lots of Republicans will prefer some other GOP candidate.

Democrats Inflate Electoral College Vote into Another Burst Bubble for Clinton.  It's hard to keep track of how many times Clinton has lost the 2016 election now.  Jill Stein's absurd recount theatrics wasted millions of left-wing dollars — and millions of taxpayer dollars, too! — to accomplish a second validation of Clinton's loss in several key states.  Democrats then sank deep into a fantasy about Clinton's popular-vote lead somehow overturning the results of the actual election, but everyone and their uncle knows that the winner is not decided by the total number of ballot-box votes.  Now the "faithless elector" fantasy is blowing up in their faces.

Electoral College Members Receive Death Threats for Promising to Back Trump as President.  Members of the Electoral College have received troubling messages and death threats as they get closer and closer to the moment where they will presumably confirm Donald Trump as America's next president.  Demonstrations against Trump continue across the country, and people have been pressuring electors to revolt by not voting on Monday for their state's popular vote winner.  CNN spoke with Michigan elector Michael Banerian, who has received a variety of messages demanding that he change his vote (even though Michigan state law forbids people like Banerian from doing so).

'Faithless' Electoral College voter deserts Clinton for Sanders — as calls for them to dump Trump are roundly ignored.  Calls for Trump to be voted down by members of the Electoral College were roundly ignored on Monday — with only two 'faithless' Republican electors rejecting the president-elect and four deserting Democrat Hillary Clinton.  Several more electors tried to ditch the Democratic loser, in an effort to pressure Republicans into doing the same and selecting a more moderate GOP president.  Trump applauded his victory when that scheme didn't work and flaunted it in front of the media.

Watch: Protesters harangue electors for voting for Trump.  Protesters harangued electors not to cast their votes for President-elect Trump during Monday's Electoral College meetings around the country.  The protests took place at state capitol buildings around the country, with protesters attempting to shame electors into casting their votes against the New York Republican.

Here's What Happens If 'Faithless' Electors Try To Overturn Election Results.  What happens if, on December 19, more than three-dozen Trump electors abandon their pledges, their party and their promises, and vote for Hillary instead of Trump?  Is that it?  Election over?  Coup finished?  Three dozen no names and nobodies just reversed the votes of more than 60 million in more than 30 states?  Not so fast, as the football analyst legend Lee Corso would say.  Congress and courts established a range of precautions against such rogue actions.

Maine elector announces he'll vote for Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary.  Virtually all of the agitation within the electoral college in favor of dumping Trump is coming from blue-state electors who are pledged to Hillary.  If they decide to vote for John Kasich or Mitt Romney or "Anyone But Trump" instead of her, that costs Trump nothing.  Those are votes that come out of Hillary's column, not his.  At least in that scenario, though, where electors are switching from Clinton to some anti-Trump Republican alternative, the elector's intent in casting a protest vote is clear.  They don't really prefer President Kasich to President Clinton, they're just trying to encourage red-state electors to withhold their votes from Trump by reassuring them that someone from the GOP will benefit if they join an anti-Trump revolt.

Michigan elector speaks out on 'nasty' death threats.  Michael Banerian reacts on 'America's Newsroom' [12/19/2016] to bullying ahead of his vote and questions surrounding the process.  [Video clip]

Here's What Happens If 'Faithless' Electors Try To Overturn Election Results.  At the outset, it is important to note that the mythical version of the electoral college — as a "check" against the electorate with a right to vote one's "conscience" against the people — was rejected in the very first election it was used, subsequently invalidated formally in the adoption of the 12th Amendment, and recognized by the Supreme Court and leading jurists and scholars alike.  The twinned SCOTUS decisions of McPherson v.  Blacker, 146 U.S. 1 (1892) (states enjoy plenary and exclusive power over electors) and Ray v.  Blair, 343 U.S. 214 (1952) (finding since the first election of electors role as "simply to register the will of the people") made that history clear.  Whatever Hamilton thought, the actual voters rejected it, and the Twelfth Amendment chose the voters' method rather than Hamilton's.

"Faithless" — and Destructive.  There are 538 Electoral College delegates.  This year, 306 are Republicans and 232 are Democrats.  To win, a candidate needs the votes of 270 electors.  In other words, for the plotters to succeed, at least 37 electors must switch their votes from Trump to some other candidate.  Since the election of 1832, no more than one elector in any cycle has ever has ever voted against his or her pledged candidate.

Activist Larry Lessig Concedes Efforts to Turn Electoral College Against Trump on Road to Failure.  Just days before the Electoral College is slated to hold its vote, Harvard law professor and progressive activist Larry Lessig conceded that as of today, only a "handful" of electors will likely ultimately vote against Donald Trump unless the number of electors who pledge to do so climbs above 40.  Lessig co-founded a group called the Electors Trust, which is leading a last-ditch effort to stop Trump from becoming president by providing legal representation to renegade electors and offering them a confidential space to air their intentions.

Pennsylvania electors get police protection: 'This is stupid'.  On Monday [12/19/2016], they will travel to the state Capitol to cast their votes to assign Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes to Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence during what has, in the past, been a ceremonial and largely unnoticed event.  Not this year.  This time around, the electors will be greeted by organized protests, urging them to assign Pennsylvania's electoral votes to anyone but Trump.  One elector, Ash Khare, said he and each of the 19 others have been assigned a plainclothes state police trooper for protection.

Electors won't get intelligence briefing: report.  Voters in the Electoral College will not receive an intelligence briefing about Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election, according to a new report.  Sources told NPR the electors would not receive any national intelligence before they cast ballots this Monday.  Fifty-four of the 232 Democratic electors had signed a letter asking for a briefing before the Electoral College's vote, according to reports.

No record of 'faithless elector' Chris Suprun as a 9/11 first responder.  [Scroll down]  The City of Manassas Park confirmed to WFAA that it hired Suprun on October 10, 2001, one month after the 9/11 attacks.  The fire chief there added that his department never even responded to the Pentagon or any of the 9/11 sites.  "It's no different than stolen valor for the military; dressing up and saying 'Hey, I earned a Purple Heart' when you weren't even in combat.'  There's a big difference between shopping at Old Navy and being a Navy SEAL," said the first responder who knows him.  But Suprun's résumé raises even more questions.  It shows he was, at the time this story aired on WFAA, a paramedic with Air Methods air ambulance service.  But Christina Brodsly, a spokeswoman for that company, said he is not an employee there.

Obama: 'The Electoral College is a vestige'.  President Obama cast doubt on the continued need for the Electoral College on Friday [12/16/2016], seizing on a popular Democratic argument that has emerged since Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by millions of ballots but lost the Electoral College handily.  "The Electoral College is a vestige.  It's a carry-over from an earlier vision of how our federal government was going to work," Obama said during his final press conference of the year.  "There are some structures in our political system as envisioned by the founders that sometimes are going to disadvantage Democrats," he added.

Judge rejects Washington electors' attempt to avoid fine.  A longshot bid to deny Donald Trump the presidency suffered another setback Wednesday [12/14/2016] after a federal judge rejected an effort by two Democratic electors from Washington state to avoid being fined if they ignore the results of the state's popular vote.

The Myth of Hillary's Popular Vote 'Victory'.  Many modern liberals are fascists at heart who can't accept losing power; that's why Bush wasn't "their" president.  Those liberals are currently bemoaning the fact that Hillary won the popular vote which, according to them, means she should really be president, though were the case reversed we all know they'd be extolling the virtues of the Electoral College.  Driven by a lust for power liberals don't get that everyone has to follow the rules; demanding the rules change when you lose so that you can win is a sign of immaturity and an unhealthy need for control.

Celebrities beg electors to be 'heroes' and vote against Trump.  Celebrities are teaming up to beg Republicans in the Electoral College to vote against President-elect Donald Trump, pledging their "respect" for potential "heroes."  A slew of other has-been and B- or C-list celebs have piled on, calling for 37 "conscientious Republican electors" to swing the Dec. 19 Electoral College vote away from Trump.  The Republican is expected to win 306 votes — more than the 270 necessary to win — based on the results from last month's general election.

