At the risk of boring our regular readers we repeat.

The electors sent to the electoral college are selected by the state legislators, not by the secretary of state. A secretary of any state can certify that Joe Biden won the election and the state legislature can decide that it doesn’t care, it will send the electors it wants to send. It is just a fact that comes straight out of our constitution.

We have warned and warned and warned that Trump’s team might take this route – the nuclear option. It is the option that essentially casts democracy off a cliff and makes a vote for the presidency nothing more than a reflection of a states’ legislature’s make-up.

The plan would be to convince enough people that the election was “rigged” through mail-in ballots that it’s not valid and the citizens cannot trust the results certified by the secretary of states, therefore the legislators will send their own electors. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin could send electoral college electors that support Trump, invalidating their elections. On December 15th, when the electoral college votes, the state may have only the legislatures’ electors, or two sets – which would cancel each other out and equate to zero.

The process could result in Joe Biden not reaching 270 electoral votes (neither would Trump, probably). The constitution says that if neither candidate reaches 270 votes, the vote goes to the House of Representatives. Except in this particular vote in the House, each state gets only ONE vote. Wyoming’s ONE vote cancels California’s 40 plus votes. There are more Republican states by 4, than Democratic states. Trump would win.

We call this the nuclear option because even though it is in the constitution, it has been ignored, and that is why democracy has flourished. It would take a Trump to turn it around and ruin it for good. Once it is used once, it will be used by every state for every election if it helps one party.

The only question is whether there is the will power among the Republican legislators in each of these states (they know the stakes and may not want to blow up democracy, but we are talking Republicans), and Trump’s willingness to do it knowing that it would send the nation reeling.

Here is the first hint: (The other hint is that Trump wants to start rallies again, what good could those possibly do? Except raise money and a movement to get results overturned).

The president is tweeting out commentary suggesting Republican legislators in Pennsylvania should invalidate the election results https://t.co/Qsx46c6J8K

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 9, 2020

Time to get scared. Most people don’t know of this possibility.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak