Constitutional Question....?
- Thread starter vanzandt
- Start date
There is a lot of time between November election and innauguration day, plenty of time to review and fix whatever happened. As Gore-Bush showed, there is always significant time to work out and resolve issues.
The Consitution does not have to spell out where the bathrooms are located in the Capitol for you to piss so Congress can handle it within their power.
The Consitution does not have to spell out where the bathrooms are located in the Capitol for you to piss so Congress can handle it within their power.
Indeed.
In addition to the time available, the government could also do some planning in advance- yeh, I know radical concept there. We have hurricane Katrina (hitting Bush here) and days go by and people start to deteriorate because no one could figure out to airlift bottled water to the dome. Or (hitting Obama here) absolute confirmation of russian interference went unaddressed because it was not considered to be a barrier to Hillary winning.
It would not surprise me a bit - after years of outrage over russian and chinese interference- that there is no nationwide, statewide plans for cyberattacks to disable voting machines or something that would call the validity of election results into question. Are there Plan B's? Half of my brain says, of course, there are armies of government planners that do nothing but war game this day in and day out knowing the vulnerability. The other half says, dont be ridiculous. Obvious things always come as a surprise to the government. There is a hurricane or storm approaching Puerto Rico, so can I be assured that various generators and potable water are staged around the island to benefit from the learnings from the last five decades of disasters? I doubt it. but I am up for a surprise. I just hope this cyberattack on our voting system stuff does not have a learning curve like that. Most likely some of the states do not even have their voter registration data backed up somewhere else. Half the records we have needed from various departments of late, somehow are not backed up. Because it is the government you dont know whether it is intentional or just basic incompetence.
Twas my impression the discussion was based on the scenario of an election being hacked and unable to be verified.
You're correct in that each state would send their electors, but what if a state couldn’t verify an election to know which electors to send, enough states to hit 270?
Under these circumstances i could see the election results put on hold for a time to sort it out, would it last past Jan 20? They got it done in time in 2000
Goes to The House to decide.
Pfff. Are you f'ing kidding me?!
We're talking about the U.S. government here. When I see companies like Capital One, Equifax, J.P. Morgan, Anthem, HD, Marriot... these companies invest hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars and have the people you referenced, the armies of geeks that stay on the cutting edge of this crap, and they still get taken out.
You "hope" our government is ready?!
That's an out loud laugh TFT.
I thought you had more common sense than that bro.
Its not a matter of "if"....
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Uncharted waters.
In many ways the answer is unknowable because if it involves the intervention of the Supreme Court then it becomes dependent upon the composition of the Court at the time.
For example, if a major cyberattack takes North Dakota's election system down, then I can see a very reasonable argument that the meeting date for the electoral college can be moved out from the middle of december to the middle of January and still meet the inauguration date- so voila, problem solved.
Except a court may/probably might as equally conclude that the constitution defines when the electoral college will vote, and if a state wants to participate then the date is the monday after the second wednesday in December. Figure out for yourself within your state who you will or will not have participating. And if you dont have electors, well then, that is up to you. The same as if a bunch of citizens did not vote. We aren't going back.
A state's voting in the electoral process is an opportunity, not a requirement. I might have to go back and look but I dont think it says anything about the process requiring a vote from all states, only that the process is open to all states who are willing and able. If their crappy, insecure voting system failed and had no plan B then that is their problem. Start running around the state handing out beans with the each color representing a candidate and have them place one in the jar. Get going.
Also, as a practical matter. The non-functioning or non-participating state's electoral votes may not be determining/dispositive. You know, for example, Maine has two electoral college votes. If their system goes down but there are obviously 270 or more votes for a candidate ready to go from the other states based on their known election results, then, as a practical matter, it is not worth holding the process up. Yes, there are elections where those votes could count. Well then, candidates need to put pressure on the state to fix it before the electoral college date.
A lot of talk about the electoral college because Hillary lost. Suddenly all the dems want to be constitutional scholars. Get a candidate for gawds sake.
Pfff. Are you f'ing kidding me?!
We're talking about the U.S. government here. When I see companies like Capital One, Equifax, J.P. Morgan, Anthem, HD, Marriot... these companies invest hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars and have the people you referenced, the armies of geeks that stay on the cutting edge of this crap, and they still get taken out.
You "hope" our government is ready?!
That's an out loud laugh TFT.
I thought you had more common sense than that bro.
Its not a matter of "if"....
Yeh, well. I thought my little reference to how the government handled Katrina and how prepared Puerto Rico is (not) for storms even though they get hammered every year gave a little hint about what my confidence level is. Hope is all you got. I hope no one gets murdered in Chicago this weekend. Believe me, I am not saying that will be the case.
my bad.
I think everyone here from all sides has enough common sense to figure this one out.