It’s been a few days since this story broke out of Michigan:
And since I’ve been disappointed in the media’s attempt to explain what actually happened, I’m gonna give it a shot since I randomly have some experience in this matter thanks to Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign. Keep in mind that although we’re talking about a federal election, each state has its own particular rules and paperwork and whatnot, so the situation in your state may be differ from what’s written below.
The first thing to understand is that voting for president isn’t as simple as just voting for the president on election day. You’re voting for the candidate who will ultimately receive your state’s support via a slate of electors chosen to represent a chosen candidate in the Electoral College. During some elections, delegates meet multiple times — at the precinct, county, and/or state levels — to determine who the actual electors will be. Let’s watch an an example of how this can play out in practice:
Imagine a race between an upstart political outsider — let’s call him…….Pon Raul — and an establishment candidate who represents the worst of the Swamp — Johnny McWarFace. The election results are being pulled from the ballot boxes and read out loud in public, and Pon Raul is amazingly dominating the vote. Suddenly, the election leaders — McWarFace supporters all — take the remaining ballots into a back room and lock the door. Half an hour later, they emerge, declaring McWarFace to be the winner of the election, and therefore Abduxuel, Nihasa, and Verdelet will represent the state (or whatever) at the next round of elections.
“Wait, what??!?! You can’t just take the ballots and disappear and then proclaim your guy won the election!” the Pon Raul supporters exclaim. Only the votes counted in public should count, according to the election rules!
“Voting’s over, go home!” the McWarFace supporters say as they shut off the lights.
As a Raul supporter, what do you do if you think the election has been stolen from you? You take it to the courts and try to prove your case! (Which is ironically exactly what Joe Biden was planning on doing if he lost in 2020.)
But election lawsuits aren’t like a sports replay where they just ring up New York to get a ruling. These things take time, and while the case is winding through the courts, there is technical stuff that electors are supposed to be doing. When you ultimately don’t know WHO the electors are going to be, the prudent thing is to be prepared so that if the case goes your way, you have your ducks in a row and your electors ready to step into their roles.
This is basically what we’re dealing with in Michigan. We have people who were involved in some sort of lawsuit surrounding the 2020 election — there were plenty of shady goings-on, that’s for sure — and were prepared in case the lawsuit went their way.
As the CBS story notes, this happened in multiple states because there were lawsuits contesting the election in multiple states. This isn’t some sort of new Trump insurrection, it’s fairly standard practice when it comes to contested elections — and in 2020, there was even less time for court cases before selection of the electors because counting took such a long time. (How lucky for some people!)
But ultimately we have to understand that it’s not a crime to say that Trump won the 2020 election. It’s not even a crime to attest to that fact on a piece of paper. Even if we could somehow magically know that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, it would not be a crime to say that he lost it. Freedom of speech includes the right to say things that an election was stolen (good thing for these people!), or to say something that is wrong — even that an election was stolen.
This prosecution is yet another example of the weaponization of government and the powerful trying to send a message to anybody who would dare stand up for Donald Trump — you could be next.
It’s also worth taking a little trip down memory lane, to after Donald Trump won the 2016 election and the Electoral College was preparing to meet and formally vote for president. This video was directed at the actual electors themselves, who had already been selected (often through multiple “rounds”) to vote specifically for Donald Trump. Pay special attention to how they invoke the solemn powers of the Constitution and declare that it’s a DUTY to keep somebody as UNFIT as Donald Trump out of the White House:
I think maybe “Americans Take Action” overestimated the amount of pull that Hollywood B-listers would have on people who were serious enough about Donald Trump to go through the process of being in the Electoral College…..
But this video brings up an interesting moral question — is it “better” to have an alternate slate of electors prepared in case your lawsuit works out, or is it “better” to try to convince duly chosen electors to instead vote for your candidate?
What do you think?
Really quickly, I want to touch on RFK Jr. testifying in front of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government yesterday. You can watch the entire (super long) video here, but below is RFK’s opening statement.
A powerful defense for the First Amendment and a stunning rebuke for censorship everywhere, ESPECIALLY government-led censorship.
So what did Debbie Wasserman Schulz — who somehow still has a job after helping rig the 2016 DNC primary — do in response to this rallying cry against censorship?
She tried to censor him, of course.
Bill Rice has more on the story if you’re interested. Enjoy the weekend, Screamers!
Sorry to come late to the party here. Been busy. One small correction. In the USA there are no "federal elections". What you no doubt meant was elections for federal office. The key point that you touched on should be more explicitly shouted: the constitution specifically states that the legislatures of the several states are responsible for elections in their state. The context of the time it is clear that the design requires no state can control how another state runs its elections. This was done for a very, very good reason. Prevention of the single point of corruption principle. A state legislature may be completely corrupted but that can only affect how it selects members of congress and electors, and leaves the other states in control of their elections. Of course national political parties have effectively undermined this protection: by either dominating the legislatures with a party-defined platform, enforced through $$ (easier) or outright corruption of elections officials in multiple states (harder) or as we have today both.
However keep this origin and principle in mind as you ponder the consequences of "doing away with the electoral college" and plans to expand the power of the FEC. Both are unconstitutional and will, irrevocably, destroy the "representative" part of our representative republic.
Dang, how'd I miss these! (The story and your write up?)
Oh...right...the media isn't doing it...