Judson Phillips, founder of the Tea Party Nation, thought he'd found a constitutional way to overturn the popular vote and make Mitt Romney President. He just needed to get 17 states to sabotage the Electoral College:
Mitt Romney carried 24 states. We need to have conservative activists from all over the nation contact the electors, the Republican Party and the secretary of state in all of these states and tell them not to participate in the Electoral College when it meets on Dec. 17.
If we can get 17 of those states (just over one-third) to refuse to participate, the Electoral College will have no quorum. Then, as the Constitution directs, the election goes to the House of Representatives.
That is how we can still pull this election out and make Mitt Romney president in January [Judson Phillips, "How Obama Can be Stopped in the Electoral College," World Net Daily, 2012.11.20].
I was all ready to run through the South Dakota laws that our electors and officials would have to violate to heed Phillips's call. But Phillips was thwarted by the Constitution itself... and his faulty reading of the Twelfth Amendment. Wing Nut Daily posted this humiliating correction:
Since this column was posted it has been discovered that the premise presented about the Electoral College and the Constitution is in error. According to the 12th Amendment, a two-thirds quorum is required in the House of Representatives, not the Electoral College [editor's note, correction to Judson Phillips, "How Obama Can be Stopped in the Electoral College," World Net Daily, 2012.11.20].
The Twelfth Amendment reads in toto as follows:
The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;
The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;
The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President.
The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
Phillips hates Barack Obama so much that he would advocate subverting your vote to replace our President with a man whom he admits was a "terrible candidate" and would not be "a great President."
But the real kicker here is that Tea Partiers claim to be protecting the Constitution. Pshaw—they can't even read the Constitution.
And I worried that the TEA party boneheads might actually know their ass from a horsefly. Koch boys must not have put in quite enough dollars and manpower into the TEA Party pot to marginalize the total crazies with a health serving of some genuine greedy opportunists to properly balance their witches brew.
Judson Phillips must really hate America and democracy to urge such shenanigans to overturn both the popular and electoral vote. These wingnuts who want to break up the country using one method or another ought to have their arses kicked by real Americans! The one thing they have in common though is that they're all really stupid, and demonstrate it over and over again.
Douglas, indeed, I would think that if WND is supposed to be a world-class publication, and if Phillips were even a vaguely responsible activist, he'd have vetted his idea with an editor or someone else to make sure he'd read the 12th Amendment right. Charging ahead with such a call to activists to illegally suppress the will of the electorate demonstrates disdain for facts, the Constitution, and democracy.
R: bingo. We see quite clearly that patriotism is simply the sheet in which the Tea Party wraps itself to hide its naked fear and loathing.
If these teabaggers hate Obama and this country maybe they should move to a different country.
"America: Love it or leave it" used to come from the right. Now it comes from the left, sometimes, too, I guess ...
Same thing with accusations of treason. Used to come only from right wingnuts. Now it comes from the left too (see previous posts here regarding secessionists).
Oh well ... eventually we'll all shout deafly at each other across the void, and we won't have to think at all. Nothing will get done either, but that won't constitute any change from the current gridlock, innit?
More to the point of this post, I suppose the electors in several states could go the other way and cast their lots in conflict with the wishes of their voters. In theory, I think that can happen.
In that way Romney could be elected. But imagine the civil uproar that would follow such a twist!
Of course in theory, if you get enough monkeys banging away at enough keyboards on enough blogs, eventually you will get the exact post whose photons grace your retinas right now.
None of you ever knew that "Stan Gibilisco" actually is a monkey, did you? Hee, hee, hee! The joke's on you!
The teabaggers are loons whose calls have long since dissipated into the infinite void of pure reason.
I like the hats you wear in your math videos Mr. Gibilisco.
Grudz,
Oh, I have a fetish about hats. Clocks and lamps too. And tablet devices. Woe is me! Where does the money go?
Actually in my more recent math videos, I wear no hats. I give viewers a better look at the beigeboard and a more robust earful of audio ...
As for the tea party's panic attacks over Obama and the deficit and everything left of the International Date Line, I suggest they hold off their voodoo deaths ... there's no need to keel over quite yet ...
http://news.investors.com/blogs-capital-hill/112012-634082-federal-deficit-falling-fastest-since-world-war-ii.htm
The Constitution isn't the only bit of wisdom whose intricacies elude the Tea Party.
As far as fiscal cliffs and taxes and all that go, my mantra for the self now boils down to "I gots my work and I'll pay my tax."
We have Obama and I think he's an okay President. He sure seems to know how to do foreign affairs anyhow. I'm just not seeing what all the morbid fear is about. I know some folks who think he's the Antichrist!
Another turkey day and I didn't die from the King's Rich Food. How can I worry?
Stan, I had to read that IBD article twice. They usually peddle arch-conservative lines; that article seems to say we're already reining in the deficit, that Obama and Congress are getting it done by, amusingly, not getting things done. Heck, let's roll with it!
Romney not getting elected will teach some control freaks a lesson. Kudos to the Liberty crackers who broke the machine.
Indeed: those of us who believe in real liberty, not the corporate domination of Mitt Romney or the faux-philosophical fantasies of Ron Paul, won by re-electing Barack Obama.