Baylor PSC 1387 - Bridge - Unit 3
The Electoral College
Number of Electoral Votes: Number of senators + 2
People donât vote for the president, they vote for an electorate (either R or D)
If the majority of individuals vote for a Republican president, than the Republican electoral would be chosen to vote (republican)
Technically, electorates can vote against their party, but some states have criminalized it. It does happen, just rarely.
States decide how to allocate electoral votes, but most use winner-take-all
To win the electoral college, you need to win 50% + 1 of electoral votes
If theres no majority, the House of Reps chooses the winner
Each state gets one vote determined by how their various delegates vote
If a states delegates tie, that state is not allowed to vote.
In order to win the House of Reps you need 50% + 1 votes (26) This does not change if a state cant vote
Its never happened, but if no one wins the electorate and the house, the senate would chose a vice president who ascends to the presidency.
In theory, then the president would appoint their presidential running mate vice president, then step down, then the president appoints the ex-president vice president again
Changing the Electoral College
Any large change to the Electoral College would require amending the constitution, which is unlikely.
Practical Options
Change the winner-take-all system for states
Colorado (failed proposition): proportional votes
GO BACK WATCH VIDEO MISSED THESE
Unlikely Option: Redrawing state lines
Problems with the Electoral College - (+ Counterargument)
Its complicated
This is reductionist
The second place/winner can lack mandate from the people (lost popular vote) (Itâs like if a football team says they shouldâve won because they were winning in ž of the quarters even though they scored less)
The people did give the president a mandate through the system even though more people dislike them
Winner-Take-All states emphasize swing states and discourage voting (in non-swing states)
Non-swing states dont loose their right to vote
Unequal representation (Voters per electoral votes ratio is very unequal across states)
Most of these arguments are false (some of these counteragurments are stupid imo)
Advantages/arguments for of the Electoral College (+ counter arguments)
Higher turnout w/ EC
No, only a higher turnout in swing states
US is a republic, not a democracy
Except that a republic is people voting for an official, which is exactly what a popular vote does
Framers intent
They threw this together last second
Fights Mob Rule
Barrier between public and outcome
But the electorates dont go against the public
Protects against demagogues (emotionally-manipulative us-vs-them politicians like Hitler)
Prevents tyranny of the majority
Winner-take-all systems are more tyranny of the majority then popular votes
Decisive outcomes/It works   Â
10% of elections are madhouses, it doesnt âjust work.â
Helps small states/all states
No it doesnât, it helps swing states. Thats where politicians focus, not on small states.
Small states like it
Statistically, they donât
Cities control the elections (and overrule rural areas)
If that was true, why didnt DFW, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, and Houston ganged up and turned Texas democrat?
Cities are diverse, they dont all vote the same
It would require 65.5% of the 176 biggest metros citizens to all vote the same for cities to control elections. Yet, of the top 20 most democratic cities only 15/20 vote high enough to fit this rate
Every single one of these arguments are false
Popular Vote and Republicans (GOP)
Republicans claim there is a silent majority that is conservative
Republicans do not have a small state advantage
If TX or FL become blue, its over for the GOP
The Election of 1800
Candidates: Jefferson (Jeffersonian) vs Adams (Federalist) (+ Pickney and Burr as vice presidents)
Context: The majority party was the federalists until 1800, where the majority party became Jeffersonian.
Rules of Election in 1800: People vote for 2 candidates, the person w/ 2nd place becomes the VP. The tie-breaking procedures: If multiple candidates tie with over 70 votes, just those with over 70 votes go into a tie-breaker runoff. If no one got over 70 votes, the top 5 candidates go into the tie-breaker runoff, even if one candidates got more votes than anyone else.
Framers were worried about coups from the VP, so they gave the VP an important roleâ president of the senate
Presidents of the senate could direct debates and can pass a tie-breaking vote
Nowadays, the VP doesnt spend much time in the senate
Results: Jefferson and Burr tie at 73 (more than 70!) votes. This makes sense since the general agreement was âvote for Jefferson for president and vote for Burr for VP,â so those who voted for Jefferson would also vote for Burr.
