The courts are going very badly for Trump Team Treason.* Going against the "norms" of the Electoral College is probably all that's left. But that's still mainstream.
*I switched the order of the words, so as not to get sued.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
The courts are going very badly for Trump Team Treason.* Going against the "norms" of the Electoral College is probably all that's left. But that's still mainstream.
The surge of donations is largely from small-dollar donors, campaign officials say, tapping into the president’s base of loyal and fervent donors who tend to contribute the most when they feel the president is under siege or facing unfair political attacks.
The Philadelphia suburbs were the key to Joe Biden’s Pennsylvania victory. Here are the numbers.
Biden’s victory margin was 105,000 votes better than what Hillary Clinton amassed in 2016. That was more than enough to offset the gains Trump made in smaller counties across the state.
In Pennsylvania, a state President-elect Joe Biden won by 81,000 votes — and President Donald Trump won four years ago by 44,000 — every vote mattered.
And Philadelphia’s suburbs delivered.
In Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties Biden expanded the total margin of victory by nearly 105,000 votes over what Hillary Clinton amassed in her loss in 2016. That was more than enough to offset the gains Trump made in smaller counties across the state, even despite a somewhat disappointing Democratic performance in Philadelphia.
“If Philly didn’t perform up to all expectations for Democrats, the suburbs did. They really, really did,” said Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College and pollster who heads its Institute of Public Opinion. “If you’re looking for one big thing, you’d go to the Philly suburbs. Those margins … were just off the charts.”
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Biden picked up votes in towns all across the collar counties, a coalition of municipalities large and small that includes a wide range of political and cultural communities, according to an Inquirer analysis of precinct- and municipal-level data. The analysis, which examined the results in all 238 municipalities in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties, found that:
The number of votes cast for either Biden or Trump increased in all but three municipalities over the total cast for Clinton and Trump in 2016.
Ninety percent of the towns shifted further to the left than four years ago, with 213 giving Biden a greater share of their two-party vote than they did Clinton. Twenty-five shifted right.
136 towns voted for both Clinton and Biden, but his margin was bigger in 119 of them.
Trump won 67 towns in both elections, although 59 of them shifted left this time and eight of them shifted to the right.
Thirty-five towns that Trump won in 2016 flipped this year and gave more support to Biden.
No municipality in the Philadelphia suburbs that Clinton won four years ago flipped this year to Trump.
Biden’s boost wasn’t just in one kind of suburb. His performance stretched across the region, encompassing Democratic bastions of wealthy, white, and well-educated voters such as Lower Merion, where he picked up the biggest gain in net votes, or Haverford, or Abington — as well as racially and ethnically mixed inner suburbs, such as Upper Darby, which had the second-highest net gain in votes, and Yeadon, which is largely Black and continued to vote heavily for Democrats.
The numbers are eye-popping, but also fit broader patterns: The Philadelphia suburbs don’t stand out because they defy long-term trends or the movement in the rest of the state, but because of those shifts and trends.
It’s not just that the Philadelphia suburbs voted heavily for Biden — they’ve been getting bluer for two decades now. Or that turnout surged everywhere — in all 67 counties, Biden drew more than Clinton, and Trump topped his totals from four years ago. Or that suburbs across the state delivered strong numbers for Biden, including outside Pittsburgh and around smaller cities such as in Dauphin, Cumberland, Northampton, and Lackawanna Counties.
It’s the size of the Philadelphia suburbs — and their growing, educated, increasingly racially and ethnically diverse electorate — that makes them key for Democrats. Even relatively small shifts in turnout and vote share can mean a difference of tens or even hundreds of thousands of votes.
That’s what happened this year: Turnout rose as towns shifted left.
Statewide, the number of presidential votes cast rose by more than 13% this year. The votes cast for either the Democratic or Republican nominee in particular rose by 16%.
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Delaware County’s two-party vote was up, though below the statewide average, but the other counties exceeded it: Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester Counties each rose close to or just above 20%.
That points to another big difference in 2020: While the Libertarian, Green, and Constitution party candidates won 3.6% of the vote in Pennsylvania four years ago, third-party candidates won just 1.1% in 2020. Notably, the Green Party candidate was removed from the ballot in Pennsylvania.
