Politico:
A Republican member of the Electoral College who had expressed reservations about supporting President-elect Donald Trump has opted instead to resign his position and turn it over to an alternate elector.The blog post from Sisneros is an excellent piece of political philosophy that deserves notice. He correctly points out how we have turned the original intent of the Electoral College as a republic into a warped representation of democracy, whereby the electors merely serve at the whim of the voters, and not chosen for their own best judgement. If you want to understand why we have shallow politicians, this blog post is a great place to start.
Art Sisneros, a Texas Republican elector who told POLITICO in August that he was strongly weighing a vote against Trump, confirmed Monday that he would quit the position. Sisneros had said as recently as last week that he still hadn't decided how to cast his electoral vote.
Sisneros detailed his decision to resign in a little-noticed blog post over the weekend.
Think about it: When you vote, do you elect people to do what you want them to do, or do you elect the wisest person possible?
In other political news...
The New Yorker:
In case you missed it:
Who started it this time? The behavior of Jill Stein, the Green Party Presidential candidate, who has filed in Wisconsin for a recount of votes cast in the Presidential election, and who plans to pursue recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania as well, has been frustrating; that of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party contender, who joined the effort, human but disappointing; and that of Donald Trump, the President-elect, outrageous and destructive. The recount business has not brought out the best in anybody, and in Trump it has brought out the worst: in a series of tweets Sunday night, he alleged that millions of votes were fraudulent, enough to cost him the popular vote. None of this is going to produce any change in the results of the 2016 election. The sole item it may deliver is the one thing the country had been spared with Trump’s victory: a corrosive, conspiracy-minded, and slanderous attack on the integrity of our voting system. This is a critical period in which the shape of Trump’s Administration will be formed, one that presents all sorts of tasks and challenges for his opponents. Democrats have better things to do.Huh? How does an action initiated by the Green Party candidate and supported by the Democratic Party candidate turn into a diatribe against the Republican? Only in New York...
But back to the story...
A candidate needs two hundred and seventy Electoral College votes to win the Presidency. Trump has three hundred and six, and Clinton has two hundred and thirty-two. This includes sixteen for Trump from Michigan, where his victory, by ten thousand votes, was certified this afternoon. Wisconsin has ten electoral votes, and he is ahead by about thirty thousand; Pennsylvania has twenty, and the lead is seventy thousand. A recount would have to reverse the results in all three states to get Clinton to two hundred and seventy. And, as fivethirtyeight.com noted, this has never happened in cases where the margins are as large as those in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania; even Michigan would be at the edge of past experience. (It is worth noting that Jill Stein won enough votes in Michigan and Wisconsin to account for Clinton’s losses there.) Stein’s Wisconsin application lists a number of reasons for a recount, most of which are paraphrases of a single thought: the Russians might, just might, have fixed the election—after all, they hacked John Podesta’s e-mail. Added to that is the general observation that electronic voting systems are, in any state, theoretically hackable. That amounts to saying that no one should really trust any results. The only example of observable irregularities that Stein cites is an uptick in absentee voting, something that may have many causes. Attached to her submission is an affidavit from a computer expert, J. Alex Halderman, who has long warned against electronic voting systems. But, apart from explaining why a paper record is a good idea, he doesn’t really offer any evidence, apart from press reports that the Russians have hacked other things and a general sense that they are up to no good. (There have also been reports pointing to a weaker performance for Clinton in counties with paperless balloting; however, as both fivethirtyeight.com and the Upshot have pointed out, any difference disappears when one controls for demographics.) And Halderman includes this line: “One would expect a skilled attacker’s work to leave no visible signs, other than a surprising electoral outcome in which results in several close states differed from pre-election polling.”That hits the nail on the head: You need evidence for a good conspiracy theory, not wild speculation that connects unconnected dots.
This is classic conspiracy logic: the absence of evidence is evidence of just how insidious it is. The failure of an event to turn out as expected is presented as evidence of some hidden hand at work, some deliberate interference.
Time for a TRUTH check: This election is a done deal. This isn't anywhere close to what happened in 2000. Trump is going to be president, like it or not.
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