[ExI] Electoral College

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of
Adrian Tymes
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2018 10:13 PM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] Electoral College

On Thu, Aug 16, 2018 at 6:55 PM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:


>>... But presidents cannot stop state elections.

>...Sure they can - if they can somehow get enough law enforcement or
military to arrest/shoot up/confiscate/et cetera the people trying to run
elections and/or the equipment being used to run them...

This is a lot of why I have long been opposed to "...the equipment being
used to run them..."  Such equipment should not exist.  Paper ballots,
filled in with ink pens, perfectly adequate robust secure technology for
this purpose, similar to what was used to re-elect George Washington and all
his successors.

>..."We have received legitimate terrorist threats against every polling
station.  They're all closed.  Anyone ignoring this order will be arrested
for endangering public safety."  

Fortunately presidents do not make law and do not make orders of this kind.
Article 9 and Article 10 of the Bill of Rights prevented this from happening
a long time ago.  Presidents can do Executive Orders, but those do not apply
to congress or the SCOTUS, never mind the Electoral College.  

>...This requires cooperation of those under them, but most of a president's
power requires that anyway...

A really controversial president leading a deeply divided country is far
less a threat than one who leads a mostly unified country (such as Franklin
Roosevelt did in 1940.)  He had to be stopped by death.  

I can assure you, if the current POTUS (whose name I cannot recall at the
moment) were to declare martial law to stop an election, that election would
go right on ahead right on schedule.  I already know how it would come out
under those circumstances: his opponent would take every state.

Presidents cannot stop elections.  They would if they could.  The founders
of the COTUS had just fought a war over power-grabby autocrats, and designed
the system to prevent another war over the same thing.  They thought of that
scenario and prevented it.  They were smart.

spike
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