Why 'Hamilton Electors,' Who Would Make Hillary Clinton President, Are as Dead as Their Namesake.  Donald Trump's surprise election has made the Electoral College a thing again.  Sad Democrats and progressives, still looking for anyone and anything to blame besides their feckless candidate and the inept, celebrity-obsessed campaign she ran, are repeating their stages of grief from 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the White House to George W. Bush.  In both cases, the Dems could fixate on the Electoral College, that awful holdover from the country's slave-owning past.  But despite high-profile attempts to bend the rules before the Electoral College votes on December 19, there's no way [...] that Trump is not going to be the next president.  Whatever you think of either him or Clinton, that's not a bad thing.  It's the way the rules are supposed to work, and for good reasons.

Electors are being harassed, threatened in bid to stop Trump.  Electors around the country are being harassed with a barrage of emails, phone calls and letters — and even death threats — in an effort to block Donald Trump from being voted in as president by the Electoral College on Monday.  The bullying is overwhelming Sharon Geise's tech devices, but not her resolve to support Trump.  The Mesa, Arizona, grandmother woke up Wednesday morning to more than 1,500 emails demanding she not carry out her legal duty to vote for the president-elect.  "They just keep coming and coming," Geise told The [New York] Post, estimating she's received more than 50,000 emails since the election.

Electoral college voters will NOT rebel against Trump they say.  Republican electors are being swamped with pleas to buck tradition and cast ballots for someone else at meetings across the country Monday that are on course to ratify Trump as the winner.  Associated Press interviews with more than 330 electors from both parties found little appetite for a revolt.

Now Electoral College voters who will back Trump are sent death threats.  Members of the Electoral College are being threatened as they plan to vote on Monday for Donald Trump.  The New York Post found a number of Republican electors who find themselves being berated by Americans who would prefer them not to cast a vote for the Republican president-elect, who won the Electoral College, but not the popular vote.  One elector, Michael Banerian, a 22-year-old college student at the Oakland University in Michigan, told the Post he was getting death threats sent through the mail and over the internet via email, Facebook and Twitter.  'Somebody threatened to put a bullet in the back of my mouth,' Banerian told the newspaper.

CNN.com: Electoral College Is 'Democracy's Ugliest Anachronism'.  A Thursday op-ed on CNN.com outlined a proposal to "not only... end a Trump administration, but also to eradicate democracy's ugliest anachronism — the Electoral College."  Scott Piro hoped against hope that a group of Trump electors would switch their vote to Hillary Clinton, in order to gain "the bipartisan support needed to legislate it [the Electoral College] out of existence."  Piro contended that "if enough Trump electors voted for Clinton instead, it would give Republicans their own, distinct reason to loathe the Electoral College."  The editorial staff at CNN's website led into the columnist's piece, "It's time for the Electoral College to fall on its sword," with a short bio:  "Scott Piro is an independent media relations and copywriting professional, directing PR campaigns and designing messaging for startups, arts organizations, authors, publishers, corporations, nonprofits, indie films and other entities."

Electoral College death threats won't be the last bid to overturn the election.  The Electoral College is due to meet Monday, when the electors chosen on Nov. 8 will establish Donald Trump as the winner.  Then Democrats' efforts to steal the election will finally come to an end — right?  Don't bet on it.  So bitter are American liberals that they may go down as the sorest losers since the invention of democracy.  They're apt to try anything to overturn voters' decision.  Certainly Election Day didn't stop them, even though the Electoral College outcome was unambiguous, a landslide indicating that Donald Trump had secured 306 electoral votes to the 232 won by the Democratic nominee.  To the losers, that was a mere sideshow — something to be overturned somehow, anyhow.

Group Using Celebrities to Urge Electors to Vote Against Trump Has Foreign-Registered Website.  A new video of U.S. celebrities urging electors to vote against President-elect Donald Trump was made by an organization whose website was registered in a foreign country, despite its accusations that foreign influence was to blame for Trump's victory in the presidential election.  The video, released on Wednesday by a group called Unite for America, is framed as a public service announcement with celebrities such as Martin Sheen, Debra Messing, and James Cromwell begging Republican members of the Electoral College to cast their votes against Donald Trump on Dec. 19.

Electoral College voters under intense pressure.  The 538 delegates to the Electoral College will gather at governors' offices and statehouses across the country Monday to make President-elect Donald Trump's victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton official.  The results aren't expected to deviate much from Election Day, when Trump won 306 electoral votes to Clinton's 232.  Despite media coverage, social media chatter and announcements from a handful of electors who have made their protest votes public, it's unlikely that electors will defect in significant numbers.

Sole Republican elector who plans to vote against Trump is a '9/11 faker' whose claim to be a first responder at the Pentagon are false.  The Republican elector from Texas who refuses to cast his vote for Donald Trump at the Electoral College wrongly claimed to be a first responder during the September 11 attacks.  Chris Suprun, a Texas elector, said he was one of the first on scene after a third plane flew into the Pentagon on 9/11.  But in fact he was not employed as a firefighter at the Virginia department he often credits until a month after the attacks, according to an investigation by WFAA.

Report: 'Faithless Elector' Lied About Being A 9/11 First Responder.  The Texas elector who cited his experience as a 9/11 first responder for his refusal to vote for President-elect Donald Trump appears to have fabricated the entire thing, according to an investigation by local news outlet WFAA.  Chris Suprun said he responded with the Manassas Park, Va., fire department after the third plane hit the Pentagon during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.  But WFAA's investigation reveals that the department wasn't among those responding to the attacks.  What's more, Suprun didn't even join the fire department until October 2001 — a month after after the attacks.

The Editor says...
Fool me once, shame on you.

Full-page ads urge GOP electors not to vote for Trump.  Full-page ads created by a Democratic activist are urging Electoral College members to vote against President-elect Donald Trump on Monday [12/19/2016].  The ads, which began running in newspapers across the country Wednesday [12/14/2016], are funded by Daniel Brezenoff, who made a Change.org petition urging electors not to vote for Trump.  He told Politico the ad is not aimed at choosing Clinton or a specific Republican alternative to Trump but intended to inspire electors to use their own judgment before voting.

These godless wretches have never heard of the Golden Rule.
'We Have a Chance!' The View Crew Desperately Try to Get Trump Unelected.  Wednesday [12/14/2016] on The View, the ladies turned their self-admitted "rage" over the election results into a tentative plan of how to stop Trump from entering office.  Host Joy Behar argued that the Constitution left a "chance" for Trump to get forced out, with help from the electoral college.

Oath Keepers Pledge to Protect Electors from Terrorist Death Threats.  Oath Keepers is hereby issuing a standing offer of volunteer protection to any of the Electoral College Electors who may feel threatened or in danger from leftist radicals attempting to coerce them into changing their vote as Electors.

Bitter Dems plot to rig Electoral College vote.  Democrats — who once demanded Donald Trump accept the election results — are now trying to rig the Electoral College vote in their favor next Monday.  If electors fulfill their obligation and follow the will of the voters for their individual state, Trump should receive a total of 306 Electoral College votes.  But Democrats are demanding Republican electors change their votes to thwart a Trump victory.

Judge Says Electors Must Vote For Statewide Winner.  A federal judge dealt a severe setback Monday [12/12/2016] to a longshot plan to deny Donald Trump the presidency through the Electoral College, refusing to suspend a Colorado law requiring the state's nine electors to vote for the presidential candidate who won the state in November.

Plot To Use Russia As An Excuse To Steal The Presidency From Trump On Dec. 19th Or Jan. 6th.  Donald Trump could have the election legally stolen from him on either December 19th when the Electoral College casts their votes or on January 6th when a joint session of Congress gathers to count those votes.  The establishment is in full-blown panic mode at this point, and they seem to have settled on "Russian interference in the election" as the angle that they plan to use to try to deny Trump the presidency.  As you will see below, there is an all-out effort to try to persuade members of the Electoral College that are supposed to be committed to Donald Trump to cast their votes for someone else instead.  And if that doesn't work, the groundwork is being laid for the Electoral College votes to potentially be invalidated when a joint session of Congress meets to count those votes on January 6th.

C.I.A. planning to overturn Trump's win as talking heads claim 'National Emergency'.  Alex Jones, radio talk show host and head of the popular alt-news agency Infowars, released a video transmission late Monday night which details how the C.I.A., along with the democrats, are moving forward to steal the election from President-elect Donald J. Trump.  In the transmission Jones said that the situation is likely the "gravest" threat presented "in the history of our country," in which I tend to agree.

