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TRUMP-BIDEN: The Electoral College, Online Shysters, Internet Wizards, and Google Geniuses; What is True and False?

11/15/2020

A Guest Editorial by former State Senator Rod Adair (R-Chaves & Lincoln Counties) and former member of the Electoral College (2004)

Perhaps many of you have seen the gentleman, named Shane Vaughn, shown at left. His photo and accompanying video about the current presidential election have been sent to me scores of times, along with questions asking “Is this true?”

The answer, for the most part, is “No, it isn’t.” He gets a few facts correct as many Googlemeister-internet surfers do, but he misses the mark on most things. This is to be expected. *

So I watched this man’s video. He starts out by boldly stating he’s going hold a “class” on “history and law” and that he’s going to “teach.” Then he says that this election (2020) in which a candidate has not “conceded” has “occurred twice before in 1800 and 1824.” And that it’s because the popular vote margin was “less than 1%.”

This is patent nonsense. In 1800, there was no actual popular vote at all. In 1824, most states had popular votes recorded, but several states still had no popular vote at all. And the margin of that which was recorded was fairly wide, not close at all.

But all of this discussion is irrelevant. Those two elections went to the House of Representatives because in each instance the Electoral College did not produce a majority. Those events had nothing at all to do with “concession speeches” or popular vote margins.

He goes on to say there are 475 members of the House of Representatives. (There are actually 435.) And he says that if there were to be “no certification” of the election results (though it’s clear he doesn’t know what that means exactly) then the election goes to the House of Representatives.

What is true is: if there is no presidential candidate with a majority of the Electoral Votes then that election would go to the House, where delegations vote by state, not by individual member.

Mr. Vaughn goes on to make the startling claim that Republicans control 37 of the 50 state delegations. The actual situation is that they currently control 26, with the Democrats holding majorities in 20, and four states are either tied or in doubt. (A Republican candidate has a 48-vote lead in one Iowa congressional district—if she holds that lead in a recount, then the GOP would have a 27 to 20 advantage, with Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania all evenly split, 4-4, 7-7, and 9-9 respectively.)

Misunderstanding Electors and Misunderstanding the Method of Presidential Elections

The problem with much of what is on the internet right now is that it ignores what has already transpired. Yes, it is true that under the US Constitution the individual state legislatures are empowered to determine the manner of each state’s electoral votes. But they have already done that. They are not waiting till the December 14th meeting of the Electoral College to make that determination. They have long-since put the manner of choosing electors into their state statutes.

The chief elections officers of every state (usually, but not always, the secretary of state) have had the names of the electors, their addresses, phone numbers, and all pertinent information, on file for several months. The reality is that on November 3rd, Americans were voting for ELECTORS, not directly for Biden or Trump. (Even the so-called popular vote is the cumulative total of votes cast for electors—not for the candidates themselves. In fact, the electors ARE the candidates.)

For example, in New Mexico, if a voter filled in the oval next to a presidential candidate, he or she was actually, legally and constitutionally, casting his or her vote for five electors, not Biden or Trump. This is the same thing that took place in all 50 states. (See an example of how an actual presidential election result looks like in the attached photo.)

The five winning candidates for elector in New Mexico (or the 38 winning candidates in Texas, or the 29 in Florida) will go to their respective state capitals (not to Washington, DC, as Mr. Vaughn asserts) on December 14 and cast electoral votes. They do so because they have won their elections for the office of elector.

People have a very hard time understanding this process. The states have already elected the electors.

So, as Mark Levin asserts (and he is only one among several doing so): Can the legislatures overrule the elections that have already taken place to elect the electors?

The answer is: They possibly could. But it would not be very easy. They would have to be drawing up plans right now for special sessions of their legislatures. Why? Because they would have to go into session and repeal their current statutes which currently specify the manner in which their electors are to be chosen.

They would also have to, somehow, nullify their own states' 2020 election results and that probably would mean nullifying ALL the election results in their states, including those that just elected or defeated these same legislators themselves.

Final, official canvassing is about to take place all over the country. (New Mexico's is in nine days.)

Can they repeal their own results after they have been declared final and official? It seems doubtful. So if anyone intends to do this, they better get cracking.

