It specifies a majority of the electors appointed. I don’t know if that could make a difference if, say, a state or states failed to return their slate of electors for any reason.
They can take to the streets and peacefully insist that Trump (or whoever gets the fewer votes) concedes.
Yeah, Trump and his followers seem to respect protesters and the rule of law, so this ought to work.
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The big thing Jones is mistaken about in that video is thinking that the GOP and a large bulk of their supporters are rational actors
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The relevant bit of the Twelfth Amendment is:
The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President.
If fewer than 538 electors are appointed, then surely the ''majority of the whole number of electors" would be less than 270? Of course, the only election where this came into play was 1864, where Lincoln would have won by a landslide either way.
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At this point the senate races are more important than the potus race.
If it flips back to D control and the house remains in D control (which it definitely will)…then congress has the power and authority to stop the madness regardless of the outcome of the potus race.
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Yeah, the cancer is spread throughout the body politic. Trump is just the biggest tumor.
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As others have pointed out, the rules for electing the president in the House are different. Each state delegation gets one vote. So having a majority of the members is not sufficient. One needs a majority of the STATES. I don’t believe that how exactly the states determine how their delegations vote is specified. Majority of the members from that state? Order from the governor or state legislature? Expect people to sue over whatever method states pick. And since the supremes have ruled that states that electors are legally bound by state laws telling them who to vote for, it is possible that they would rule that legislators could be similarly bound. Even with extreme GOP shenanigans, I think the election going to the house is very unlikely. ,
I’m not sure how this relates to my point.
I mean that even if he is re-elected if the Dems control the house and senate he can be successfully impeached and removed at that point. Or they can simply block him from doing pretty much anything for the next four years.
[portable plasma cutter]
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Secret Service agents are in there too, and apparently they hate his guts; what are the odds that they’re the ones dragging him out in January?
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No, that’s not what “majority” means. A majority is 50% + 1. What you’re describing is a plurality.
If no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes – that would be 270 or more – then the election goes to the House. That’s the mechanism we’re talking about here. In the hypothetical you’re describing, 269-268-1, no candidate has a majority, and the election goes to the House. That’s more or less what happened in the 1800 and 1824 elections: more than two candidates got electoral votes, no candidate got a majority, and the House determined the outcome of the election.
What we’re talking about here is a little bit different, but it’s the same basic principle. Instead of the electoral vote being split across multiple candidates and preventing any candidate from getting a majority, what Jones is describing is the electoral vote being incomplete, of Trump preventing states from certifying their results, so that no candidate gets a majority.
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It began as a simple courtesy, with a telegram that William Jennings Bryan sent to his opponent, William McKinley, two days after the election of 1896.
Not conceding is no big deal. Launching a massive coup attempt is. Don’t normalize it as Trump just being a sore loser.
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I fully expect the tune to change in an instant if the Republicans don’t have a clear majority on election night. Suddenly all those mail in ballots will be fair and true and must be counted and recounted.
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Why, on our mostly-still-green earth, are we still giving Van Jones the time of day?
Yeah, Jones chose a pretty weird way to frame it. What he really meant was that a candidate can choose to gum up the works instead of letting the process play out like normal. But it’s not really about concession.
If Gore had refused to concede after the SCOTUS ruling in 2000, what would have been different? Not a goddamn thing. Florida would have certified the results the court ordered it to certify, Congress would have accepted them, and Bush would have taken office.
It wasn’t Gore’s concession that allowed Bush to become president. It was the Supreme Court ordering Florida to certify its (wrong) results.
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Yes. I was just trying to point out that “control of the House” = “majority of the members” ≠ “ability to elect another person if the election goes to the congress.”
It takes a 2/3 majority of the Senate to remove a president from office. The Democrats are probably going to win the Senate, but they’re not going to flip 19 seats.
And if they somehow did, that would mean that the election is some kind of extreme, historic blowout that Trump has no chance of stealing no matter how much he cheats. You can’t pull a Bush 2000 if the map looks like Goldwater 1964.
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