Chuck Todd Excited by Idea of Abolishing the Electoral College on 'MTP Daily'.  With the Electoral College gathering early next week to elect Donald Trump President of the United States, many on the left are desperate to find a way the turn the institution against him and/or abolish it.  Such schemes are popular on MSNBC, and Chuck Todd expressed the same desire on Tuesday's [12/13/2016] MTP Daily.  "If we are never going to use the Electoral College, then we should abolish it," Todd exclaimed to his panel of journalists.  Todd's argument seemed that have been derived from a deep misunderstanding of the U.S. Constitution.  "My point is, the Electoral College was the idea, a college of influencers, right, deciding whether the American public had made the right decision," he claimed.  By Todd's argument the Founding Fathers set up the Electoral College to be a type of chaperone for the ignorant masses.

White House, Clinton Tied To PR Firm Behind Electoral College Push.  Texas Republican elector Chris Suprun, who has said he will not cast his vote for Trump, claimed in an interview with The Daily Caller last week that he decided to switch his vote after watching Vice President-elect Mike Pence defend one of Trump's tweets on TV.  In his interview with TheDC, Suprun went out of his way to deny any ties to George Soros.  "Nobody got to me," he added later.

Harvard professor says GOP electors are close to blocking Trump win.  Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig said Tuesday that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, more than half the number of anti-Trump votes needed to stall the president-elect from being sworn into office.  "Obviously, whether an elector ultimately votes his or her conscience will depend in part upon whether there are enough doing the same.  We now believe there are more than half the number needed to change the result seriously considering making that vote," Lessig told Politico.

There won't be a rebellion inside the Electoral College.  Some in Washington and others on social media are speculating that President-elect Trump is on the cusp of a tidal wave of "faithless electors" defecting from their pledges.  The notion is provocative, titillating — and has no root in reality and is nothing new.  Anti-Trump forces are advancing efforts to invalidate his election in the only venue that matters:  the Electoral College.  The electors of the Electoral College — the people who actually choose the next president — will gather on Dec. 19 to make their choices; choices that are supposed to represent the will of the voters of the 50 sovereign states.

The 5 Stages Of Losing An Election To Donald Trump.  We are now in the midst of widespread anguish over the imaginary popular vote.  Not only is the system we've used to elect presidents since the founding of the republic "unfair" and "undemocratic," but like anything else progressives dislike these days, it's a tool of "White Supremacy — and Sexism."  And it's not only illiberal pundits such as Mark Joseph Stern who peddle myths about the Electoral College, but Democrats such as E.J. Dionne and Michael Tomasky, both of whom misrepresented the reasons for proportional voting and the make-up of representation in DC.  One could argue that Democrats oppose dispersing political power and states' rights, but that would be giving them far too much credit.  They only seem to oppose those things when they're losing elections.

RNC keeps close tabs on Electoral College vote.  The Republican National Committee is overseeing an expansive whip operation designed to lock down Donald Trump's Electoral College majority and ensure that the 306 Republican electors cast their votes for the president-elect.  Two RNC sources familiar with the effort said the committee — with the assistance of state Republican parties and the Trump campaign — have been in touch with most of the GOP electors multiple times, and has concluded that only one is a risk to cast a vote against Trump on Dec. 19, when the Electoral College meets.

Judge rejects Democratic electors' bid to unbind votes as anti-Trump 'political stunt'.  Two Colorado Democratic electors have lost their bid to break with the popular vote after a federal judge threw out their motion, calling it a "political stunt."  U.S. District Court Judge Wiley Daniel rejected late Monday [12/12/2016] the request for a temporary injunction to suspend a Colorado law requiring members of the Electoral College to cast their ballots for the presidential candidate receiving the most votes.  "Part of me thinks this is really a political stunt to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president," said Judge Daniel, appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton.

Congressman begs electoral college voters to block Trump.  A Democratic lawmaker is desperately lobbying the Electoral College to shun Donald Trump, and vote for Hillary Clinton — even though he conceded Monday [12/12/2016] that the Republican won the election "fair and square."  The plea from Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) comes a week before the Dec. 19 vote, which is expected to affirm the results of the Nov. 8 election, in which Trump beat Clinton with 306 Electoral College votes.

Cavuto Battles Gov. Richardson: 'Are You Saying Electors Should Flip Votes?'.  Some are calling for Electoral College electors to receive an intelligence briefing before the Dec. 19 vote to formalize the election results.  A Democratic congressman called on electors to vote against President-elect Donald Trump regardless of the election results in their state.

Colorado 'Hamilton Electors' file appeal in 10th Circuit in continued attempt to not elect Trump.  The two Colorado electors who saw their attempts to get a state law that requires them to vote for the winner of the state's popular vote for president dashed by a federal judge Monday filed an appeal Tuesday [12/13/2016] in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.  Monday, U.S. District Court of Colorado Judge Wiley Daniel denied Polly Baca and Robert Nemanich's motion for a temporary restraining order that would have blocked the state law that now requires they vote for Hillary Clinton, since she won Colorado's popular vote.  Nemanich is an elector from Colorado Springs and Baca is a former state senator and elector from Denver.

John Podesta Fuels Russian Conspiracy Theory:  Urges Electoral College To Revisit Election.  John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's former campaign chair, is fueling conspiracy theories that Russians successfully hacked the election to make Donald Trump the next president.

The Incredible, Spineless Hillary Clinton.  I'm pretty sure I heard Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton promise — not once, but several times over the course of many months — that she would accept the results of the 2016 presidential election.  I then seem to recall that after her loss to Donald Trump, she followed through on that promise.  "We must accept this result and then look to the future," she said (or did she?).  "Donald Trump is going to be our president.  We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead."  But I find that hard to reconcile with what I've seen since then:  namely, Clinton and her campaign doing everything in their power to delegitimize Trump's victory and work towards getting the results of the election overturned.

Democrats blaming Russia need to take a good look in the mirror.  In the wake of their shocking loss, Democrats and their fellow travelers in the media have mounted a frantic, and increasingly deracinated, campaign to deny Trump the fruits of his victory in the Electoral College and thus overturn the election by any means necessary, fair or foul.

Democrats' all-out bid to smear Trump's victory.  Democrats put on a united bid to question the legitimacy of Donald Trump's election victory on Monday with the Clinton campaign returning from the dead to join in.  In a series of developments the White House, the Clinton campaign and Democrat members of the electoral college all pounced on reports that the CIA believe Russian wanted Trump to win the election.  A group of electoral college members — aided by an anti-Trump Republican — demanded a security briefing on the CIA's findings — a clear attempt to influence other members of the college who are not bound to vote for Trump.

Obama Calls for Electoral College Intelligence Briefing, Prior to Final Presidential Vote.  Hillary Clinton's top political adviser John Podesta said the campaign is supporting an effort by members of the Electoral College to request an intelligence briefing on foreign intervention in the presidential election.  Podesta said that President Barack Obama backs this effort.  "The bipartisan electors' letter raises very grave issues involving our national security," Podesta said in a written statement Monday [12/12/2016].  "Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed."

Electors want briefing on Russian interference.  Ten Electoral College electors have asked U.S. intelligence officials for more information on ongoing investigations surrounding President-elect Donald Trump's relationship with Russia.  The group of electors, which includes the daughter of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), wrote an open letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper asking for the information ahead of their Dec. 19 meeting to formally vote for the next president.

The Editor says...
The Electoral College is not a deliberative body.  The Electors are not entitled to intelligence briefings or any other information other than the popular vote totals in their respective home states.  The presidential election is no longer up for debate.

With 7 days left, Trump resistance pins last hope on Electoral College.  Trump won 306 electoral votes.  There are 306 electors, actual people, who are expected to vote for him next Monday in Electoral College meetings in state capitals across the country.  Trump's total is 36 more than the 270 required to become president.  With that in mind, a group of Trump resisters is hoping to convince 37 Trump electors to vote for someone else on Monday, taking Trump just below the magic 270 mark.  If that were to happen, Trump would not become president.

Warning: An Electoral Coup is Underway.  On December 19, 2016 the electoral college will vote.  Based on the vote, Trump should receive 306 votes and Clinton will have 232.  However, it is possible for many electors to change their vote.  They aren't bound by it.  There's currently a very well funded attempt to influence electors to flip their votes on December 19th to change the outcome of the election.  Despite expectations that it is far fetched, it has a high chance of success.  As of today, there are enough electoral votes in play to flip the outcome.