What came out 200 years later: The Jeffersonian-won Georgia didnât officially sign their constitutionally required paperwork (which prevented voter fraud) including the names of the electors from the electoral college. (Turns out a secret federalist operation destroyed the real documents lol?) If Georgiaâs votes are discounted, Burr and Jefferson have 69 votes. (<70) So, top 5 candidates go through. (John Jay is the 5th, with 1 vote for some reason) The president of the senate ignored the clearly illegitimate documents and gave out the pointsâ but Jefferson was the president of the senate? clearly fraud but no one knew at the time so it was officially 73-73
Tie-Breaker: It was expected Aaron Burr would resign the race for presidency so he would be VP as expected, but he was crazy. Jeffersonians won the House, but the lame duck federalist majority house chooses the president, however, the jeffersonians were more spread out.
House: 9 votes needed to win
    8 Jeffersonian states
    6 Federalist states
    2 states are split
No one could win. Federalists vote for Burr (in 27 straight ballots, one vote an hour) because they hate Jefferson so much. After the 27th identical ballot, Jefferson gets upset and says âwell clearly they wanted me to win,â but Federalists argue back if not for the 3/5ths slave clause, Adams would have won. The plan with the federalists voting for burr was that they would elect no one and statue says the house can call for a new election. The oldest dude in the senate becomes president in the meantime, but the federalist congress could change who became the interim president. They want to make John Marshall, the secretary of state, the interim president. John Marshall was also about to become a future Chief Justice.
Mobs gather and state militias organize and no one knows what the angry people with firearms want to do. This scares a few federalists into casting blank ballots, giving Jefferson enough votes to win.
The âfailuresâ of the constitution shown in the election of 1800
2nd Place winner becomes Vice President
The Vice president counts electoral votes, even when he is running for president⌠conflict of interest
John Marshall couldâve become president, secretary of state, and chief justice
Lame Duck House of Reps control election
3/5ths rule sucks, slave owners had more voting power than non-slave holders
No real rules for succession; could be easily changed
Jeffersonians messed up, the reason John Jay got 1 vote was that Adams told one elector to vote for him and John Jay (not Pickney), leading to him having one more vote than Pickney, avoiding this exact issue
Georgia
Winner-take-all
The Election of 2000
Florida is the deciding factor between Gore and Bush, but its so close, its hard to tell, so a recount is called by Florida. Some of the districts recounted by hand, some recounted by machine.
Florida says the count must be done by Nov 16, and sues to end this. The judge rules this deadline is fine, but the secretary of state, Harris, who assigned it must be reasonable.
Florida Secretary of State certifies the election two days before her own deadline and makes any district âexplain themselvesâ if they wanted to submit anything but hadnât by Nov 14th.
Lawsuits
Absentee: Overseas military soldiers vote in and it took a while for them to come in, so due to the sudden influx of votes for Bush, democrats sue republicans for fraud since since some handwriting was the same.
Some soldiers forgot to write their home address/etc, so someone filled it in for them so their vote counted. There was not fraud.
Do-Over: Lets just do a new election. Court rules no.
SC #1: BUSH Appeals FLSC #2 to the US supreme court. The USSC agrees to take on this case
Dimpled/chads: Judge refuses to rule on whether dimpled votes aka âchadsâ (In order to vote, people had to punch out the paper. In many cases, the paper didnât fully come out (called a chad)) are counted as that is not their job
USSC:
USSC hears arguments about whether or not Harris was reasonable and while there Bush asks USSC to rule on equal protection about the difference in chad votes.
December 4th: The USSC undoes the FLSC decision to extend the deadline before sending the case (Gore vs Harris) back to the FLSC. The USSC tells the FLSC to not interpret rules on counting ballots as that is the state legislatureâs domain. USSC doesnât rule on equal protection. (11th circuit later rules against him as EP applies to people, not votes)
FLSC orders state-wide hand recount of all non-handcounted votes, but refuses to impose a standard for counting these votes. Bush now leads by only 154 votes. Bush appeals to 11th circuit but gets denied. He then appeal to the USSC, who agree.