Let's say they go through with that, what next? After repealing the current method of choosing electors by popular vote of the people (after they just had an election to choose them, mind you) they would then have to arrogate the choice of the electors solely to themselves—the state legislators.

Any state that did this would be reverting to a method that has not been used since 1860, when South Carolina was the last state which made the choice of the electors to be determined solely by a vote of the legislature. All other states had already adopted the system currently in place (and South Carolina did too after it was readmitted to the Union) which has the people choose electors by popular vote on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

I am not saying that the election is over, or that the outcome has been decided. The Electoral College does not meet for another 29 days. Trump has some serious allegations, and there appears to be evidence of a number of problems involving elections integrity. I have no idea how these claims will be adjudicated, nor does anyone else.

All I am saying is that many of the things posted on the internet are false, or at best highly misleading.


EDITOR’S NOTE: Let us know what you think, or send us any questions you may have, by emailing us at: Editor@NewMexicoPoliticalJournal.com


* Some three centuries ago, Alexander Pope noted that “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” He wisely noted that “shallow draughts intoxicate the brain” and “short views we take, nor see the lengths behind…”

Today’s youngest generations are intoxicated by the belief that formal educational traditions, study, research, and reflection are completely obsolete, and made so by “search engines.” Many times I’ve heard people say, “I don’t need to study anything or read any books, I can just Google whatever I want to find out.”

The problem is that relying solely on search engines too often end up with the searcher getting a modicum of information, but no context, no understanding of the antecedents, or many other variables that are part of the historical framework. Mr. Vaughn is but one of hundreds on the internet who offer their expertise, obviously based on incomplete and hastily completed Google searches. (To be fair, the man in the photo is not a millennial, maybe not even a Gen X, but the same mental disease—not wanting to drink deep from the Pierian spring”—affects millions (Gen Z and Boomers alike) in the 21st Century.)


Email us (at nmpj@dfn.com) with your feedback, comments, questions, and ideas.


Intelligent Political Discourse—for the Thoughtful New Mexican

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National Issues

National Issues

Democrats

2016 Presidential Campaign - Democrats

Republicans

2016 Presidential Campaign - Republicans

Jeb Bush gets religion.

"They said he got religion at the end, and I'm glad that he did."  — Tom T. Hall. The Year Clayton Delaney died.

Well, it's official.  Jeb Bush has changed quite of few of his positions on illegal immigration.  The single most significant is that he no longer endorses the "path to citizenship" for those who came here illegally. 

This is, after all, the key portion of any proposal aimed at "reforming" our existing illegal immigration situation.

No sensible citizen can see any point in trying to deport between 12 and 16 million people currently living in America illegally.  And no candidate for any office that we know of supports that.  What the average American wants is for the country to "get a handle on it."  They want it stopped, our borders secured and future illegal immigration prevented.  It is a national security issue.

The Path to Legal Status

The only way to accomplish the above goals, is to identify current illegal immigrants, get them accounted for, have them documented, and placed on a path to legal status.  Neither they nor their children or spouses should live in a state of fear or anxiety.

But a path to "citizenship" is not the right course.  It is not morally or legally correct.  A merciful and compassionate nation can provide the safeguards of legal status without sending the message to the rest of the world that all you have to do is cross our border and you will eventually get to become a citizen, thus circumventing the legal framework scores of millions of Americans have followed, honored and respected.

If someone who is granted legal status eventually wants to become a citizen, that person should have to return to his or her country of origin and wait in line like 20 million people around the world are doing at any given time.  Failing that, America will forever send the signal that anyone in the world can "jump the line," and that there is no reason at all to obey our immigration and naturalization laws.

We Like Jeb Bush

We are glad Jeb Bush has learned this lesson.  He is a fine speaker, and can eloquently explain his positions on complex issue.  If he were not named "Bush" he would be an actual top tier candidate—in all that that title would entail, including likelihood of acceptance and support of and from the American people in the primaries, and in any theoretical general election.  

We also recognize that he already is a de facto top-tier candidate because of his fame and his fundraising.

If he were to be the nominee of the Republican Party we would heartily support him and endorse him.  We hope, however, that he is not, as he does not give the center-right coalition the best chance of winning.