Report: "Soft Coup" Now Underway To Influence December 19th Electoral College Vote.  What is now underway is an insidious plan by political and media elites to create havoc in the final days prior to the December 19th Electoral College vote that would officially make Donald Trump the President-Elect.  It is a plan that has governmental agencies pitted against one another, and politicians and media figures promoting outrageous claims for the sole purpose of providing cover for an unprecedented move by the Electoral College to deny a Trump presidency.

Nancy Pelosi's Daughter, An Elector, Calls For Hijacking Presidential Election.  Remember when the Electoral College was evil and needed to be abolished.  Ten electors, including Nancy Pelosi's daughter, have a great new plan.  And it doesn't take much reading between the lines. [...] Why exactly do the Electors require information that has nothing to do with their current function, which is representative, rather than deliberative?  Because Pelosi argues they are a deliberative body.

Nancy Pelosi's daughter leads electors demanding intel briefing on Russia's ties to Donald Trump.  The accusations of Russian interference in the November presidential election have provided a last-minute lifeline for the long-shot effort to head off Donald Trump at the Electoral College.  Ten electors, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's daughter Christine Pelosi, demanded Monday [12/12/2016] an intelligence briefing on Russian interference by Monday, when the Electoral College makes the vote official.  Flipping the Electoral College seems to be the only hope left for Trump opponents.  Recount efforts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have backfired.

The one thing you must understand about the unfolding media-Democrat Electoral College coup attempt.  We are witnessing nothing short of an attempt to steal the election by some Democrats and a very supportive mainstream and leftwing media, by causing Electors in the Electoral College to go rogue and vote for Hillary, or at least not vote for Trump.  The first excuse for this tactic after the election was made by people like Prof. Lawrence Lessig.  At least he was honest in his call to have the Electors stop Trump because he didn't like the result and thought Trump would be a horrible president on a host of issues.  Honest, but severely misguided.

Podesta backs bid to overturn electoral vote.  John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's former campaign chairman and the victim of the most famous hack since Jennifer Lawrence, has joined the call from some members of the Electoral College that they be made privy to the secret findings of the intelligence community about Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.  The hope of the electors, led by Christine Pelosi, daughter of the House minority leader, is that the information would cause red-state electors to break from the popular vote in their states.  While conservatives may be cheered to see the sudden swell of support for federalism and republicanism on the left, that's not really what's cooking here.

Hand-wringing about Electoral College misplaced.  After Donald Trump won the presidency while finishing second in the nationwide popular vote, some people on the short end of this distinctly American phenomenon have questioned the validity of the Electoral College.  The popular vote winner has failed to become president twice in our last five elections, in 2000 and 2016, after that happened only three other times in history, 1824, 1876 and 1888.  That's disconcerting to those unhappy with how our Constitution established selection of a president, but it's a moot, purely academic discussion.  The Electoral College was created by the Founding Fathers because they didn't really trust the majority will of the people, and whether it still serves its originally intended role or not, it's here to stay.

The Faithless-Elector Fantasy Is Fun, but It's Just a Fantasy.  There are six Democratic electors from Washington and Colorado trying to persuade their Republican counterparts to join them in voting for Mitt Romney or for Ohio Governor John Kasich.  (Kasich's rejected the idea out of hand).  There's a Texas Trump elector who says he can't vote for him.  There's Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, who promises to offer free legal defense to any Trump elector who votes for Hillary Clinton.  It's all a shadow play — entertaining, provocative, but bearing no relation to current political reality.

The Deep State vs.  Donald Trump.  Do the Democrats want Donald Trump to become the 45th president?  Of course not.  And how about the Democrats' handmaiden, the Main Stream Media?  Do they want Trump in the White House?  Of course not.  And how 'bout all the other affluent residents of the Washington "swamp," which Trump has pledged to drain — do you think any of them want Trump?  Of course not. [...] And in fact, one Republican elector, Christopher Suprun of Texas, has already declared that he won't vote for Trump next week.  And guess what:  Suprun has become a hero to The New York Times and the rest of the MSM.

Exclusive: 'Faithless Elector' Now Blames Mike Pence For Vote Switch.  Texas elector Christopher Suprun revealed what the last straw was that lead him to publicly announce his decision not to cast his ballot for President-elect Donald Trump, even though Trump was the clear choice of Texan voters in last month's election.

Van Jones' PR Firm Working With Republican Electors Voting Against Trump.  A progressive public relations firm founded by environmentalist and CNN political contributor Van Jones is representing "a number" of Republican electors who plan on voting against President-elect Donald Trump.  Chris Suprun, a Republican presidential elector from Texas, garnered media attention on Monday after having an opinion piece published in the New York Times explaining why he plans to defect from Trump with his Electoral College vote on Dec. 19.

Faithless Electors Are Not Brave.  On December 19, electors across the country will head to their state capitols to formally cast votes for president and vice president.  In Texas, 38 electors — one from each congressional district and two chosen in a statewide vote — will gather in Austin, and almost all of them will cast their ballots for President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence.  The exception is likely to be Christopher Suprun, who argues that "electors should unify behind a Republican alternative, an honorable and qualified man or woman such as Gov. John Kasich of Ohio."  Never mind that Kasich has said he doesn't want any electors to vote for him, declaring that "this approach, as well meaning as it is, will only serve to further divide our nation when unity is what we need."  Suprun is not the only faithless elector nationwide.  In Colorado, four of the state's nine Democratic electors are saying that they might not cast votes for Hillary Clinton, who actually won the state, if there's sufficient support for a non-Trump Republican option.

The Editor says...
Mr. Suprun will have permanently ruined his own reputation if he follows through with his threat to vote for someone other than the clear winner of the election (in the State of Texas).  His word will no longer be of any value.  That's a high price to pay for grandstanding and political activism.  I hope his conscience will prevent him from making this costly mistake.  (Apparently, his conscience has had quite a workout lately.)  Mr. Trump is far from the ideal presidential candidate, but he's the winner of the popular vote in Texas, and the Electoral College should vote accordingly.

The Left's Retreat into Fantasy.  It isn't fair, these pouty runner-ups argue, that a woman should be denied the presidency because of a system set up by white men over 200 years ago.  Not only should the Electoral College be tossed out like old leftovers that've been sitting in the fridge for centuries, but the College's electors should refuse to vote for Trump later this month.  This is all very rich coming from the same people who demanded Trump accept the election results, no matter the outcome. [...] Here's the thing about all the Electoral College business:  Both Trump and Clinton campaigned to win a majority of its votes.  The presidency was never supposed to be a popularity contest.  If that were the case, Hillary could have campaigned solely in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington D.C. and come out a winner.  But she didn't, and she lost.

Colorado electors sue state in effort to block Trump.  Two Democratic electors from Colorado filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday, challenging a state law that requires they vote for the winner of the state's popular vote, the Denver Post reports.  Polly Baca and Robert Nemanich had pledged to support Democrat Hillary Clinton, the winner of Colorado's nine electoral votes.  But now they are joining so-called "Moral Electors" in other states and say they'll shift their Democratic votes to a consensus Republican pick — if one emerges.

Kasich asks Electoral College not to change vote for him.  Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Tuesday [12/6/2016] advised state electors not to vote for him in an anti-Donald Trump protest.  Kasich, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for president, told The Associated Press Tuesday that he is not a candidate for president, the election was held and Trump was the winner.  "The country is divided and there are certainly raw emotions on both sides stemming from the election," Kasich, in his second and last four-year term, said in a statement.

John Conyers now claiming the electoral college is rooted in slavery.  When the Democrats lose, they hate anything that they think contributes to their loss and once again they've taken aim at the electoral college after Trump beat the pantsuit off of Hillary a month ago.  Today John Conyers held a forum on the Future of the Electoral College where he proceeded to argue for the abolition of the electoral college by claiming it is rooted in slavery.  [Video clip]

Hillary Clinton could have legal right to challenge electoral college system and be next US president, says law professor.  Hillary Clinton may be able to challenge the election result in the Supreme Court and become the next President of the United States, a law professor has said.  Ms Clinton currently has 2.6 million more votes than Donald Trump in the popular count, but lost the election in November because of the idiosyncratic workings of the United States' Electoral College system — a result which academic Lawrence Lessig has said could be ruled unconstitutional.  The process by which the United States elects a president is complicated — rather than US citizens voting for their head of state directly, representatives in the Electoral College choose the winner on behalf of their state.

