Was The Election Rigged?

I don't think "funhouse" is the appropriate appellation. Maybe "House of Horrors".

I have heard rumors that the Electoral College may not give their votes to Cheeto Jesus. That would be fun. It would actually be the reason for the existence of the system: to keep an unqualified lunatic from being elected by the unwashed masses.

_Howard wrote:

I have heard rumors that the Electoral College may not give their votes to Cheeto Jesus.

I don't even want to think what John Roberts would do with this.

SCOTUS shouldn't be involved. The electors would only be following the Constitution.

Oh, child of childish assumptions

A strict constructionist would have no problems with such an action by the electors.
Oh, where is Scalia now that we need him?

My understanding is that SCOTUS is not involved. If the electors can't come to a decision, it goes to the House.

The point here is what if they decide on someone other than Trump.
The only thing I can see happening, if they do anything other than give it to Agent Orange, is the Republican electors striking a deal with the Democrats to give the presidency to Pence.

No, Pence's road to the presidency involves an impeachment. And that is not out of the realm of believability either.

But the electors, if they have a choice, can choose to go with the winner of the popular vote (by over 2 million votes) which is why the Orange Hemorrhoid has been claiming "millions of fraudulent votes for Hillary cost him the popular vote." He wants to sow doubt so if the electors move that way, he has grounds to challenge. (In his world, statements are as good as facts.)

Either way, if Donald is not installed January 21 the country will undergo a turmoil the likes of which we have never experienced. It will be like a military coup.

Hmmm, I wonder if that's a third possibility?

richard09 wrote:

If the electors can't come to a decision, it goes to the House.

Hello President Paul Ryan?

There will be no President Ryan in 2016. The House must choose between the top two electoral vote recipients or between the top five recipients, depending on the vote distribution. The House cannot insert anyone else into the race. The Electoral College is not bound by the Constitution to select from the proffered candidates.

Any way you slice it I don't see the Electoral College choosing anyone but Don. I think we're stuck with Agent Orange til 2020.

You're undoubtedly right, but please leave me my dreams.

I think most people haven't really come to terms with who and what the man with the tiny hands will mean to this country. Consider this from his surrogates: Clinton may be prosecuted because DT is pissed about the recount. Is this who those idiot voters wanted?

Let him initiate prosecution.  They'll find the same thing the FBI found, twice: no evidence of wrongdoing.

I hear Kenneth Starr is looking for a job.

No, god damn it, do NOT let him initiate prosecution. The Congress and the executive branch agencies need to put a stop to shit like that at the onset. We cannot allow that kind of thuggery to become the norm.

Too late.

Too soon to give up on everything.

We'll see. My innate skepticism has returned, after a short absence.

Quote :

My innate skepticism...

Or learned cynicism? I've long suspected that our future may be poisoned by our past. Our political institutions are cumbersome relics, no longer limber enough to deal with the sheer amount of information and the speed of change. I think we'd gotten kind of complacent and sort of believed in steady, incremental human progress and the spread of liberal democracy.

Check it out...

Yeah I'd say our democracy is about 3/4 of a mile down the road to dissolution. The signs are all there but general acknowledgment isn't there yet.

I say it would be nice if some democracy broke out in this country. There sure as hell isn't much around at the present.

richard09 wrote:

There sure as hell isn't much around at the present.

Populist democracy is thriving though.  Encouraging and managing popular expression is a hallmark of fascism.  Mobs of assholes chanting "Lock her up!" is seen as the very essence of "people power".  Plus, we have a free press! You know, I could never understand those old line conservatives like Edmund Burke, Hobbes, reaching all the way back to Plato, who seemed to have such distrust of the uneducated masses but I'm starting to wonder if they may have been onto something.

kilo wrote:

You know, I could never understand those old line conservatives like Edmund Burke, Hobbes, reaching all the way back to Plato, who seemed to have such distrust of the uneducated masses but I'm starting to wonder if they may have been onto something.

This last election would seem to lend support to that argument.

I think it may be worthwhile for all candidates to be tested both intellectually and psychologically.

Faithless Electors:

Wikipedia wrote:

The Electoral College mechanism and the peculiar phenomenon of faithless electors provided for within it, was, in part, created as a safety measure not only to prevent a scenario of tyranny of the majority, but also to prevent the use of democracy to overthrow democracy for an authoritarian, dictatorial or other system of oppressive government.[3] American founding father Alexander Hamilton writing to Jefferson from the Constitutional Convention argued of the fear regarding the use of pure direct democracy by the majority to elect a demagogue set out to harm the minority rather than work for the benefit of all citizens. As articulated by Hamilton, one reason the Electoral College was created was so "that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications."[4]