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“Bad things are happening in Pennsylvania," the Trump campaign said in a statement. "President Trump and his team are fighting to put a stop to it.”
Thursday, November 5th 2020 at 10:54AM
Steve Williams
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Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, said that in some Philadelphia locations observers “can be 20 or 30 feet away. Never able to see the ballot itself, never able to see if it was properly postmarked, signed on the outside — all the things that often lead to disqualification of ballots.”
“This is among one of the most anti-democratic things I’ve ever seen or encountered and it’s not just here in Philadelphia, it is going on all over the country,” Giuliani said, according to the New York Post.
“They’re not going to steal this election. This election is decided by the people,” Giuliani said.
Thursday, November 5th 2020 at 10:57AM
Steve Williams
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On that note, I agree This election is decided by the people so, Let every VOTE Count.
Steve, do you really support "President Trump and his team fighting to put a stop to THE VOTE?”
Thursday, November 5th 2020 at 11:18AM
Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
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I trust President Trump. It's you I don't trust Ron. Trump was right, you're trying to steal the election by means of your vote-by-mail fraud.
Thursday, November 5th 2020 at 12:09PM
Steve Williams
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I don’t ask you about who do you TRUST FUFU.
Steve, do you really support "President Trump and his team fighting to put a stop to THE VOTE?”
Now pay 💰 attention!
Thursday, November 5th 2020 at 2:13PM
Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
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If you looked at the live feed from Philly, you'd see the problem.
Thursday, November 5th 2020 at 4:26PM
Steve Williams
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You mean you can't explain why you support "President Trump and his team fighting to put a stop to THE VOTE?”
Thursday, November 5th 2020 at 10:35PM
Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
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Read this again Ron:
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, said that in some Philadelphia locations observers “can be 20 or 30 feet away. Never able to see the ballot itself, never able to see if it was properly postmarked, signed on the outside — all the things that often lead to disqualification of ballots.”
“This is among one of the most anti-democratic things I’ve ever seen or encountered and it’s not just here in Philadelphia, it is going on all over the country,” Giuliani said, according to the New York Post.
“They’re not going to steal this election. This election is decided by the people,” Giuliani said.
Thursday, November 5th 2020 at 10:57AM
Steve Williams | delete
The judges of the election at the Philadelphia Convention Center were told by a Commowealth Judge to allow observers to observe from 6 feet and the scum who have been defrauding the Pennsylvania voters refused to comply. I'm sure you know the type of downtown scum I'm talking about.
Thursday, November 5th 2020 at 11:58PM
Steve Williams
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The Judges has the right to appeal just like Trump is using.
Friday, November 6th 2020 at 12:03AM
Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
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Pennsylvanians will look to our reperesentatives to correct the error.
Friday, November 6th 2020 at 8:01AM
Steve Williams
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I think you maybe right Steve, they have made a correction and the people are speaking loudly, don’t you see it?
Friday, November 6th 2020 at 9:54AM
Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
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The state legislature chooses the electors. It's in the U.S. Constitution. The PA legislature is controlled by the Republicans Ron.
Friday, November 6th 2020 at 10:52AM
Steve Williams
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I Know... and your point is to explain why you support "President Trump and his team fighting to put a stop to THE VOTE?”
Friday, November 6th 2020 at 9:49PM
Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
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I want my state legislators to chose the electors. Biden doesn't deserve to.
Saturday, November 7th 2020 at 1:37AM
Steve Williams
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Don't you understand that the people of Pennsylvania chooses the candidate and the electoral votes goes to the winner?
Steve, it is not possible for your state legislators to chose the electors because they are NOT running for president.
It looks like The people of Pennsylvania will put Biden in The White House. Thank You Pennsylvania.... In Advance.
Saturday, November 7th 2020 at 9:48AM
Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
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The PA state legislature ABSOLUTELY can choose the electors.
Saturday, November 7th 2020 at 11:57AM
Steve Williams
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ELECTORAL COLLEGE
The electoral college was one of the compromises by which the delegates were able to agree on the document finally produced. “This subject,” said James Wilson, referring to the issue of the manner in which the President was to be selected, “has greatly divided the House, and will also divide people out of doors. It is in truth the most difficult of all on which we have had to decide.”89 Adoption of the electoral college plan came late in the Convention, which had previously adopted on four occasions provisions for election of the executive by the Congress and had twice defeated proposals for election by the people directly.90 Itself the product of compromise, the electoral college probably did not work as any member of the Convention could have foreseen, because the development of political parties and nomination of presidential candidates through them and designation of electors by the parties soon reduced the concept of the elector as an independent force to the vanishing point in practice if not in theory.91 But the college remains despite numerous efforts to adopt another method, a relic perhaps but still a significant one. Clause 3 has, of course, been superceded by the Twelfth Amendment.