Overall, the two-party vote in the four counties rose by 18.3% — an increase of 237,000 votes, from 1.3 million in 2016 to more than 1.5 million this year.
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That’s a significant number of additional votes. But it’s not enough on its own to explain Biden’s win.
After all, turnout rose in other counties, too. In the 54 counties that Trump won in both 2016 and 2020, the two-party votes increased by 17.8%. That’s a smaller rise than in the Philadelphia suburbs, but it’s a growth of 445,000 votes from 2.5 million in 2016 to more than 2.9 million this year.
That’s where the shift in votes comes in.
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Although it’s easy to paint the Philadelphia suburbs with a broad brush, the reality is there are dozens — hundreds — of communities, cultures, and subcultures there, making up a complicated quilt of political leanings. And it was a shift all across those communities that gave Biden huge numbers.
It’s not just turnout that matters, or just the vote share — it’s the combination of the two and the ultimate margin of victory.
Consider Philadelphia. Biden received nearly 20,000 more votes than Clinton did in the deep-blue city. But Trump also received more support in Philadelphia this year — 24,000 more votes.
So even though Biden’s 471,000 votes in the city was more than any past Democratic presidential candidate, and even though Philadelphia still voted heavily Democratic, his net vote, or share of the total cast, was actually lower than Clinton’s.
And those are the numbers that add up, because candidates aren’t starting with a blank map. By taking the 2016 map as a baseline, looking at the difference in votes allows us to see how this election compares.
That’s how Lower Merion, for example, ends up being such a powerful driver of votes. The town was already blue, and shifted slightly left, going from voting 78.1% for Clinton to 79.1% for Biden. The total number of votes cast for either party’s nominee increased by 16%.
That rate is lower than the rest of the suburbs, but because Lower Merion has the largest number of Biden and Clinton votes of any town in the area, the increase in turnout and its leftward shift meant more than 4,000 net votes for Biden. That alone was nearly enough to offset the decreased net Biden votes from Philadelphia.
Despite Biden’s strong performance, Trump clearly retained some appeal in the suburbs. For example, the working- and middle-class towns of Bensalem and Bristol in Lower Bucks County both continued to shift to the right — four years after Trump drew more support there than the GOP nominee in 2012, Mitt Romney.
Biden still won Bensalem and Bristol, but the Democrats’ slide there reflects the party’s broader struggles among white voters without college degrees.
At the same time, however, Biden made inroads in affluent, well-educated, and predominantly white towns that Trump won in 2016. In Central Bucks, for example, Warrington, Warminster, and Upper Makefield all flipped this year for Biden.
It will be difficult for Democrats to replicate Biden’s dominating performance in the region.
Dave Wasserman, an elections analyst with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said Democrats could possibly build on their margins for the next presidential election. At the same time, he said, the party could see more defections beyond the cities and their ring collars from voters who might have liked Biden — but not the Democrats “brand” as a whole.
Guiliani also claims that Barr and the DOJ aren't privy to the evidence they've uncovered. LOL
The DOJ, CIA, Homeland Security and FBI are run by commies; they obviously can not be trusted.
Two words: Deep State. Bill Barr is a Deep State operative. That dishonest redaction of the Mueller Report? That was just to gain their trust...
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
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The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,258
Biden
Name me another “movement” that lost the popular vote twice?
Name me another “movement” that lost the popular vote twice?
I love this fact: Donald Trump was the first U.S. president to be elected while losing the popular vote, to get impeached, and then to fail to be reelected as an incumbent.
I'll ride the wave where it takes me......
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,698
Name me another “movement” that lost the popular vote twice?
I love this fact: Donald Trump was the first U.S. president to be elected while losing the popular vote, to get impeached, and then to fail to be reelected as an incumbent.
what he's always wanted. To be in a class all his own.......