Support for the Electoral College is at a 49-Year High.  A recent Gallup poll shows that support for the Electoral College is growing.  A record 47 percent of Americans want to keep the Electoral College, and less than half of Americans (49 percent) want to abolish it.  This is the first time in 49 years — since 1968 — that less than half of Americans want to get rid of the current electoral system.

Why I Will Not Cast My Electoral Vote for Donald Trump.  I am a Republican presidential elector, one of the 538 people asked to choose officially the president of the United States.  Since the election, people have asked me to change my vote based on policy disagreements with Donald J. Trump.  In some cases, they cite the popular vote difference.  I do not think president-elects should be disqualified for policy disagreements.  I do not think they should be disqualified because they won the Electoral College instead of the popular vote.  However, now I am asked to cast a vote on Dec. 19 for someone who shows daily he is not qualified for the office.

The Editor says...
It's not up to the Electoral College to decide if the winning candidate is qualified, competent, or even sane.  That assessment is made by the voters before the Electoral College convenes; and when it does, it is merely a formality.  The bottom line is this:  You shouldn't seek the office of Elector if you don't intend to follow through on your obligations.

Comey's FBI Needs to Investigate Violent Democratic Tantrums.  It's time for the FBI to conduct a detailed investigation into the violence and political thuggery that continue to mar the presidential election's aftermath.  A thorough probe of the protests — to include possible ties to organizations demanding vote recounts — will give the Bureau's integrity-challenged director, James Comey, a chance to sandblast his sullied badge.  Director Comey must also include "elector intimidation" on his post-election investigation list.  Reports that members of the Electoral College are being harassed and threatened by angry, vicious (and likely Democratic Party) malcontents require Comey's quick and systematic attention.

Rogue electors brief Clinton camp on anti-Trump plan.  Advocates of the long-shot bid to turn the Electoral College against Donald Trump have been in contact with close allies of Hillary Clinton, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions, but the Clinton camp — and Clinton herself — have declined to weigh in on the merits of the plan.  Clinton's team and the Democratic National Committee have steadfastly refused to endorse the efforts spearheaded by a group of electors in Colorado and Washington state.  But, as with the ongoing recounts initiated by Green Party nominee Jill Stein, the Clinton team has not categorically rejected them, leaving the collection of mainly Democratic electors to push forward with no explicit public support from the failed Democratic nominee or any other prominent party leaders.

Americans' Support for Electoral College Rises Sharply.  Americans' support for keeping the Electoral College system for electing presidents has increased sharply.  Weeks after the 2016 election, 47% of Americans say they want to keep the Electoral College, while 49% say they want to amend the Constitution to allow for a popular vote for president.  In the past, a clear majority favored amending the U.S. Constitution to replace the Electoral College with a popular vote system.

Missouri's presidential electors [are] being asked to vote for Clinton.  Each party selects its own presidential electors.  The Republican Party in Missouri will send its10 presidential electors to Jefferson City because Donald Trump was the presidential candidate with the most votes in the state.  Hector Maldonado from Sullivan is one of the 10 Electoral College representatives from Missouri and one of 538 in the country.  He showed our Fox 2 News crew a stack of letters he's received in just the past few days.  "There's probably a good close to 100 (letters) here," Maldonado said.

First Republican faithless elector comes forward:  Why I can't vote for Trump.  The mystery man:  Christopher Suprun of Texas.  He has an op-ed tonight in the Times, two weeks to the day before the big vote.  We should probably start a pool.  How many electors in all will break ranks?

Washington State Electors Join Movement Seeking to Deny Trump the Presidency.  Levi Guerra declared that she would join a handful of electors seeking to deny Donald Trump the presidency.  That makes Guerra at least the second Washington state elector seeking to sway the upcoming Electoral College vote.

DOJ Declines To Comment On Why Agency Won't Investigate Threats To Electors.  The Department of Justice did not want to discuss why the agency refuses to investigate alleged harassment and death threats toward Electoral College voters in states that went for Donald Trump.  "The department will decline to comment," DOJ deputy press secretary David Jacobs told The Daily Caller in an email Wednesday afternoon [11/30/2016].  The Justice Department seemed concerned about protecting voters from being intimidated at the polls on Election Day.  It deployed 500 monitors to 67 jurisdictions in 28 states to watch polling stations this past presidential election cycle.

Put Faith in Constitution, Not 'Democracy'.  Start with a thought experiment:  What if Donald Trump had won the popular vote and lost in the Electoral College?  How would Democrats respond if prominent scholars and public figures argued that Clinton's electors should break their pledges and elect Trump?  I'll tell you how:  Democrats would see it as an attempted coup d'etat.  And they'd be right.  The vote in the Electoral College has always been a formality.  Its purpose is simply to effectuate the results of the electoral system we have, with all its imperfections.  Faithless electors have never determined the outcome of a presidential election, and for good reason.  To do so would be to change the rules of the game in the game's closing minutes.  It would distort fairness and the rule of law.  And it would send the extremely worrisome message that electoral results aren't to be taken seriously as the outcome of a legally constrained process.

Gore: We Should Abolish Electoral College, Popular Vote Would 'Stimulate Public Participation'.  During a statement on Tuesday [11/29/2016], former Vice President Al Gore argued that the Electoral College should be abolished in favor of a popular vote system.  Gore said he supported keeping the Electoral College even after the 2000 election, because it tied the states together, but now he has changed his mind and thinks the Electoral College should be eliminated.

Don't assault Constitution over partisan complaints.  Hillary Clinton, with the help of huge vote leads in places such as California (62-33 percent), New York (59-38 percent) and Massachusetts (61-34 percent), is currently ahead by more than 2 million votes.  In California alone, she surpassed Trump by about 3.5 million votes, meaning that if the election were decided by popular vote, that extremely liberal state would wield massive power over much smaller states such as Montana, Wyoming, Oklahoma and Tennessee, where Trump won by similarly large margins.  This should remind us why the country was established with checks and balances against putting too much power into the hands of any one state, and indeed any one faction.  One of those checks and balances is the Electoral College, to which the Founders gave the responsibility for choosing the winner of the presidency, instead of relying on the popular vote.

The Anti-Trump Riots Are a Smoke Screen.  Many seem bewildered by the anti-Trump riots and demonstrations. [...] They know full well that they aren't going to overturn the election.  These privately funded forces are being used to create pressure to destroy the Electoral College so they won't have to deal with it next election.  This is how the Left operates.  Make a big deal over here to force the hidden agenda over there.  The plan is to make enough trouble that Congress will move to abolish the EC to get some peace.  For clues as to who is behind this effort, one only has to watch to see which member of Congress proposes such action.  The answer of course is California Senator Barbara Boxer.

Prominent Harvard Law Prof Tells Electoral College to Abandon Trump.  Lawrence Lessig, a well-known professor of law at Harvard University and a political activist, penned an opinion piece in The Washington Post encouraging electors to cast their votes for Hillary Clinton despite Donald Trump winning more votes in the Electoral College.  His theory is that, while it has never been tested like this, the Electoral College is a "safety valve" that is intended "to confirm — or not — the people's choice."  According to the latest tally, Hillary Clinton is leading the popular vote by more than 2 million.

All This Silliness about Abolishing the Electoral College.  By now, you've heard the disgruntled leftists parroting the sentiment that the Electoral College is an archaic relic that is either racist (what else?), or has obviously outlived any usefulness it may have once had.  Therefore, in the interest of progress, it must be abolished.  Outgoing California Senator Barbara Boxer has recently introduced a doomed-to-fail bill meant to do just that.  This argument is, of course, painfully dim and tiresome.  The Electoral College is one of many safeguards against what de Tocqueville would later describe as the "tyranny of the majority" that our Founders feared, or more specifically, the threat of a concentrated majority in a state that happened to be more populous than another.

Six liberal electors have agreed not to give Trump the electoral votes he needs to be President.  The electoral college has many people up in arms right now.  It is agonizing for me to listen to people rant about the unfair nature of the electoral college.  I wonder if anyone has picked up a history book lately.  It is perhaps the most crucial part of our voting system.  And contrary to what many people seem to think, it plays the most pivotal role in enduring the most equal representation possible.  Even with this being the case, everyday more people sign petitions to end the electoral college.  Which, mind you, would require an amendment to the constitution of the United States of America.  Petitions are just not going to cut it.  So sign away.

Hillary Rodham Clinton Could Still Become President — It's Not Over.  Currently, Donald Trump is on track to win 306 Electoral College if Michigan is called for him.  Without Michigan he is at 290, and he needed as you know only 270.  This is what they are doing folks:  Clinton clan is circulating a Change.org petition and urging as many Americans as they can to get electors to mind the national popular vote and mark Clinton's name down come decision day, EVEN IF she didn't win a majority of ballots in their state.  They have the minds of crooks.

The Editor says...
The electors' names and addresses are well known by party officials.  Is there no civil or criminal liability in the event of malfeasance?  Would anyone other than Hillary Clinton have the gall to assume the office of US President just because the electors revolted?

Anti-Trump presidential elector suing to unbind from state's election result.  A presidential elector leading a historic protest against the Electoral College system is planning to take his fight to court.  A lawyer for Michael Baca, a Colorado elector, told Politico that his client is preparing a lawsuit challenging state laws that force electors to vote for their party's nominee.  There are currently 29 states with laws on the books that bind electors to the election result in their respective states, but those laws have never been enforced.  Further, the penalty for violating the law is typically a small fine.

Limbaugh: Hillary Campaign Behind Push to 'Threaten Electors'.  As the revolt against Donald Trump's victory Nov. 8 takes another turn — with calls to challenge results in three states and more "faithless" electors vowing not to vote for Trump — Hillary Clinton's lecture to Trump after the third presidential debate on the virtue of accepting election outcomes comes to mind.  When considerable attention was given to Trump's reluctance during the third presidential debate to pledge that he would accept the results of the election, Clinton went on record stating "one of our hallmarks has always been that we accept the outcomes of our election."

Poll: Majority of Democrats want to ditch Electoral College.  A majority of Democrats are in favor of abolishing the Electoral College, according to an online poll released Thursday [11/17/2016].  The Huffington Post/YouGov poll finds 66 percent of Democrats favor scrapping the Electoral College for a popular vote system to elect the president, while 14 percent want to keep the current system.  Most Republicans, 67 percent, are in favor of keeping the Electoral College, with just 13 percent saying Congress should amend the Constitution so the candidate who receives the most total votes nationwide wins the election.

Ignore the Mob.  Long Live the Electoral College.  This week, anti-Trump protesters hit the streets in big cities around the country, chanting "This is what democracy looks like!"  Yes.  That's the problem.  For many Democrats, the greatest political system is the one that instills their party with the most power.  Now that it looks like Hillary Clinton will "win" the fictional popular vote over Donald Trump, people — not just young people who've spent their entire lives being told America is a democracy, but people who know better — are getting hysterical about the Electoral College.  Not only is it "unfair" and "undemocratic" but like anything else progressives dislike these days it's also a tool of "white supremacy" and "sexism."

Electoral College voters 'deluged' with death threats.  On Dec. 19 the Electoral College will convene to cast their votes for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, with each state's electors pledged to vote for the candidate elected on Nov. 8 in their state.  But a handful of states have no laws making it illegal for the electors to change their vote while others have only a minor penalty such as a fine for doing so.  If Clinton's supporters can get enough of the 163 electors from states where Trump both won and votes can be legally switched on Dec. 19, Hillary Clinton becomes the next president of the United States.

Colorado elector wants Electoral College to dump Trump.  Michael Baca is a graduate student at Northern Arizona University.  He's a registered Democrat who supported Bernie Sanders.  And he's a member of the Electoral College, who's trying to convince the other electors not to vote for Donald Trump.  "There's a chance that by coming together, we can avoid a Donald Trump presidency," he says.  "But it's going to take a unification of Americans, I believe."  Baca calls himself a Hamilton Elector, and he says a half-dozen other electors from across the country are on board with his plan.

Arizona's presidential electors being harassed, urged not to cast vote for Trump.  Arizona's presidential electors are reportedly being hit by a flood of emails and phone calls demanding they defy the voters in their state and choose Hillary Clinton instead of President-elect Donald Trump — as part of a last-gasp bid to overturn the election.  Since Trump's surprise victory on Nov. 8, those opposed to his election have engaged in a number of strategies to attempt to nix the election or declare it invalid.  Protests, many of them violent, have erupted in cities such as Portland and New York City.  Others, noting that Clinton appears to be on track to win the popular vote but still lose the election, have called for the scrapping of the Electoral College altogether.

Outside California, Clinton Is A Big-Time Popular Vote Loser.  Yes, the Electoral College occasionally produces the odd outcome where the popular vote winner is the election night loser.  But without the Electoral College, abnormally partisan states like California could permanently dominate the nation's politics.  It's unlikely people in "flyover" country would consider that fair, or even democratic.

Hillary Clinton Supporters Doxxing, Harassing Electoral College Voters.  Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have already gotten more than 4 million signatures on a petition asking the Electoral College to toss Donald Trump's victory.  But some, apparently, aren't content to simply vent their frustrations online.  According to reports out of Idaho and elsewhere, Clinton supporters have obtained Electoral College voters' personal information and are harassing them with calls, Facebook messages, emails and even home visits, encouraging them to become "faithless electors," and change their Trump votes to Clinton votes.  And they aren't being kind about it:  "A lot of 'em use bad, rough language," said Layne Bangerter, one of Idaho's electors.  "Nothing I feel intimidated over.  But we're watching it very closely.  They've got our home phone numbers, our cell numbers, our emails, our Facebook.  We're just getting an orchestrated barrage from the left."

Should Los Angeles County decide our presidential elections for us?  The Electoral College is a mechanism, and balancing the power is a means to an end.  The end itself is protecting minorities against majorities.  A majority of 50.1% is not necessarily very much to have to get.  50.1% can often be achieved on a temporary basis.  But if democracy operates unfettered, a minority of 49.9% is still a minority.  If everything is decided by majority vote, that can be a lot of people left unprotected.  A lot of things voters will later regret can be implemented.  And good luck to minorities of 35%, or 25%, or 15%.  The Framers wanted to make it hard for the federal government to alter the status quo very much.  Policy ideas that would coerce the people needed to win widespread and enduring majorities throughout the nation, as opposed to supermajorities in a few population centers.  In any case, the Framers did not envision the federal government doing a good 90% of what it does today.  If they even saw the kinds of government activity we now take for granted as appropriate, they assumed that states, counties, and cities would be the ones involved in them.

Eliminate the Electoral College if You Hate Minorities.  Today, as we wait both for the Electoral College to cast its votes and for the final tally of the popular vote, we again see the Left declaring that the Electoral College is un-democratic and must be eliminated to protect the rights of minorities.  However, what they fail to understand is that the Electoral College was designed precisely to protect minorities against the majority.

Blame the British Empire for the Electoral College.  There are two truths about the Electoral College:  It ought to be abolished, and it never will be.  Calls for changing the constitutional election system abound now that Hillary Clinton has won the popular vote and lost the electoral vote, as Al Gore did in 2000.  But it turns out that the same Constitution that enshrines the Electoral College effectively protects the small states from an amendment they don't want.  The problem goes back to the nation's founding — and short of abolishing the states as effective sovereigns, it basically can't be fixed.

The Editor says...
It can't be fixed because it isn't broken.

Idaho Trump electors report 'barrage' of harassing messages urging them to change votes.  Idaho's four presidential electors say they have been getting harassing phone calls, emails and Facebook messages urging them to become "faithless electors" and not cast their votes for Donald Trump in the electoral college.  "A lot of 'em use bad, rough language," said Layne Bangerter, one of the four electors.  "Nothing I feel intimidated over.  But we're watching it very closely.  They've got our home phone numbers, our cell numbers, our emails, our Facebook.  We're just getting an orchestrated barrage from the left."

Two Electors Launch Effort To "Flip the Electoral College" And Block Trump's Win.  OK, theoretically, everything will go according to plan, and Donald Trump will be the next president.  But technically, the (s)election hasn't really taken place yet.  Presidential electors of the mystified electoral college must still actually vote for the president, and there isn't anything to keep them from 'voting their conscience' and choosing someone other than Donald Trump.

Dem introducing bill to abolish Electoral College.  Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) will introduce legislation on Tuesday to get rid of the Electoral College, after Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election despite leading in the popular vote.  "In my lifetime, I have seen two elections where the winner of the general election did not win the popular vote," Boxer said in a statement.

