Which includes purple states with Democratic governors and a majority of Republicans in the combined House and Senate of the state, as with Michigan, Pennsylvania, and"-most significantly because in 2020 it'll probably play the role Florida did in 2000"-Wisconsin.
Thus, through simple brute force, if Trump, Fox News and Limbaugh, et al, were to loudly claim that there was "voter fraud" in any or all of those states and succeed in casting doubts about the integrity of an election that would put a Democrat in the White House, the manufactured conflict could be resolved and the election given to Trump by one or more state legislatures as Florida threatened to do in 2000.
The GOP and right-wing radio and TV have been preparing this ground for the better part of two decades, constantly harping on non-existent voter fraud by undocumented Hispanics and African Americans who, as Trump alleged, go from polling place to polling place by bus to double- or even triple-vote.
While there's absolutely no evidence for any of this"-despite the Bush administration spending tens of millions of dollars, enlisting all 93 U.S. attorneys nationwide, and examining over 840 million votes and finding fully 35 examples of illegal votes nationwide (and none by "illegal Hispanics")"-this "voter fraud" fantasy is widely believed among the Republican electorate and could be used by a state's legislature to flip a close vote.
The U.S. House of Representatives Decides (and Trump Wins)
Another way Trump could lose both the popular vote and the uncontested electoral vote is found in the election of 1876.
Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote nationwide but, with 184 electoral votes, was one vote short of the necessary 185 electoral votes to become president.
Republican Rutherford B. Hayes not only lost the popular vote but had only 163 electoral votes.
Ohio's Republican Congressman James Monroe (not related to the president of generations earlier of the same name) wrote the definitive summary of that election and how it played out in Congress, a narrative he published in the Atlantic in October 1893.
Pointing out that "the votes of Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina, with an aggregate of 22 electors" would turn the election to either Hayes or Tilden, Monroe (who was there) wrote, "From the States just named there were two sets of returns, one favorable to General Hayes, the other to Mr. Tilden."
The dispute had to do with three of those four states then being occupied by the Union Army (this was just 11 years after the Civil War ended, and Reconstruction was in full swing). At the same time, the Klan was riding high in all four states.
Formerly enslaved African Americans were trying to turn out large numbers of voters for the Republican candidate, but there was also widespread Klan activity suppressing that Black vote. On the other side, Democrats in Congress charged that Union soldiers had intimidated Southern Democratic voters, suppressing their vote.
Monroe wrote that the Democrats charged, "that these returns [in those four states for Republican Hayes] were a product of fraud and dishonesty; that, in preparing them, the vote of whole precincts, parishes, and counties had been thrown out in order to secure Hayes electors" [and] they did not represent the people of those States, but were themselves the product of fraud and corruption, and were kept in place only by what was called the 'moral influence' of Federal bayonets."
The nation nearly exploded, wrote Monroe:
"The feeling of mutual hostility had been greatly intensified by party leaders, orators, and presses. In some of our cities it took all the terrors of the police court to keep Democrats and Republicans from breaking the peace."
The 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, had a simple solution to the problem of neither candidate winning a majority of electoral votes.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