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,698
By the time President Trump released a lengthy recorded speech Wednesday delineating his various false and debunked claims about fraud in the presidential election, it was already too late. He insisted it wasn’t, of course. “There is still plenty of time to certify the correct winner of the election,” he argued, “and that’s what we’re fighting to do.” But there wasn’t still plenty of time. That’s not just in the sense that, over the past month, he’s been unable to provide any evidence to bolster his claims of fraud. It isn’t just in the sense that races had already been called in each state, showing that President-elect Joe Biden would surpass the required number of electoral votes. And it wasn’t just that states were beginning to certify those results, locking Trump’s losses in cement. As he spoke, five of the six states Trump has repeatedly focused on with his unfounded claims of fraud — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — had not only certified their results but also transmitted formal certificates of ascertainment to the National Archives with the seal of the state’s governor. And that, by itself, essentially closes the door. To understand why, you have to understand a bit about the process by which the United States selects a president. It’s fairly opaque in large part because the country eventually put the emphasis on the will of the voters instead of the electoral college. How those electors voted tracked with how the voters voted, so the process by which those electors were formalized moved to the background. With Trump attempting to somehow subvert the will of the voters, though, it demands more attention. In about two weeks, the electors from each state will meet to formally cast their votes for the president and vice president. But that’s only half of what ends up being transmitted to Washington. Those votes are paired with what are called “certificates of ascertainment,” formal declarations from each state of which slate of electors should be considered valid. Here, for example, is the second page of Wisconsin’s. It bears both the seal of the state and the signatures of the governor and secretary of state. It lists the specific people who will serve as electors — all of whom are pledged to Biden, as the first page delineates. These documents look different from state to state, varying in form and content. But each one that has been submitted contains two important bits of information: who won the state and whom the electors will therefore be. Again, these are critical documents. As the National Archives’ explainer of the process puts it, “a set of electoral votes consists of one Certificate of Ascertainment and one Certificate of Vote.” The certificate of vote is the documentation of how the electors voted. The certificate of ascertainment is what is signed by the state validating the electors. It’s a package. But it’s important, too, because in the event of competing slates of electors, the electors who have the stamp of approval from the state’s executive are the ones whose votes will count. We’re getting into the weeds a bit here, but it’s worth summarizing our past, lengthier looks at this. In short, it is possible that both Biden and Trump electors could meet in their states on Dec. 14 to cast their votes for president. Both sets of electors could transmit those votes to Washington. The House and Senate, when opening the votes on Jan. 6 — the final step in determining the winner — would then have two slates of electors from, say, Wisconsin. The House and Senate would vote on which slate to accept. Given the composition of each body, it’s possible that the House might pick the Biden electors and the Senate the Trump ones. If things got that far (which isn’t likely), the Electoral Count Act of 1887 has a tiebreaker: “The votes of the electors whose appointment shall have been certified by the executive of the State, under the seal thereof” are the ones that count. In other words, if there’s such a split on Wisconsin, it’s the Biden electors who are supposed to win. As it stands, the vote has been certified in about half the states. There are a lot more electoral votes for Biden in states that haven’t certified their votes than there are for Trump, but there’s no real question that the largest — California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York — will certify for Biden. Biden has a lead among the states that have already transmitted their certificates of ascertainment to D.C. But, again, those states include most of the ones that Trump is currently fighting to overturn. He wants to claim he won Arizona — but the certificate of ascertainment already indicates under the governor’s signature and with the state seal that the electors go to Biden. Same with Pennsylvania and Michigan and Georgia. Biden not only won those states, he has the backup documentation he needs in case Trump really starts to take things sideways. And with those states alone, he passes the 270 electoral-vote mark. It’s over. It’s been over for nearly a month, of course, but now it’s over over. Biden is going to get the electoral votes he needs to be president, and even if there’s a dispute in Washington when those votes are counted, his votes will be counted in the states where Trump has been most fervent about alleging fraud. None of this will matter to the president, given that he is by now approaching the contest from outside the realm of reality. But it will matter to Congress and to the country.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
WI 6/27/98 WI 10/8/00 MO 10/11/00 IL 4/23/03 MN 6/26/06 MN 6/27/06 WI 6/30/06 IL 8/5/07 IL 8/21/08 (EV) IL 8/22/08 (EV) IL 8/23/09 IL 8/24/09 IN 5/7/10 IL 6/28/11 (EV) IL 6/29/11 (EV) WI 9/3/11 WI 9/4/11 IL 7/19/13 NE 10/09/14 IL 10/17/14 MN 10/19/14 FL 4/11/16 IL 8/20/16 IL 8/22/16 IL 08/18/18 IL 08/20/18 IT 07/05/2020AT 07/07/2020
If you’re not watching Jake Tappers interview with Sleepy Woke Joe Basement Biden and Kamala Harris, Veep, you should be. It’s what leadership and humbleness and progression looks like. 4 issues, yo. He’s woke, yo!