“Appoint”
The word “appoint” as used in Clause 2 confers on state legislatures “the broadest power of determination.”92 Upholding a state law providing for selection of electors by popular vote from districts rather than statewide, the Court described the variety of permissible methods. “Therefore, on reference to contemporaneous and subsequent action under the clause, we should expect to find, as we do, that various modes of choosing the electors were pursued, as, by the legislature itself on joint ballot; by the legislature through a concurrent vote of the two houses; by vote of the people for a general ticket; by vote of the people in districts; by choice partly by the people voting in districts and partly by the legislature; by choice by the legislature from candidates voted for by the people in districts; and in other ways, as, notably, by North Carolina in 1792, and Tennessee in 1796 and 1800. No question was raised as to the power of the State to appoint, in any mode its legislature saw fit to adopt, and none that a single method, applicable without exception, must be pursued in the absence of an amendment to the Constitution. The district system was largely considered the most equitable, and Madison wrote that it was that system which was contemplated by the framers of the Constitution, although it was soon seen that its adoption by some States might place them at a disadvantage by a division of their strength, and that a uniform rule was preferable.”93
State Discretion in Choosing Electors
Although Clause 2 seemingly vests complete discretion in the states, certain older cases had recognized a federal interest in protecting the integrity of the process. Thus, the Court upheld the power of Congress to protect the right of all citizens who are entitled to vote to lend aid and support in any legal manner to the election of any legally qualified person as a presidential elector.94 Its power to protect the choice of electors from fraud or corruption was sustained.95 “If this government is anything more than a mere aggregation of delegated agents of other States and governments, each of which is superior to the general government, it must have the power to protect the elections on which its existence depends from violence and corruption. If it has not this power it is helpless before the two great natural and historical enemies of all republics, open violence and insidious corruption.”96
More recently, substantial curbs on state discretion have been instituted by both the Court and the Congress. In Williams v. Rhodes,97 the Court struck down a complex state system that effectively limited access to the ballot to the electors of the two major parties. In the Court’s view, the system violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it favored some and disfavored others and burdened both the right of individuals to associate together to advance political beliefs and the right of qualified voters to cast ballots for electors of their choice. For the Court, Justice Black denied that the language of Clause 2 immunized such state practices from judicial scrutiny.98 Then, in Oregon v. Mitchell,99 the Court upheld the power of Congress to reduce the voting age in presidential elections100 and to set a thirty-day durational residency period as a qualification for voting in presidential elections.101 Although the Justices were divided on the reasons, the rationale emerging from this case, considered with Williams v. Rhodes,102 is that the Fourteenth Amendment limits state discretion in prescribing the manner of selecting electors and that Congress in enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment103 may override state practices that violate that Amendment and may substitute standards of its own.
Whether state enactments implementing the authority to appoint electors are subject to the ordinary processes of judicial review within a state, or whether placement of the appointment authority in state legislatures somehow limits the role of state judicial review, became an issue during the controversy over the Florida recount and the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. The Supreme Court did not resolve this issue, but in a remand to the Florida Supreme Court, suggested that the role of state courts in applying state constitutions may be constrained by operation of Clause 2.104 Three Justices elaborated on this view in Bush v. Gore,105 but the Court ended the litigation—and the recount—on the basis of an equal protection interpretation, without ruling on the Article II argument.
Constitutional Status of Electors
Dealing with the question of the constitutional status of the electors, the Court said in 1890: “The sole function of the presidential electors is to cast, certify and transmit the vote of the State for President and Vice President of the nation. Although the electors are appointed and act under and pursuant to the Constitution of the United States, they are no more officers or agents of the United States than are the members of the state legislatures when acting as electors of federal senators, or the people of the States when acting as electors of representatives in Congress. . . . In accord with the provisions of the Constitution, Congress has determined the time as of which the number of electors shall be ascertained, and the days on which they shall be appointed and shall meet and vote in the States, and on which their votes shall be counted in Congress; has provided for the filling by each State, in such manner as its legislature may prescribe, of vacancies in its college of electors; and has regulated the manner of certifying and transmitting their votes to the seat of the national government, and the course of proceeding in their opening and counting them.”106 The truth of the matter is that the electors are not “officers” at all, by the usual tests of office.
107 They have neither tenure nor salary, and having performed their single function they cease to exist as electors.
This function is, moreover, “a federal function,”108 because electors’ capacity to perform results from no power which was originally resident in the states, but instead springs directly from the Constitution of the United States.109
In the face of the proposition that electors are state officers, the Court has upheld the power of Congress to act to protect the integrity of the process by which they are chosen.110 But, in Ray v. Blair,111 the Court reasserted the conception of electors as state officers, with some significant consequences.
