I watched some of the Jan. 6 hearings yesterday and, once again, I don’t know how anyone can watch these hearings without getting a chill down their spine about how close the United States of America, the former beacon of democracy, came to having a coup on our own soil. The pressure former President Trump put on Vice President Mike Pence to do something that almost all of his close advisors told him was illegal was staggering, and unprecedented in American history. It is just another example of how Trump and his acolytes clearly do not understand, nor care about, the U.S. Constitution, and how they clearly do not think through the long-term consequences of their decisions.
If John Eastman’s theory about the power vested in the Vice President was true, it begs the question why, during the 2000 election, Al Gore, then the sitting vice president, didn’t just reject the slate of electors from Florida, since the vote outcome was clearly in dispute, and have the Democratic Party of the state simply submit another set of electors which favored Gore and declare himself the winner. Same thing. How many of the Republicans who are currently kissing Trump’s butt and continuing to propagate the ‘Big Lie’ of widespread election fraud, would have accepted that? Even someone with the IQ of a brick could answer that question – zero!! The Republicans would have gone apoplectic.
Or fast forward to the election of 2024. Who is the sitting Vice President? Kamala Harris. Do you think there is any chance in hell that the same morons who continue to insist that Mike Pence had the power to overturn the results of the 2020 election would agree that Kamala Harris has that same power to determine the outcome of the 2024 election? I can only imagine the twisted arguments and rational that these same people would offer as to why Kamala Harris does not have that same power.
There would be those who resurrect the argument that Kamala Harris is not even a legitimate citizen of the United States so she is an illegitimate Vice President and, hence does not have the same standing and power as Mike Pence. Questions of Kamala Harris’ citizenship and eligibility to hold her office have long since been put to bed but they would certainly resurface amongst the right-wing media and Trump toadies.
Perhaps the misogynistic organization like the Proud Boys would offer up the theory that since there were no ‘founding women’ amongst the ‘founding fathers’, the framers of our Constitution never intended that-women hold governmental offices so the 19th Amendment granting vote rights to women is itself unconstitutional, i.e., Vice President Kamala Harris has no power because she holds the office illegitimately. Think that’s far-fetched? If so, you haven’t been paying attention to all of the whack-a-doodle theories floating around out there.
More than likely, the argument that would gain the most traction amongst the Trump faithful would be that since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were not legitimately elected due to the fact that the election was ‘stolen’, Vice President Kamala Harris does not have the same rights and power as were (wrongly) conferred to Mike Pence.
Whatever the rational, it is a one hundred percent guarantee that the very same Republicans who were screaming to ‘hang Mike Pence’ because he ‘failed to do his duty’ as Vice President to overturn the results of the 2020 election in favor of Trump, would be once again rioting in the streets if Kamala Harris were to reject slates of electors in 2024 in an effort to ensure a Democratic victory.
The fact that there was so much pressure on Mike Pence to tamper with/reject the certified slates of certified electors submitted by the various states, coupled with the ongoing activities of Republicans in many states to elect and install election officials who buy in to the Big Lie, is a very, very strong argument to rid ourselves of the Electoral College once and for all. In two very recent elections, the winner of the popular vote, lost the election due to the vagaries of the Electoral College: Bush v. Gore; Trump v. Clinton.
The way things are going, it doesn’t appear that there is much danger of widespread voter fraud in future elections, but it appears there is an increasing probability of meddling with the slates of electors that are ultimately responsible for deciding presidential elections. That was tried in the last election and barely failed. I would not be so confident that we will be so lucky in the next presidential election. It is time to do away with the Electoral College and just let the popular vote speak for itself. I don’t believe any other country has a system like this and it has clearly outlived its usefulness. Not only is it an anachronism but it is becoming the tool of choice to undermine the very foundations of democracy in this country.