“Electoral College Do Your Job – Don’t Elect A Demagogue!”
Message From Trenton, NJ: “Stop Trump”
NJ Statehouse, Trenton NJ (12/19/16)
Despite the cold and wind, over 200 hardy citizens went to Trenton NJ today to give a message to the electoral college:
“Electoral College Do Your Job – Don’t Elect a Demagogue” they chanted during a Statehouse protest.
Electors met in 50 State Capitals today to select the next President.
The question is: should they honor their State vote pledge to Trump or vote their conscience.
Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig makes the case that electors are not legally bound to honor their state vote, that the ethical obligations are complex, and that they should instead vote their conscience.
The electoral college is a vestige of the Constitution’s anti-democratic origins, when only elite white men who owned property could vote (see: “Taming Democracy”). Elite’s structured the Constitution to preserve elite privilege and block direct democratic control of governmental power.
Alexander Hamilton lays out the elite’s justification in Federalist #68 – portions of which raise pertinent arguments, particularly given Trump’s “foreign entanglements”. Hamilton wrote:
Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention. They have not made the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes;
It erects “obstacles” that serve as barriers to democracy and contradicts the concept of “one man – one vote” that most Americans incorrectly believe is the legal principle that governs voting for President.
The fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes but lost the electoral college vote by a wide margin has shone a bright light on this anti-democratic Constitutional reality.
Here’s some photos that prove democracy is alive and that people fully understand the stakes: (apologies for the poor quality – no processing and portable camera)
My friend Jeff Tittel (Sierra Club) urged people to honor the legacy of historical progressive social movements – abolition, women’s suffrage, workers rights, union organizing, 8 hr. wrk day, New Deal reforms, anti-war, gay rights and environment – and unite in common cause to Stop Trump.
Looks like “It’s a hard rain, gonna fall”.