[ExI] White House does not rule out the possibility of delaying the election

Wed May 13 15:56:18 UTC 2020

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On 
Subject: Re: [ExI] White House does not rule out the possibility of delaying the election

On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 10:08 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

> Trump’s son in law isn’t in charge of that, state governments are.  

 Aren’t you glad we have a constitution? 

>…That election date is set by the US Constitution not by state constitutions. And Spike, I know you're not concerned because you believe violating the US Constitution is as impossible as violating the Second Law Of Thermodynamics, but those of us that still remain on planet earth think that maybe just maybe that might not be entirely true.

John K Clark

John, you may recall the Supreme Court case of 2000.  The Florida ballot was disputed, and Florida was the tipping point state.  

The one feller whose name I cannot recall beat the other feller whose name I cannot recall by a razor thin margin, there were irregularities in the way the votes were counted by the county officials (the dented chads and hanging chads debtes) and so on, so the case ended up in the SCOTUS.

The SCOTUS didn’t argue over who won the election that state, but rather whether that state’s delegates would be allowed to come to the EC.  If they were excluded, the one feller would win, otherwise, the other.  One of the possibilities: split them, award 12 to each.  Had they done that, the outcome would have gone the other way.

The decision eventually came down that the SCOTUS did not have sufficient justification to disqualify the election nor sufficient authority to force the state to split their vote (which was the functional equivalent of disqualifying the election.)  So… they admitted those 25 votes and that was that.

The whole misadventure was a great civics lesson: it warmed my heart to hear the SCOTUS keep reminding us that its authority was only that which the constitution allowed.  All they could do was what was authorized in the document which gave them the legal authority to start with.  

I didn’t care which of those two won that election, for I didn’t vote for either of them, but I am a big fan of Supreme Court justices saying that the states control elections and the SCOTUS would swear in whoever the Electoral College said was the winner.

I will note the risk of a disputed election is increased by the kinds of things California is doing, and the consequences are higher.  Remind us please why gun shops should be closed as non-essential businesses?

spike

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