Media Watch

Media Watch

County Government News

County Government News

Cities, Towns and Villages

Cities, Towns and Villages

Judicial Watch

Judicial Watch

Movies, Television, Pop Culture

Movies, Television, Pop Culture

  • Movies, Television, Pop Culture
    Selma   ????? We have now seen the Oscar-nominated movie Selma.   Our earlier allusion to criticism that sounded as though it was in an Oliver Stone category for historical fabrication is some...

Sports

Sports

The Major League Baseball Playoffs are not realistic, and destroy the actual meaning of the sport. 

Major League Baseball is unique in this respect—its postseason is markedly different from the way the game is played normally.  No other major league sport suffers from this flaw.

Not that much is wrong with baseball. In some respects it's the most well thought-out sport there is.  The "perfect game" many aficionados say.

But the Major League Baseball postseason experience is unique in the world of professional sports, and not in a good way. 

In fact the playoffs are flawed in such a way as to detract from the sport itself and diminish the game and what it means to be the world champion of the sport. 

Among the Big Four team sports of North America: football, hockey, basketball and baseball—and all the 122 professional major league teams competing in the NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB respectively—it is in baseball alone that the postseason turns the sport itself on its head and makes it reflect something that it is not.  This article will explain why that happens and why it is wrong-headed.

 

Background on the The Frequency of Play

The 30 teams in both the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association teams play a very similar schedule.  On average, each team has a day off between games, sometimes two days off.  Though there are back-to-back games, they are relatively infrequent.  NBA teams play between 14 and 22 back-to-back games a season, and for the NHL it usually ranges between 9 and 19. The NFL has a full week between games, the exception being the new Thursday games that each team plays once, leaving them only four days' rest once a year.

But baseball players play every single day.  Ten days straight, then a day off, then seven more games, then a day off, then ten more games.  Typically a baseball team plays 27 games every 30 days.  For the NHL and NBA it would be 14 per month, and for the NFL the number would be 4.

 

Getting to the Playoffs:  It's a grind

In all four sports, getting to the postseason requires a total team effort—in fact an all-out total organizational effort.  Teams must be deep, have bench strength and the capability of moving players in and out of the lineup, and on and off the roster, who can take the place of key players who go down for an injury, or who have to miss games for whatever reason.  While this is true of the other three major sports as well, it is most certainly even more of a concern for baseball teams because of the sheer volume of games in which a team must field a competitive lineup.

Each league's regular season* is a marathon, not a sprint.  NFL teams play for 17 weeks, 16 games.  The NHL has an 82-game season over six months, paralleled by an NBA season of 84 games over the same timeframe. Baseball is the biggest marathon of all—a true test of resilience and endurance—162 games usually starting around the beginning of April and finishing about the end of September.

NHL teams carry 23-man rosters, of which 20 can be active for any particular game.  The NBA is similar, with 15-man rosters of which 13 can be on the bench for a given game. In the NFL, the teams have 53 players on a roster, but only 46 can suit up on game day.  In Major League Baseball, teams have a 25-man active roster, and all 25 are at the park every day.

 

The Postseason Playoffs:  Sport by Sport

The National Football League:

Of the 32 teams, 12 qualify for the playoffs.  The playoffs are conducted in the exact same manner as the regular season.  Each team plays once a week, the exception being that the four top teams get the first week off.  For a typical qualifier to reach the Super Bowl, the team must play three consecutive weeks.  At that point both remaining teams have two weeks off before the Super Bowl.

In short, the playoffs, with a game each week, reflects the same means of advancement as is present in regular season grind.

The National Hockey League: 

16 of the 30 teams qualify for the postseason.  The playoffs are conducted in the exact same manner as the regular season: a game, a day off, a game, a day off, a game, a day off, and so on.  Just as in the regular season, there are occasionally two days off.  But the playoffs require the same stamina, the same approach as that required to make the playoffs.

 

The National Basketball Association

16 of the 30 teams qualify for the postseason.  The playoffs are conducted in the exact same manner as the regular season: a game, a day off, a game, a day off, a game, a day off, and so on.  Just as in the regular season, there are occasionally two days off.  But the playoffs require the same stamina, the same approach as that required to make the playoffs.

Major League Baseball

10 of the 30 teams qualify for the postseason.  (Although four of those teams qualify only for a one-game do-or-die play-in game.)