The Editor says...
There are teenagers who have "seen" the same thing in their lifetimes.  So what?  The same thing may happen again in four years.

We Still Need the Electoral College.  While Trump won a clear majority of the votes in the Electoral College, he did not win the most popular votes.  Some liberals are engaging in sore-loser backbiting by falsely focusing on the meaningless outcome in the popular vote.  The Chicago Cubs did not score more runs than the Cleveland Indians in the World Series, yet the Cubs were declared the winner.  Was that unfair, or does anyone challenge that result?

There's One Big Reason Why the Electoral College Isn't Going Anywhere.  [Scroll down]  There's just one big problem: when something only becomes a major issue when it's sour grapes following an election defeat, it becomes very difficult to actually do anything about it.  Or, to put it another way, support for abolishing the electoral college is almost always directly inverse to the amount of power yielded by the side calling for its abolition.  The Republican wave will not last forever.  The pendulum will eventually swing its way back in the other direction.  When that day comes, don't expect to see many Democrats still waving the flag for changing the way we choose our president.

Old, Bitter Socialist From Tiny State Bashes Electoral College After Trump Win.  Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders criticized the Electoral College in the wake of Donald Trump's presidential election victory because, he said, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and closely contested states receive too much attention.  "We may want to take a look at the whole Electoral College, which is seating a man for president who didn't get the most votes," Sanders told USA Today this week.

Hillary's Participation Trophy.  From the founders onward, the American presidential election system has been based on a state-by-state system of electors, chosen by the people of that state, who in turn choose the president.  The fact that no state, even the smallest, can have fewer than three electors means that those smaller states still get a voice even though in reality the voters of those smaller states actually are more "powerful" than the larger ones.  The system is unique to the world and born out of the blood, tears and politics of a different time.  However, many still praise it because it serves as a check on the huge urban population centers "running over" the rest of the country, particularly rural areas, when it comes to national politics.  Those are the rules, and both parties know them backwards and forwards, inside and out.  End of story.

Liberal bullies try forcing Electoral College into submission.  The Left had a total meltdown over Trump winning the election.  They were massively shocked.  Now that they have quit fainting, they are looking to challenge the Electoral College.  Our Founding Fathers were incredibly wise and prescient men.  They knew if the country just went with the popular vote, that many if not most Americans would have no say in who led them.  Thus the Electoral College came into being.  Liberals claim that Hillary won the popular vote by about 1%.  Not true.  Absentee ballots are only counted if a state is very close, so most were not included in the vote tally.  Most absentee votes are military who tend to vote Republican.  That doesn't include expats either or the fact that the Left utilized voter fraud.  They think if they can turn 10 to 37 Republicans in Congress against Donald Trump, that they could keep him from being inaugurated.

The Electoral College Is Brilliant.  The progressives are determined to get rid of the Electoral College.  Of course they are.  Abolishing the Electoral College would complete their project of overthrowing America's unique federal system, begun about one hundred years ago.  The direct election of senators was the first and greatest victory of the progressives over the Framers of the Constitution.  Made possible by the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, it mortally wounded the Founders' system.  Abolishing the Electoral College will finish the job.  And the progressives mean to do just that.

Left Rag Slate In 2012 Vs Left Rag Slate In 2016.  [They were for the Electoral College before they were against it.]

Soros, Half-A-Million Liberals Plot To 'Abolish' The Electoral College.  In the wake of Donald Trump's historic election victory, liberals across the country have taken aim at the institution solely responsible for robbing Hillary Clinton of the presidency:  the Electoral College.  A petition on MoveOn.org — founded and funded by liberal mega-donor George Soros — has garnered nearly 500,000 signatures toward "[amending] the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College."

Four Theses on the Electoral College.  [Scroll down]  The first route to replacing the Electoral College — through a Constitutional amendment — is hardly worthy of consideration.  Even in the extraordinary event that two-thirds of both houses of Congress voted to repeal it (this has never occurred, despite hundreds of efforts, although the Congress elected in 1968 came close) there is simply no possibility of getting buy-in from 38 state legislatures.

The Concession Speech aka Meet The New Clinton Inc..  [Scroll down]  Remember:  An electoral college prevents all the things (such as a King/Queen or Political Elite) from retaining or gaining all the power over its citizenry.  Without it, using today as the example, if one could win all the votes of just 3 states like California, New York, and Texas.  Their population, e.g., their "popular vote," would dictate whatever they decided for the entire other 47 states and their populace.  That's why we have one (electoral college that is) and other "democracies" don't.  It protects the very things these "we won the popular vote!" worry about, yet don't understand.

Dukakis calls for end to Electoral College.  Former Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, who lost to George H.W. Bush in 1988, re-upped his call to abolish the Electoral College after Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald Trump on Tuesday.  "Hillary won this election, and when the votes are all counted, by what will likely be more than a million votes.  So how come she isn't going to the White House in January?  Because of an anachronistic Electoral College system which should have been abolished 150 years ago," he wrote Sunday [11/13/2016] in an email to POLITICO.

Why We Have an Electoral College.  The point of the Electoral College is simple: to restrict the power of the majority.  There's a tendency to forget that majority rule is only half of a free country — the other half is the protection of the rights of the minority, of the dissenters.  This is why our federal government has two legislative houses instead of one.  The House of Representatives is filled on the majority-rule principle, with greater power given to larger states; the Senate, on the minority-protection principle, with equal power given to each state no matter its size.  The same balance underlies the Electoral College.

Folly of Getting Rid of the Electoral College.  The results of the 2016 presidential election will give fresh fuel to those who would like to abolish the Electoral College, with the usual expressed concerns that it is antithetical to "democracy," that Hillary Clinton could "still win," because there could be some "faithless electors" who could switch to her from Donald Trump; and then there is the biggest myth of all:  Hillary Clinton was the choice of the "majority" of the voters.  It is quite impossible to correct all the myths and misunderstandings about the Electoral College in a single article, but we can address some.

The Marxist Coup Brewing within our Republic.  It is now Hillary Clinton and her Marxist supporters who are threatening our Representative Republic through the petition website Change.org.  Immediately following Donald Trump's election victory, a petition was launched to sway the Electoral College to "Make Hillary Clinton President on December 19."  The Electoral College will meet and vote on December 19, 2016, to certify the Trump victory as defined within our Constitution.  Remember, the United States is a Representative Republic and not a Democracy, no matter how many times journalists want to change our constitution through language and the repetitiveness of their lies.

Almost Three Million people sign a (doomed) petition for the Electoral College to make Hillary Clinton president.  Donald Trump's election victory left millions of Americans in shock, especially those who believe he is 'unfit to serve'.  Americans opposing the election results have showed up in numbers across the nation protesting and letting their voices be heard.  But now, more than three million people have signed a petition for the Electoral College to elect Hillary Clinton as president instead of Trump.

The Editor says...
If Mr. Trump truly is "unfit to serve," he can be impeached by our elected representatives.  He cannot be recalled by a tiny minority of disgruntled hippies bearing petitions, some of which may include the signatures of people like Doodad Pro.  [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Keep the Electoral College.  Filmmaker and progressive activist Michael Moore colorfully summed up Democratic feelings about Trump's victory:  "The only reason he's president is because of an arcane, insane 18th century idea called the Electoral College."  But those clamoring to dump the system cobbled together by the nation's Founders — which gives each state as many electoral votes as it has members of Congress — should be careful what they wish for.  Adopting a national popular vote would trade one set of problems for another.

MoveOn Petition Asks Electoral College to Vote Hillary Clinton.  A petition on MoveOn.org asked the electoral college to vote for Hillary Clinton, in spite of the clear outcome of Tuesday's election.  While the returns are still coming in, it seems that Donald Trump has won the presidency but Hillary Clinton has won the popular vote.  Democrats and proponents of absolute democracy are furious that this can happen.  More than 3,000 Clinton supporters have signed a petition urging the electoral college to dismiss the state-by-state results of the election and instead cast their votes for Clinton.

The Electoral College Is Hated by Many.  So Why Does It Endure?  In November 2000, as the Florida recount gripped the nation, a newly elected Democratic senator from New York took a break from an upstate victory tour to address the possibility that Al Gore could wind up winning the popular vote but losing the presidential election.  She was unequivocal.  "I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people," Hillary Clinton said, "and to me that means it's time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president."