I actually signed something that says I can go to jail if I don’t tell the truth, did you sign anything like that. Sad thing is Trumpers believe signing an affidavit is evidence.
Female version of Joe the Plumber. Sister Sarah is rising. Can’t wait for them to take over the country and show us the way. You want anchovies with that?
Comments
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
www.headstonesband.com
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raises-more-than-150-million-appealing-to-false-election-claims/2020/11/30/82e922e6-3347-11eb-afe6-e4dbee9689f8_story.html
The surge of donations is largely from small-dollar donors, campaign officials say, tapping into the president’s base of loyal and fervent donors who tend to contribute the most when they feel the president is under siege or facing unfair political attacks.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
an actual trump quote from an interview on fox news.
www.headstonesband.com
Pearl Jam bootlegs:
http://wegotshit.blogspot.com
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
https://fusion.inquirer.com/politics/election/philadelphia-suburbs-2020-election-20201129.html
The Philadelphia suburbs were the key to Joe Biden’s Pennsylvania victory. Here are the numbers.
Biden’s victory margin was 105,000 votes better than what Hillary Clinton amassed in 2016. That was more than enough to offset the gains Trump made in smaller counties across the state.
In Pennsylvania, a state President-elect Joe Biden won by 81,000 votes — and President Donald Trump won four years ago by 44,000 — every vote mattered.
And Philadelphia’s suburbs delivered.
In Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties Biden expanded the total margin of victory by nearly 105,000 votes over what Hillary Clinton amassed in her loss in 2016. That was more than enough to offset the gains Trump made in smaller counties across the state, even despite a somewhat disappointing Democratic performance in Philadelphia.
“If Philly didn’t perform up to all expectations for Democrats, the suburbs did. They really, really did,” said Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College and pollster who heads its Institute of Public Opinion. “If you’re looking for one big thing, you’d go to the Philly suburbs. Those margins … were just off the charts.”
Biden picked up votes in towns all across the collar counties, a coalition of municipalities large and small that includes a wide range of political and cultural communities, according to an Inquirer analysis of precinct- and municipal-level data. The analysis, which examined the results in all 238 municipalities in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties, found that:
The number of votes cast for either Biden or Trump increased in all but three municipalities over the total cast for Clinton and Trump in 2016.
Ninety percent of the towns shifted further to the left than four years ago, with 213 giving Biden a greater share of their two-party vote than they did Clinton. Twenty-five shifted right.
136 towns voted for both Clinton and Biden, but his margin was bigger in 119 of them.
Trump won 67 towns in both elections, although 59 of them shifted left this time and eight of them shifted to the right.
Thirty-five towns that Trump won in 2016 flipped this year and gave more support to Biden.
No municipality in the Philadelphia suburbs that Clinton won four years ago flipped this year to Trump.
Biden’s boost wasn’t just in one kind of suburb. His performance stretched across the region, encompassing Democratic bastions of wealthy, white, and well-educated voters such as Lower Merion, where he picked up the biggest gain in net votes, or Haverford, or Abington — as well as racially and ethnically mixed inner suburbs, such as Upper Darby, which had the second-highest net gain in votes, and Yeadon, which is largely Black and continued to vote heavily for Democrats.
The numbers are eye-popping, but also fit broader patterns: The Philadelphia suburbs don’t stand out because they defy long-term trends or the movement in the rest of the state, but because of those shifts and trends.
It’s not just that the Philadelphia suburbs voted heavily for Biden — they’ve been getting bluer for two decades now. Or that turnout surged everywhere — in all 67 counties, Biden drew more than Clinton, and Trump topped his totals from four years ago. Or that suburbs across the state delivered strong numbers for Biden, including outside Pittsburgh and around smaller cities such as in Dauphin, Cumberland, Northampton, and Lackawanna Counties.
» READ MORE: The Philly suburbs aren’t the only suburbs where Democrats are on the rise in Pennsylvania
It’s the size of the Philadelphia suburbs — and their growing, educated, increasingly racially and ethnically diverse electorate — that makes them key for Democrats. Even relatively small shifts in turnout and vote share can mean a difference of tens or even hundreds of thousands of votes.
