Posted on 12/18/2016 2:57:44 PM PST by crz
Here is the 12th amendment which concerns the election of the POTUS. Read it!
And sends it to the house.......which will vote for trump
But all of tjis is moot. Trump will poll 305 tomorrow
The 270 figure has to do with the majority required, and the number of electors there are.
As the number of states increased, the populations fluctuated, the number of electors would change, and the number needed to win would also change.
State electors are population proportional.
I think it follows from this:
"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;"
The 12 amendment says that the winner must have a majority of all votes in the electoral college, otherwise the top 3 candidates can be voted on in the House
The interesting thing about the 12th amendment is the history behind it. Originally, the Constitution was written with the thought that we’d have no parties like bad old England. So the electors were to vote for two men to become President. The one who got the most votes would be President and the one who came in 2nd would be Vice President.
But parties did arise. In the election of 1800 Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr running as Democratic Republicans won against the Federalists. Jefferson and Burr received the same number of Electoral votes. Seeing his chance, Burr tried to steal the election (sound familiar?) by trying to drum up votes in the House to be elected President. Hamilton led the forces who opposed Burr and later Burr would pay him back by killing him in a duel.
So now the electors vote separately for President and Vice President. Under the old system Hillary! would be Vice President-Elect and wouldn’t that make for an interesting four years.
it may be moot but do I read this correctly that if the decision was thrown to the house and each state having one vote and if you had a 25-25 tie then JOE BIDEN would become president? There is a scary thought.
That isn’t going to happen...
You’re not very good at math, are you?
The VP would be elected by the house is the assumption
Currently there are 535 electors. 435 electors representing the total of congressional districts, and 100 electors representing the total number of US senators. 270 is the majority of electors.
The House votes for President as States. The Senate votes per Senator for Vice President. The vice president is chosen first in case there are problems electing a President. The Vice President becomes Acting President until the House can elect a President.
That happened in the 1796 election. Many of the Electors refused to vote for the running mates, voting for other people instead. The result was John Adams being elected President and Thomas Jefferson, Adams's very hostile political opponent, being elected Vice President.
The 12th Amendment was adopted to prevent ticket-flipping. This became possible after the two-party system was established. Jefferson realized that the Federalist Party hated him so much that it would likely tell its Electors to votes for his running mate in the 1804 election. This would result in his running mate being elected President. His running mate might encourage this, just as his running mate in 1800 (Aaron Burr) had in the House. The 12th Amendment's splitting each Elector's votes between President and Vice President (rather than 2 for President) prevents ticket-flipping.
If the original Electoral College system applied to this election, the Democratic Electors could vote for Mike Pence. This would give Pence the most electoral votes and the votes from a majority of the Electors. Mike Pence would be President. Trump would have the second most electoral votes and so would be Vice President. Would Pence resign so Trump could be President? The point is that every Presidential candidate wouldn't be able to trust his running mate, who would easily be able to double cross his party and the Presidential candidate. The 12th Amendment allows every Presidential candidate to trust his running mate.
My question to anyone:
If an objection is raised, a vote is thrown out and not counted. Does that lower the total count of the electors appointed? If so then 269 is the majority, not 270.
If the Democrats raise objections to most or all 305 Trump votes just to be pains in the azz, January 6th count take some time.
In the 12th Amendment, Biden is the "President of the Senate". The amendment's reference to Vice President is to the person just elected to that office or electoral votes for it. Under the 12th Amendment, if there was no President elected by March 4, the Vice President-elect became President ("as in the case of the death... of the President"). Section 3 of the 20th Amendment changed this to the Vice President-elect becoming only Acting President until a qualified President was elected if there was nobody qualified had been elected President by January 20.
In this election, if the House had to elect the President and Pence was Vice President-elect and the House failed to elect anybody by noon January 20, Pence would be Acting President until the House elected somebody President.
Actually it’s 538 (3 for the District of Columbia), thus 270 is majority (269 would be a tie).
That article makes one mistake: the sitting Vice President can not vote when the Senate must elect the Vice President. The 12th Amendment says when the Senate must elect the VP it does so by one of the two top vote-getters for that office receiving the votes of “a majority of the whole number” of Senators. The Vice President is not a Senator. At least 51 Senators must agree on who would be the Vice President.
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