By John F. Di Leo –
Even if you dislike the results, even if there was massive fraud in multiple states giving you good reason to believe you actually won, you must accept the results that the press has published for those states. Those states have the RIGHT to allocate their vote however they want, under whatever rules they want, with or without fraud… and you have no right to bicker about it. You've got to let them.
Why?
Because that's just the way it is. You have to accept it.
Now, I think that is a very interesting position.
Most Republicans are citing the 2000 election – leading to a case known as Bush v Gore – as reason to object to that logic. Al Gore, after all, was given 37 days to postpone the inevitable, because he claimed to be within a few hundred votes in one state. Only one… and he was never in the lead, even there. Endless recounts just continued to re-confirm the fact that President Bush won Florida fair and square.
I agree that Bush v Gore is an imperfect analogy for that reason. In 2020, there are multiple states with issues, and those issues involve credible suspicion of vote fraud and outright ballot fabrication in the hundreds of thousand of votes. This is not an analog to 2000.
But what I'd like to know is why nobody (to my knowledge at least) has brought up the issue of the National Popular Vote compact.
For those of you who may have forgotten, the NPV compact is a thoroughly illegal idea that the Democrats hatched some years ago when they decided that the Electoral College worked against Democrats, so they should plot its undoing.
There is some logic to that, since the Electoral College encapsulates vote fraud – limiting it to its own state, in a presidential election. As long as we have the Electoral College, whether Chicago fabricates ten votes or ten million votes, all Chicago can ever steal is Illinois. Throw away the Electoral College, and just a few cities can steal the whole country.
(And as we're learning right now, even with the Electoral College, just a few cities can steal the whole country if they're daring enough to fabricate enough ballots).
So here's the plan of the NPV crowd: Since the Electoral College is in the Constitution, it would take a Constitutional amendment to undo it, and that would never happen.
So, they have come up with the idea of a "compact." When it kicks into effect, States just "agree" that no matter which presidential candidate actually wins their states, they will give their electoral votes to whoever won the "popular vote" announced by the networks.
Now, keep in mind: this is an end run around the Constitution, so it's completely illegal… but it's a fascinating concept. This is their idea, their plan.
And it's not some harebrained scheme supported only by some wacko in the janitor's closet of some blighted tenement; this is a plan that has actually been passed into law already, by fifteen states and the District of Columbia.
Let's say that again, shall we, to be sure we've absorbed it. A huge number of Democrats (and to be fair, some moderates, independents, and third party types too) have endorsed the NPV compact. It has passed fifteen states plus DC.
So fifteen states plus DC are already on record as saying that the presidential choice of other states that they respect should outweigh the vote of their own citizens. If their citizens vote Republican, but the total national vote favored the Democrat, then they'll give their Electoral College votes to the Democrat anyway, with a healthy poke in the eye of their own local voters.
Now, you and I may say that's a terrifying idea. We may point out that it's unconstitutional and thoroughly misguided.
But the fact remains… it is their official position.
The official position of fifteen states and Washington D.C. is that they believe in disregarding who won their state if the residents of other states picked somebody else.
Well, now. Isn't that special?
I find it impossible to avoid proposing a corollary:
If the people of a few states realize that the vote in their own states was so horribly tainted by fraud that they cannot really be completely sure who won their states… wouldn't it make the most sense for those states to look around and give their Electoral College delegate votes to the candidate who won the majority of the states where there is no discernable fraud?
Obviously, we can trust the good people of Oklahoma, Indiana, North and South Dakota, Utah, Idaho… there's a host of states – a majority in fact – that are known for conducting their elections properly. And in those states, Donald Trump won by healthy, absolutely undisputed margins – 55/45, 60/40, even 65/35.
By contrast, massive fraud is always apparent in a number of states that always vote for the Democrat. California is famous for letting millions of illegal aliens and other noncitizens vote illegally… Chicago is so well known for vote fraud that a grand jury in 1982 determined that Chicago machine thugs had fabricated a hundred thousand ballots in one late election night. New Yorkers are notorious for having a habit of registering to vote at both their main home and their winter condos or college dorms, and voting from the both, to the tune of tens of thousands of votes per election. So we can hardly look to those states for guidance. No, it's the Republican states that really present an honest snapshot of the will of their legal residents.
I can hardly think of anything more honorable than for the legislatures of the several currently uncalled states – now forced to acknowledge that they are wracked by vote fraud – to say "Our state failed to hold a proper election; we don't know for certain how they voted. The only thing for us to do is to trust the states that did it fairly, and allocate our electoral college delegates to the choice of those honest states. Congratulations, President Trump."
Now, I'm not saying they will take this approach. I'm not even saying they should; I'm a Constitutionalist. I want an honest election – in which all legal votes are counted and all illegal votes are excluded. I want the Constitution upheld.
All I'm saying is, considering the anti-electoral college rhetoric of the modern Democrat, in particular their push for the National Popular Vote Compact, it would be awfully hypocritical of them to object to this theory, when they've been saying all along that they believe the residents of one state should give their delegates to the winner of other states, just for the principle of the thing.
If the legislatures of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia, for example, were to say "There's so much fraud in our states, we're going to follow the lead of Indiana, West Virginia, Montana and Alaska, among others, and proudly say, "Congratulations President Trump!"… the NPV-happy Democrats could hardly argue against it, without completely undermining their own case, now could they?
Hmmm… Are those crickets I hear?
copyright 2020 John F Di Leo
John F Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance trainer and transportation professional. A one-time county chairman of the Milwaukee Republican Party, John has been writing for Illinois Review for eleven years now.
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