Three Ways To Steal An Election: A Tutorial

Think it’s over once all the votes are counted? Not by a long shot. The Electoral College provides plenty of ways to game the system and I’ll guarantee you that both sides know exactly how this works.

FIRST, Faithless Electors. Electors promise to vote for the presidential candidate who gets the most votes in their state. (Minor variation in NE and ME, which divide them up by district. That’s where those weird one delegate votes come in.)

But — nothing happens to them if they break their promise. So suppose someone offers an Elector a couple of million to change his or her vote, to be a faithless elector?

If the vote is close enough and a few electors break their promises, we could have an electoral votes tie.

SECOND. States have to certify their Electors to the Electoral College on 8 Dec this year. But if the election is still in dispute, the Legislature of that State could appoint electors.

Here’s an example: suppose Republicans are in the majority in a state legislature, but a Democrat wins the vote. The vote is protested. It can’t be resolved. The Legislature could then appoint and certify Republican Electors instead of the Democratic Electors. (Variations between states in how this would happen, but that’s the general shape of it.)

THIRD. In case of a tie, the election is kicked over to the House. Each State gets one vote in the House. Democrats have the majority of Representatives in the House because the more populated states tend to be Democratic. BUT there are more Republican states in sheer numbers of states.

So — watch for all three of these issues to pop up. Pretty much a guarantee we’ll see a variation on at least one of these.