Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Let's talk about Republican legislatures who could do this.
Generally speaking, you'd need a Republican trifecta (State House, State Senate and Governor) to pull this off. Presumably, it would take a change of law in a state to alter the allocation of Electoral Votes from the popular vote winner to simply appointing Electors as the state government deems appropriate. Mind you, this is how it worked prior to the Civil War in many states.
Here is a list of states with Republican trifectas (bolded are RCP toss-up states):
SC GA FL
AL
MS
TN
AR
MO IA
IN OH
WV TX
OK
NE
ND
SD
WY
ID
UT AZ
Let's say for argument's sake, all of these states decided to cast their EV for Trump regardless of the popular vote. Most states on that list are not even competitive. That's worth about 100 votes (non-bolded states) that Trump would win. Another 116 votes are up for grabs if Trump somehow convinced those states to simply allocate their votes to him. That puts him at 216. That would look like this:
Now, let's add in other states likely to go Trump's way legitimately. That would be MT, KS, KY, LA. That puts Trump at 241 EV now. He'd need to come up with just 29 EV from states like these:
MI
WI
PA
MN
NC
NH
NC is the most likely of those to go for Trump, so let's give him that. He'd be at 256 then. Needing just 14 more. A combination of WI/MN and NH would do it. Or just MI or just PA.
Sad to say, this is all plausible. It would require a stunning betrayal of the country by Republican Trifecta states to overturn votes in states that might have gone to Biden (AZ being the most likely trifecta state to go blue of the list).
I read some of these states had no laws which actually said electorates must vote for the candidate who won the state, and even in the states who did have laws the fine was only $1000. It's my understanding that no laws would really need to be changed. Would that remove the need for the Governor if the state Legislature is Republican and the Governor is a Democrat like PA maybe it could be done. If Trump can tie up the certification in court delay it enough. The other way would be to tie it up enough where it goes to the house then it's voted by state GOP holds more states then DEMS. Trump wins again without voters.
I read some of these states had no laws which actually said electorates must vote for the candidate who won the state, and even in the states who did have laws the fine was only $1000. It's my understanding that no laws would really need to be changed. Would that remove the need for the Governor if the state Legislature is Republican and the Governor is a Democrat like PA maybe it could be done. If Trump can tie up the certification in court delay it enough. The other way would be to tie it up enough where it goes to the house then it's voted by state GOP holds more states then DEMS. Trump wins again without voters.
This can happen although quite unlikely, since it would lead to a generalized social upheaval.
This can happen although quite unlikely, since it would lead to a generalized social upheaval.
I agree and it sounds like a bad dream something like this would actually happen in the US. When the Pennsylvania House Republican State Government Committee Chair, Garth Everett says he already been in discussion with the Trump campaign about it no longer fiction.
Well we have to learn from 2016, we can't just pretend it didn't happen....
And Trump supporters have been abused and harassed more in 2020 than they were in 2016.....so good luck polling them.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