That’s what happened this year: Turnout rose as towns shifted left.
Statewide, the number of presidential votes cast rose by more than 13% this year. The votes cast for either the Democratic or Republican nominee in particular rose by 16%.
Delaware County’s two-party vote was up, though below the statewide average, but the other counties exceeded it: Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester Counties each rose close to or just above 20%.
That points to another big difference in 2020: While the Libertarian, Green, and Constitution party candidates won 3.6% of the vote in Pennsylvania four years ago, third-party candidates won just 1.1% in 2020. Notably, the Green Party candidate was removed from the ballot in Pennsylvania.
Overall, the two-party vote in the four counties rose by 18.3% — an increase of 237,000 votes, from 1.3 million in 2016 to more than 1.5 million this year.
That’s a significant number of additional votes. But it’s not enough on its own to explain Biden’s win.
After all, turnout rose in other counties, too. In the 54 counties that Trump won in both 2016 and 2020, the two-party votes increased by 17.8%. That’s a smaller rise than in the Philadelphia suburbs, but it’s a growth of 445,000 votes from 2.5 million in 2016 to more than 2.9 million this year.
That’s where the shift in votes comes in.
Although it’s easy to paint the Philadelphia suburbs with a broad brush, the reality is there are dozens — hundreds — of communities, cultures, and subcultures there, making up a complicated quilt of political leanings. And it was a shift all across those communities that gave Biden huge numbers.
It’s not just turnout that matters, or just the vote share — it’s the combination of the two and the ultimate margin of victory.
Consider Philadelphia. Biden received nearly 20,000 more votes than Clinton did in the deep-blue city. But Trump also received more support in Philadelphia this year — 24,000 more votes.
So even though Biden’s 471,000 votes in the city was more than any past Democratic presidential candidate, and even though Philadelphia still voted heavily Democratic, his net vote, or share of the total cast, was actually lower than Clinton’s.
» READ MORE: Philly was supposed to turn out huge for Biden. It didn’t. What happened?
And those are the numbers that add up, because candidates aren’t starting with a blank map. By taking the 2016 map as a baseline, looking at the difference in votes allows us to see how this election compares.
That’s how Lower Merion, for example, ends up being such a powerful driver of votes. The town was already blue, and shifted slightly left, going from voting 78.1% for Clinton to 79.1% for Biden. The total number of votes cast for either party’s nominee increased by 16%.
That rate is lower than the rest of the suburbs, but because Lower Merion has the largest number of Biden and Clinton votes of any town in the area, the increase in turnout and its leftward shift meant more than 4,000 net votes for Biden. That alone was nearly enough to offset the decreased net Biden votes from Philadelphia.
Despite Biden’s strong performance, Trump clearly retained some appeal in the suburbs. For example, the working- and middle-class towns of Bensalem and Bristol in Lower Bucks County both continued to shift to the right — four years after Trump drew more support there than the GOP nominee in 2012, Mitt Romney.
Biden still won Bensalem and Bristol, but the Democrats’ slide there reflects the party’s broader struggles among white voters without college degrees.
At the same time, however, Biden made inroads in affluent, well-educated, and predominantly white towns that Trump won in 2016. In Central Bucks, for example, Warrington, Warminster, and Upper Makefield all flipped this year for Biden.
» READ MORE: Suburban voters in Pennsylvania rejected Trump — but not the Republican Party
It will be difficult for Democrats to replicate Biden’s dominating performance in the region.
Dave Wasserman, an elections analyst with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said Democrats could possibly build on their margins for the next presidential election. At the same time, he said, the party could see more defections beyond the cities and their ring collars from voters who might have liked Biden — but not the Democrats “brand” as a whole.
“So this election,” he said, “points to Pennsylvania continuing to be a highly competitive state in the future.”
Staff writer Chris A. Williams contributed to this article.
www.headstonesband.com
lol I thought pastors were peaceful!
www.headstonesband.com
Two words: Deep State. Bill Barr is a Deep State operative. That dishonest redaction of the Mueller Report? That was just to gain their trust...
