[ExI] trump

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
Sent: Saturday, 9 March, 2024 7:44 AM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Cc: Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] trump

 

On Sat, Mar 9, 2024, 6:37 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

 In the worst case, the number of delegates from that state might be enough to decide the election, in which case we have a national election in which we don’t know who won and we have no clear legal means of deciding.  This could trigger the second civil war.  This would be a bad thing.

 

>…It is consistent with what they did last time, to have that happen anyway for electors from states where Trump lost, regardless of whether there were any generally recognized questions.

 

 

 

Adrian, my point is that the constitution predates printed ballots and predates political parties for the most part.  It doesn’t tell us what happens if states or counties leave off one qualifying party’s candidate or the other, or both, or some of them or all of them.  If a state or some counties do that, we don’t really know who won that state’s election.  If several states and counties do that, we could have an election in which we really don’t know who won.

 

The SCOTUS made a decision to avert that possibility, but it isn’t clear to me as an originalist, that the SCOTUS has the authority to make that call.  Note I think it was the right call, as do all nine of the justices, but it was a functionalist decision, not an originalist decision.  A strict originalist would opine (as I do) that states and counties shouldn’t be able to omit qualifying party’s candidate, but that the court doesn’t have the authority to stop that, even foreseeing the possibility of murderous chaos if states and counties start tossing candidates on the whimsical decision of unelected local and state officials.

 

In that view, SCOTUS did the right thing without the legal authority, which is better than doing the wrong thing with legal authority.

 

spike

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