Electors as Free Agents
“No one faithful to our history can deny that the plan originally contemplated, what is implicit in its text, that electors would be free agents, to exercise an independent and nonpartisan judgment as to the men best qualified for the Nation’s highest offices.”112 Writing in 1826, Senator Thomas Hart Benton admitted that the framers had intended electors to be men of “superior discernment, virtue, and information,” who would select the President “according to their own will” and without reference to the immediate wishes of the people. “That this invention has failed of its objective in every election is a fact of such universal notoriety, that no one can dispute it. That it ought to have failed is equally uncontestable; for such independence in the electors was wholly incompatible with the safety of the people. [It] was, in fact, a chimerical and impractical idea in any community.”113
Electors constitutionally remain free to cast their ballots for any person they wish and occasionally they have done so.114 In 1968, for example, a Republican elector in North Carolina chose to cast his vote not for Richard M. Nixon, who had won a plurality in the state, but for George Wallace, the independent candidate who had won the second greatest number of votes. Members of both the House of Representatives and of the Senate objected to counting that vote for Mr. Wallace and insisted that it should be counted for Mr. Nixon, but both bodies decided to count the vote as cast.115
The power either of Congress116 or of the states to enact legislation binding electors to vote for the candidate of the party on the ticket of which they run has been the subject of much debate.117 It remains unsettled and the Supreme Court has touched on the issue only once and then tangentially. In Ray v. Blair,118 the Court upheld, against a challenge of invalidity under the Twelfth Amendment, a rule of the Democratic Party of Alabama, acting under delegated power of the legislature, that required each candidate for the office of presidential elector to take a pledge to support the nominees of the party’s convention for President and Vice President. The state court had determined that the Twelfth Amendment, following language of Clause 3, required that electors be absolutely free to vote for anyone of their choice. Justice Reed wrote for the Court:
“It is true that the Amendment says the electors shall vote by ballot. But it is also true that the Amendment does not prohibit an elector’s announcing his choice beforehand, pledging himself. The suggestion that in the early elections candidates for electors— contemporaries of the Founders—would have hesitated, because of constitutional limitations, to pledge themselves to support party nominees in the event of their selection as electors is impossible to accept. History teaches that the electors were expected to support the party nominees. Experts in the history of government recognize the longstanding practice. Indeed, more than twenty states do not print the names of the candidates for electors on the general election ballot. Instead, in one form or another, they allow a vote for the presidential candidate of the national conventions to be counted as a vote for his party’s nominees for the electoral college. This long-continued practical interpretation of the constitutional propriety of an implied or oral pledge of his ballot by a candidate for elector as to his vote in the electoral college weighs heavily in considering the constitutionality of a pledge, such as the one here required, in the primary.”
“However, even if such promises of candidates for the electoral college are legally unenforceable because violative of an assumed constitutional freedom of the elector under the Constitution, Art. II, § 1, to vote as he may choose in the electoral college, it would not follow that the requirement of a pledge in the primary is unconstitutional. A candidacy in the primary is a voluntary act of the applicant. He is not barred, discriminatorily, from participating but must comply with the rules of the party. Surely one may voluntarily assume obligations to vote for a certain candidate. The state offers him opportunity to become a candidate for elector on his own terms, although he must file his declaration before the primary. Ala. Code, Tit. 17, § 145. Even though the victory of an independent candidate for elector in Alabama cannot be anticipated, the state does offer the opportunity for the development of other strong political organizations where the need is felt for them by a sizable block of voters. Such parties may leave their electors to their own choice.”
“We conclude that the Twelfth Amendment does not bar a political party from requiring the pledge to support the nominees of the National Convention. Where a state authorizes a party to choose its nominees for elector in a party primary and to fix the qualifications for the candidates, we see no federal constitutional objection to the requirement of this pledge.”119 Justice Jackson, with Justice Douglas, dissented: “It may be admitted that this law does no more than to make a legal obligation of what has been a voluntary general practice. If custom were sufficient authority for amendment of the Constitution by Court decree, the decision in this matter would be warranted. Usage may sometimes impart changed content to constitutional generalities, such as ‘due process of law,’ ‘equal protection,’ or ‘commerce among the states.’ But I do not think powers or discretions granted to federal officials by the Federal Constitution can be forfeited by the Court for disuse. A political practice which has its origin in custom must rely upon custom for its sanctions.”120
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-c...
Saturday, November 7th 2020 at 12:01PM
Steve Williams
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Read carefully Ron.
“Appoint”
The word “appoint” as used in Clause 2 confers on state legislatures “the broadest power of determination.”92 Upholding a state law providing for selection of electors by popular vote from districts rather than statewide, the Court described the variety of permissible methods. “Therefore, on reference to contemporaneous and subsequent action under the clause, we should expect to find, as we do, that various modes of choosing the electors were pursued, as, by the legislature itself on joint ballot; by the legislature through a concurrent vote of the two houses; by vote of the people for a general ticket; by vote of the people in districts; by choice partly by the people voting in districts and partly by the legislature; by choice by the legislature from candidates voted for by the people in districts; and in other ways, as, notably, by North Carolina in 1792, and Tennessee in 1796 and 1800. No question was raised as to the power of the State to appoint, in any mode its legislature saw fit to adopt, and none that a single method, applicable without exception, must be pursued in the absence of an amendment to the Constitution. The district system was largely considered the most equitable, and Madison wrote that it was that system which was contemplated by the framers of the Constitution, although it was soon seen that its adoption by some States might place them at a disadvantage by a division of their strength, and that a uniform rule was preferable.”93
Saturday, November 7th 2020 at 12:03PM
Steve Williams
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