Electors Against Trump Are Faithful Not Faithless

[babylonsister]

http://time.com/4597387/faithless-electors-donald-trump/

Electors Against Trump Are Faithful Not Faithless

Geoffrey R. Stone

Geoffrey R. Stone is a Edward H. Levi Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Chicago.
It's their obligation to the Constitution and the country

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For members of the Electoral College, the judgment, integrity and character of a candidate who generates votes by deceit, falsehood and outright lies have to be called into question. And lest one think these lies were harmless, it is worth noting, to cite just one example, that 40% of all Trump supporters believe that he won the popular vote by a landslide. This is no way to promote the values of democracy.

Equally troubling, during the election and in the weeks since, Trump repeatedly expressed views that were racist, anti-Muslim, misogynist and filled with disdain for his fellow Americans. It is no wonder that he lost the popular vote by almost three million votes. Should the members of the Electoral College ignore this behavior in exercising their constitutional authority? Musn’t they, in order to fulfill their constitutional responsibilities, consider whether this man has the character, the judgment, the temperament, the sense of human decency, and the truthfulness to serve as President of the United States?

And still further, we now learn that the Russians played a significant role in manipulating information available to the American people in a concerted effort to bring about the election of Trump. Even if this was not Trump’s doing, is it not the duty of the members of the Electoral College to consider whether the 2016 presidential election was undermined by a foreign power? And mustn’t it matter that the foreign power did so in order to bring about the election of a particular candidate? As Alexander Hamilton made clear, this was, one of the chief concerns of the Framers. As Hamilton explained in The Federalist Papers, a primary reason for the Electoral College was the need to protect our nation against “the desire of foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils . . . by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union.”

Of course, people will say, not without reason, “Whoa! If the Electoral College interferes in the outcome of this election it will create an outcry that the election was ‘rigged.’” Trump supporters will no doubt charge that the Electoral College denied the presidency to the legitimate “winner,” even though he lost the popular vote by almost three million votes. But remember the election of 2000. The members of the Supreme Court did what they saw as their constitutional duty. They intervened in a way that resulted in the election of George W. Bush, rather than Al Gore, even though Gore won the popular vote by 500,000 votes. The justices fulfilled what they saw as their constitutional duty in the crisis of a contested presidential election.

The same is true now for the members of the Electoral College. If they do not award the presidency to Donald Trump, they will of course be condemned by Trump and his supporters and accused by them of destroying our democracy. That will be ugly. But this is where John F. Kennedy and Profiles in Courage enters the picture. If this is the right outcome, then our electors must fearlessly and courageously do right by our nation. That is their constitutional responsibility. If they fulfill that responsibility, they will not be “faithless” electors, but faithful ones. Our nation will be proud of their courage, their sense of responsibility, and their integrity, and they will have fulfilled the most fundamental vision of our Founders.

[Jean-Jacques Roussea]

1. The worst treatment they'll recieve will be how it would feel to live as a minority in Trump's

America for a couple months.

[madamesilverspurs]

2. Good timing, I was just looking for this!

And the link is getting forwarded to a friend who happens to be one of those heavily burdened 538. He spent the afternoon in a courtroom dealing with this, and is presently holding a meeting to acquaint us with how things are proceeding; I'm still waiting to hear how that meeting goes, seeing as how it's taking place in a room I have trouble getting into.

What a frigging nightmare this is!

[babylonsister]

3. Excellent!

[sarah FAILIN]

4. Trump electors are faithful

I was just on ones facebook page and he was posting about people daring to ask him to change his vote. I asked anyway, not that it would do any good.