"Hail to the Acting Chief!"
Nov. 4th, 2012 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogThere's a scenario out there that Nate Silver, for one, thinks we have little chance of even coming close to, but if this doesn't encourage my like-minded friends to get out and vote, nothing will.
This blogger-sorta-Times-reporter, who's been dead on the last few times out, is giving Obama more than an 80 percent chance of winning the electoral vote after Tuesday's results. He acknowledges, though, that mileage may vary if poll sampling is off, or if some last-minute weirdness intervenes. In such event, it could be a squeaker either way, with the victor perhaps coming away with the bare 270 electors required.
If that victor is named Mittens, though? He's got a problem:
As the Associated Press reports today, three of the Republicans who will become members of the Electoral College should Mitt Romney win their states are now saying they will refuse to vote for the Republican. All three are Paul backers who somehow managed to be appointed to this usually symbolic post but who have the power to thwart the will of the voters if that is their pleasure. Two are from potential tossup states, Iowa and Nevada. Another is from Texas, a state certain to go Republican this fall.
The "today" in that piece was sometime in September after the conventions, but let's look at tomorrow- more precisely, the day after tomorrow:
The odds are, either Romney or President Obama will wind up getting more than 273 votes, making the potential Paul protest merely a matter of symbolism. But if, as is entirely possible, the outcome does come down to a couple of Electoral votes, the focus on these individuals will be intense. If they manage to deadlock the College and send the decision to Congress — something that last happened in 1824 — it will turn the election into more of a circus than the 2000 debacle in Florida.
I wrote, almost a year ago, about the weirdness that would result from such a result- then, from the perspective of the Paulistas actually having some electors and preventing either major party candidate from 270. But the result's the same if a Romney elector, or three, should go rogue. The elections get "thrown" (that word being used almost as faithfully as "invoked" is used with the "infield fly rule") to the houses of Congress, where the new House, voting state-by-state, may be hopelessly and permanently deadlocked in choosing a President while the Senate, with fewer candidates to choose from and less divisiveness among their delegations, will almost certainly name Joe Biden as Veep on the first ballot- and he will then serve as President until either Obama or Mittens emerges victorious from the most dysfunctional legislative chamber in the world.
Every decision, every crisis, every need to clean up the Sequestration Mess caused by Congress at the end of 2011 will be held in some bizarre state of limbo.
You do not want this. I do not want this. Get out and vote.
This blogger-sorta-Times-reporter, who's been dead on the last few times out, is giving Obama more than an 80 percent chance of winning the electoral vote after Tuesday's results. He acknowledges, though, that mileage may vary if poll sampling is off, or if some last-minute weirdness intervenes. In such event, it could be a squeaker either way, with the victor perhaps coming away with the bare 270 electors required.
If that victor is named Mittens, though? He's got a problem:
As the Associated Press reports today, three of the Republicans who will become members of the Electoral College should Mitt Romney win their states are now saying they will refuse to vote for the Republican. All three are Paul backers who somehow managed to be appointed to this usually symbolic post but who have the power to thwart the will of the voters if that is their pleasure. Two are from potential tossup states, Iowa and Nevada. Another is from Texas, a state certain to go Republican this fall.
The "today" in that piece was sometime in September after the conventions, but let's look at tomorrow- more precisely, the day after tomorrow:
The odds are, either Romney or President Obama will wind up getting more than 273 votes, making the potential Paul protest merely a matter of symbolism. But if, as is entirely possible, the outcome does come down to a couple of Electoral votes, the focus on these individuals will be intense. If they manage to deadlock the College and send the decision to Congress — something that last happened in 1824 — it will turn the election into more of a circus than the 2000 debacle in Florida.
I wrote, almost a year ago, about the weirdness that would result from such a result- then, from the perspective of the Paulistas actually having some electors and preventing either major party candidate from 270. But the result's the same if a Romney elector, or three, should go rogue. The elections get "thrown" (that word being used almost as faithfully as "invoked" is used with the "infield fly rule") to the houses of Congress, where the new House, voting state-by-state, may be hopelessly and permanently deadlocked in choosing a President while the Senate, with fewer candidates to choose from and less divisiveness among their delegations, will almost certainly name Joe Biden as Veep on the first ballot- and he will then serve as President until either Obama or Mittens emerges victorious from the most dysfunctional legislative chamber in the world.
Every decision, every crisis, every need to clean up the Sequestration Mess caused by Congress at the end of 2011 will be held in some bizarre state of limbo.
You do not want this. I do not want this. Get out and vote.
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Date: 2012-11-05 01:52 pm (UTC)