Here is where all similarity to baseball ends. 

Unlike the other three sports whose playoffs mirror the test of the regular season, and whose conditions are the same as the regular season, Major League Baseball playoffs in no way resemble the sport itself.  In hockey, basketball and football, the teams win playoff games and reach the pinacle of the sport in exactly the same way that they qualify to try to do so. 

Not so in baseball.  They are two entirely different concepts.  Teams make the playoffs only because they have depth, five-man pitching rotations and can play day-in and day-out at a high level.  But the baseball playoffs suddenly become a kind of "all-star" game within each team's roster.  MLB playoffs are conducted in a way that more closely follows the NBA and the NHL.  Teams have enormous numbers of days off. 

Here's the key point:  No Major League Baseball team could even qualify for the postseason if they played the same way during the regular season that they do in the playoffs.  None.

In the regular season Major League Baseball teams have to use a 5-man starting rotation, with pitchers pitching every 5th day.  There are not enough days off to have even a four-man rotation, let alone a team with three pitchers.  Even the best team in baseball using only a 4-man rotation, would wear them out, and most likely end up with a record of something like 66-96, or 70-92—and that would be if they were otherwise teh best team in the sport.

 

The 2014 Baseball Postseason is Typical

As examples, last year's World Series teams the Kansas City Royals played only 15 games in 30 days, and the San Francisco Giants played only 17 games in 30 days.  The 12 to 15 days off in the non-baseball fantasy world of the MLB postseason, means that teams can turn to three pitchers and give all of them plenty of rest.  But it isn't the way baseball really works.

At one point, the Royals had 5 consecutive days off, and the Giants had 4.  This never happens in the regular season.  Even the All-Star break is only three days.  Very rarely is there anything beyond a one-day break, and even that happens only a couple of times a month. 

What this means is that neither team used the team that got them to the playoffs.  (The NFL, NBA and NHL teams ALL used the very same teams that got them to the playoffs.) 

Baseball teams use a three-man pitching rotation in the playoffs.  Sometimes, they essentially opt for two pitchers only—conceding the likelihood that some of their games are going to be lost—when their third-, or rarely fourth-best pitcher has to face one of their opponents' two-man or three-man rotation members. 

Imagine an NFL team using only one running back and three wide receivers, instead of rotating through their roster in the course of a playoff game—or using only 4 defensive backs and 4 linebackers, instead of rotating 8 or 9 DBs and 6 or 7 linebackers?  In hockey, would a team use only two or three of their forward lines?  Would an NBA team use only the starting five?  They would never make the post season if they tried to present that product to their fans during the regular season.

Those are the equivalents of what Major League Baseball sets up every fall.  No other sport drags its playoffs out in such a way as to completely change the playing field—completely change the dynamics of its game.

Why Does Baseball Do This?

MLB does this because the TV networks want to drag out the games so that they can try to have one game each day  This requires an unnecessary staggering of games, and creates the phenomenon of 15 off-days in a month.

What about travel days?

What about them?  Baseball has travel days constantly.  A team may play in Chicago one day and in Miami the next, or in New York one day and Phoenix the very next day.  Travel days as a routine part of the game are again, a phenomenon of television, and stretching out the playoffs.

In years past, travel days were employed only when necessary. The famous "subway series" games were played on seven consecutive days.  Why?  Because there was no "travel day" required to go from Brooklyn to the Bronx.  Today, they would put in artificial travel days.

Even fairly long train trips didn't necessarily matter.  The 1948 World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Braves was played in six consecutive days, October 6 & 7 in Boston, October 8, 9 & 10 in Cleveland, and October 11 back in Boston.

This reflects actual baseball, the way the teams play day-in and day-out, and the kind of unique test that baseball presents to its athletes, its managers and management, and to its fans.

In the modern world of charter planes, teams fly from coast to coast to play games on consecutive days.  The artificial "travel day" should be eliminated so that teams can play in the playoffs in the same way that got them there in the first place.


*All these leagues also have pre-seasons and training camps, which add an additional 6-8 weeks to each player's year.


Email us with your feedback, comments, questions and ideas. 

Religious Issues

Religious Issues

  • Religious Issues
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