The one scenario that could still get Hillary into the White House.  For die-hard Democrats holding out hope that they won't have to live through a Trump presidency, there is a last, incredibly long shot for them latch on to — a surprise twist in the Electoral College.  Though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 200,000, Trump has won the minimum of 270 electoral votes necessary to be elected president.  As of late Wednesday, he had 290 to Clinton's 228. According to the Constitution, chosen electors of the Electoral College are the real people who will vote for president, when they meet on Dec. 19 in their respective state capitals.  However, there is technically nothing stopping any of the electors from voting their conscience and refusing to support the candidate to whom they were bound, or from abstaining from voting altogether.

The Editor says...
There is nothing to stop the members of the Electoral College from electing the losing candidate, except the very real threat of civil war.  When the Constitution was written, men behaved predictably and honorably, according to their respective consciences.  In the 21st century, it is more difficult to rely on such things.  This is why the members of the Electoral College are carefully selected by active members of their political parties.

Why Do We Have an "Electoral College"?  Is It Fair?  It's about the time of year when people start complaining about the Electoral College, sure that it must be a bad thing.  Understanding how it works and why we have it is important.  It's a very American institution, and it really is a good thing.  We have a lot to be grateful to the founders for.  Ask yourself just why we have a Senate, with every state assigned two Senators.  The House of Representatives represents the people and the population, The Senate represents the States, so that big populous states like California and New York have equal representation to the small state with fewer people.  The Founders did a very impressive job of creating our Republic.  The Electoral College is based on the same principles.

Why We Use Electoral College, Not Popular Vote.  The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College after much debate and compromise, but it has provided stability to the process of picking presidents.  Though the winner of the national popular vote typically takes the presidency, that vote failed to determine the winner in four elections: 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000.  Some see the Electoral College as a peculiar and mystifying institution that ensures only a few, select individuals will ever cast a direct vote for president in the United States.  Others complain that the system rewards smaller states with more proportional power than the large ones.  Every four years, around election time, there are murmurs about revamping the system and moving toward a direct, national popular vote.

Days before the 2016 election:
Washington state elector says he won't vote for Clinton.  A Democratic elector in Washington state said Friday he won't vote for Hillary Clinton even if she wins the popular vote in his state on Election Day, adding a degree of suspense when the Electoral College affirms the election results next month.

"Faithless electors" and the outcome of the presidential election.  American voters will have cast their votes by Tuesday night, but it'll still be a couple of months before the outcome is official.  Five weeks after the election, the Electoral College takes place.  The 538 electors — one for each congressional district, plus two for the senate seats — cast their ballots in December and then the votes will be counted in Washington on January 6.  That's when the outcome will be official.  It's generally a part of the process that few pay much attention to, but by late summer, the question of "faithless electors" had attracted some attention to the Electoral College and those electors who might not vote according to the will of their states.

These are the times for which the Constitution was written.  These are the times for which the Constitution was written; this is why there is an impeachment clause; this is why there is legislative oversight of the executive branch; this is why there is an electoral college.  Elections are important to the legitimacy of government officials.  Where there is no confidence in the election process, there is the electoral college, but all of these clauses and instruments require a core of integrity.  The electoral college is to keep the public from voting for tyrants and criminals who have a slick campaign strategy.  The electoral college was designed to put cooler, more rational heads to use when deciding an election, at the time it was assumed that they would exert the power of the electoral college to protect the union.  The electors are representatives of the people and of the union normally bound to vote the way the people of their state voted, but also to recognize where that vote would be to the detriment of the union.

Breaking the Democrats' Electoral College Blue Wall.  Many savvy political analysts believe the Democrats have a built in advantage in the Electoral College. [...] There is a strategy, however, which can significantly improve the GOP's chances in 2016.  This strategy only involves taking advantage of the fact that Republicans control both the Governor's mansion and the state legislature in a few states that are part of the Democrats' blue wall.  The GOP's path to victory would be to adopt the approach already used by two states, Maine and Nebraska, in which the party that wins the state's popular vote wins two Electoral College votes (associated with the two Senators), but the candidate who wins in each congressional district wins one Electoral College vote for his party.

Recalculating Electoral Votes.  Beltway pundits routinely grant Democrats in 2016 an advantage in the Electoral College.  The magic number is 270 electoral votes.  Twenty-four states are almost certain to go Republican:  Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming, with a combined total of 206 electoral votes.  Any Republican candidate who fails to carry any of those states is going to lose the presidential election anyway.

Blue Dot for Obama Prompts Red Nebraska to Revisit Electoral College Rules.  Nebraska is one of just two states, along with Maine, that do not award all their electoral voters to the statewide winner.  And that meant that in 2008, Barack Obama picked up an electoral vote from the congressional district around Omaha, even as Senator John McCain trounced him across the rest of the state.  One electoral vote — out of five in Nebraska and 538 nationally — might seem trivial, but Republicans do not see it that way.

National Popular Vote Compact is a Bad Idea.  A movement is underway to change the method of electing presidents.  The objective of this movement is to convince states whose cumulative electoral vote count equals or exceeds 270 (the number needed to elect a president) to join an interstate compact.  This compact requires that all member states cast all of their electoral delegate votes to the presidential slate obtaining the greatest national popular vote count during that election.  To date the compact has been joined by the legislatures of 10 states and the District of Columbia representing 165 electoral votes.  See if you see any commonality among the member states, RI, VT, HI, DC, MD, MA, WA, NJ, IL, NY, and CA.  They are the bluest of the blue states meaning Democrats seem to think a national popular election might favor their candidates.

Michigan Demonstrates Why Elections Matter.  The United States Constitution allows each state to determine how electoral votes are proportioned — Maine and Nebraska do it by congressional district won, for example.  The Democratic Party has won Michigan by an average of 53% over the last five elections.  Under the proposed change, instead of giving the Dems all 16 Electoral College votes, the split would be 11 to the Democrats and 5 to the Republicans under the new law.

The Much Needed Electoral College Targeted for Elimination by George Soros & the National Popular Vote.  If we were a true democracy, then the president and vice president would be elected by popular vote.  So, what's wrong with that?  Well, the Founding Fathers firmly rejected a purely popular vote to elect the president, because they wanted to balance the power of the larger and smaller states.  They realized that should our leaders be elected by popular vote, the major centers of population, such as we now have in New York, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles, would rule, and the rest of the country would have no say in presidential elections.  There have only been four times out of 57 presidential elections when the president has been elected without a majority of the popular vote.

Blue states try raiding Electoral College.  The fondest dream of the modern Democrat is to neutralize the votes of the yokels in Peoria and put important decisions in the hands of sophisticates in places like San Francisco and Manhattan.  The modern Democrats took a step closer to realizing their ambition last week when New York joined nine other liberal states with laws to undermine the Electoral College.  Blue states have been rushing to sign up for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.  So far, the list includes — in addition to New York — California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia.  All have agreed to allocate electoral votes according to the popular vote.

States Quietly Plan to Ditch Electoral College.  Nearly a dozen states have quietly signed onto a plan to effectively ditch the Electoral College and instead, award the White House to the candidate that wins the popular vote.  The National Popular Vote agreement would take effect if states that represent 270 electoral votes all commit.  New York has most recently joined the efforts, bringing the number of states to 10 plus the District of Columbia.  Altogether, they represent 165 electoral votes.

Several States Closer to Overthrowing Electoral College.  George Washington once warned against those who would undermine the Constitution.  "It is requisite," he wrote, "that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon [constitutional] principles however specious the pretexts.  One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown."  Washington's statement could easily have been aimed at the anti-Electoral College National Popular Vote effort, which is currently working to win support in several states.

"Rigging" the electoral system only is bad when it hurts Democrats.  As things stand now, the Electoral College favors Democrats because they are all but guaranteed to win a small number of large winner take all states, such as California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, plus a coalition of hopelessly blue states.  Democrats start off close to victory because of winner-take-all voting in those states, even if they win those states by a small margin in each state.  The system currently is "rigged" to favor Democrats, if you want to look at it that way.

OH, VA Republicans Consider Changes to Electoral Vote System.  Since the 2012 presidential election, Republicans in Virginia and Ohio have floated the possibility of getting rid of their states' "winner-take-all" systems of awarding electoral votes, proposing instead that they apportion their electoral votes by congressional district.