In a 5-4 vote, USSC orders an emergency halt of recount and agrees to hear Bush vs Gore.
December 12th: In record time, the USSC court hearing is scheduled. USSC rules that hand recounts must cease because they violate the equal protection clause (WHY DIDNâT THEY RULE ON THIS THE FIRST 5 TIMES THEY WERE ASKED TO RULE ON THIS EXACT THING) and because they could not be completed by December 12th to follow that old rule. Since hand recounts were the only way for Gore to win, Gore concedes, Bush wins.
Its believed the justices (R-5, D-4) just ruled so they could get the president they wanted
Federalism
The republican justice always voted for states rights, a despite the constitution clearly saying elections procedures were a states right, they voted against the states right in this scenario.
The opposite was true for the Democratsâ they normally voted for the federal government, but voted for states rights in this case. (although this one was more clearly in the states jurisdiction IMO)
Catch-22
USSC told the FLSC not to tell the state how to define how to count votes, but in the second case they said counts needed to be stopped because FLSC did not define how to count votes
Sudden use of the December 12th
This law was basically never enforced and it was only mentioned once by a lawyer this hold time. However, it was suddenly pulled out so suddenly
Running out of the clock
USSC heard this case twice, but didnât made a decision the first time and didnât tell FLSC that they needed a decision by December 12th. They instead ran out the clock until there was no time to count the votes.
âGood only in this caseâ
Democrats realized this equal protection expansion to protect ballots could allow them to use it to protect gay marriage. Then, the court said âthis case cannot be used as precedentâ despite every other case being able to be used as precedentâ they didnât actually agree with their logic so they didnt want the logic to be used as precedent.
The Election of 2020
In 2020, the Election between Trump (R) and Biden (D) was very close. Trump told all his supporters to vote in-person and not do mail-in (absentee) ballots. Because of this, Trump is ahead on election day as absentee ballots havenât been counted yet. (According to Trumpâs advisor when being secretly taped before the election, the plan was always to claim he won early on and claim fraud⌠which was exactly what happened) As the absentee ballots get counted, Biden gets the lead and wins.
States, like Georgia, have laws/procedures for when elections are very close, so they had to recount. Georgia ended up having 3 recounts, all of which Biden won.
State Courts: Trumpâs team sues several times in various state courts claiming fraud, and most of the time judges throw out the case. Those that were heard were then dismissed due to lack of evidence; Trumpâs team never provided evidence for these lawsuits (later on, he hired someone to get proof, but she claimed to get roof through âdreams and visionsâ lol?). The courts all found that there was no (major) fraud. A few news stations found very, very minor fraud (Ex: A dead guy voted, but it was actually his kid w/ the same name and mistakenly registered under dead guys name instead of son). Even Fox News, the Heritage Foundation, and the Republican Party agreed there was no/little fraud.
Federal Courts: Trump used the Due Process and Equal Protection Clause (via Election of 2000) to go to the supreme court. Georgia counted votes received up to 3 days after the election (because mail takes time), but theoretically these votes couldâve been made after election day. However, even if all votes received after election day were tossed, Biden still wouldâve won. The Supreme Court denied to hear the court (7-2), with all three judges he appointed voting against hearing his case.
The electoral colleges met in their states to submit votes on December 14th. Congress has to certify votes on January 6th. According to the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the vice president reads the votes, if one senator and one house object, both groups go debate separately for 2 hours. Trump tried to get VP Pence to award (rightfully democratic) electoral votes to Trump.
January 6th: Riots⌠Democrats in congress say the 25th amendment should be invoked during the riots, which would allow the VP to take over for the president when the president is incapacitated (ex: in a coma). Pence says he wont take over and doesnt think its the proper use of the 25th amendment.
Impeachment: Trump is impeached by the house for inciting the riots/insurrection at January 6th. Senate now must hold the trial, which could potentially bar Trump from ever running for election again. Weirdly, the removal vote is after Biden is in office, and he is released because the senate believe 1) heâs not in office, so whatever and 2) January 6th ruined his political career.