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
what he's always wanted. To be in a class all his own.......
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/02/its-already-too-late-trump/
By the time President Trump released a lengthy recorded speech Wednesday delineating his various false and debunked claims about fraud in the presidential election, it was already too late.
He insisted it wasn’t, of course.
“There is still plenty of time to certify the correct winner of the election,” he argued, “and that’s what we’re fighting to do.”
But there wasn’t still plenty of time. That’s not just in the sense that, over the past month, he’s been unable to provide any evidence to bolster his claims of fraud. It isn’t just in the sense that races had already been called in each state, showing that President-elect Joe Biden would surpass the required number of electoral votes. And it wasn’t just that states were beginning to certify those results, locking Trump’s losses in cement.
As he spoke, five of the six states Trump has repeatedly focused on with his unfounded claims of fraud — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — had not only certified their results but also transmitted formal certificates of ascertainment to the National Archives with the seal of the state’s governor. And that, by itself, essentially closes the door.
To understand why, you have to understand a bit about the process by which the United States selects a president. It’s fairly opaque in large part because the country eventually put the emphasis on the will of the voters instead of the electoral college. How those electors voted tracked with how the voters voted, so the process by which those electors were formalized moved to the background.
With Trump attempting to somehow subvert the will of the voters, though, it demands more attention.
In about two weeks, the electors from each state will meet to formally cast their votes for the president and vice president. But that’s only half of what ends up being transmitted to Washington. Those votes are paired with what are called “certificates of ascertainment,” formal declarations from each state of which slate of electors should be considered valid.
Here, for example, is the second page of Wisconsin’s.
It bears both the seal of the state and the signatures of the governor and secretary of state. It lists the specific people who will serve as electors — all of whom are pledged to Biden, as the first page delineates.
These documents look different from state to state, varying in form and content. But each one that has been submitted contains two important bits of information: who won the state and whom the electors will therefore be.
Again, these are critical documents. As the National Archives’ explainer of the process puts it, “a set of electoral votes consists of one Certificate of Ascertainment and one Certificate of Vote.” The certificate of vote is the documentation of how the electors voted. The certificate of ascertainment is what is signed by the state validating the electors. It’s a package.
But it’s important, too, because in the event of competing slates of electors, the electors who have the stamp of approval from the state’s executive are the ones whose votes will count. We’re getting into the weeds a bit here, but it’s worth summarizing our past, lengthier looks at this.
In short, it is possible that both Biden and Trump electors could meet in their states on Dec. 14 to cast their votes for president. Both sets of electors could transmit those votes to Washington. The House and Senate, when opening the votes on Jan. 6 — the final step in determining the winner — would then have two slates of electors from, say, Wisconsin. The House and Senate would vote on which slate to accept. Given the composition of each body, it’s possible that the House might pick the Biden electors and the Senate the Trump ones.
If things got that far (which isn’t likely), the Electoral Count Act of 1887 has a tiebreaker: “The votes of the electors whose appointment shall have been certified by the executive of the State, under the seal thereof” are the ones that count. In other words, if there’s such a split on Wisconsin, it’s the Biden electors who are supposed to win.
As it stands, the vote has been certified in about half the states. There are a lot more electoral votes for Biden in states that haven’t certified their votes than there are for Trump, but there’s no real question that the largest — California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York — will certify for Biden. Biden has a lead among the states that have already transmitted their certificates of ascertainment to D.C.
But, again, those states include most of the ones that Trump is currently fighting to overturn. He wants to claim he won Arizona — but the certificate of ascertainment already indicates under the governor’s signature and with the state seal that the electors go to Biden. Same with Pennsylvania and Michigan and Georgia. Biden not only won those states, he has the backup documentation he needs in case Trump really starts to take things sideways. And with those states alone, he passes the 270 electoral-vote mark.
It’s over. It’s been over for nearly a month, of course, but now it’s over over. Biden is going to get the electoral votes he needs to be president, and even if there’s a dispute in Washington when those votes are counted, his votes will be counted in the states where Trump has been most fervent about alleging fraud.
None of this will matter to the president, given that he is by now approaching the contest from outside the realm of reality. But it will matter to Congress and to the country.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
oh glorious day.
www.headstonesband.com
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Terrible conclusion
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©