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Tag: Electoral College

  • Trump formally elected U.S. President by Electoral College

    Trump formally elected U.S. President by Electoral College

    The 538-membet Electoral College sealed Republican Donald Trump’s victory on Monday, formalising his Nov. 8 election and making him officially the 45th elected U.S. President.

    The Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in the U.S. reports that Trump took to his twitter handle to break the news of his victory to his supporters.

    “We did it! Thank you to all of my great supporters, we just officially won the election (despite all of the distorted and inaccurate media),” Trump said.

    “Today marks a historic electoral landslide victory in our nation’s democracy.

    “I thank the American people for their overwhelming vote to elect me as their next President of the United States.

    “This election represents a movement that millions of hard working men and women all across the country stood behind and made possible.

    “With this historic step we can look forward to the bright future ahead.

    “I will work hard to unite our country and be the President of all Americans,” Trump also said in a statement.

    Vice President-elect Mike Pence also hailed Trump on Twitter as the results came in.

    “Congratulations to @realDonaldTrump; officially elected President of the U.S. today by the Electoral College!”

    Unofficial reports said Trump received 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 224, with six electors said to have voted for other candidates, costing Trump two votes and Clinton four.

    However, Hawaii’s electors are reportedly still set to meet later on Monday, with the state’s four votes expected to go to Hillary Clinton, who won the popular votes by almost three million.

    NAN reports that the result will be officially announced on Jan. 6, 2017 in a special joint session of Congress.

    Vice President Joe Biden, will open the electoral votes before a joint session of the new Congress, where they will be counted and certified.

    NAN reports that in the U.S., the Vice President is the President of the Senate.

    The Electoral College met in all the 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. on Monday.

    NAN reports that afterwards, the president-elect will be communicated to officially to arrive at the Capitol Hill on Jan. 20 for his inauguration.

    Under U.S. law, electors must formally vote for the president and vice-president before they can lead the country.

    NAN recalls that Trump’s victory in various states in the  Nov. 8 election put him in line to get 306 of the 538 electoral college votes as against Clinton’s 232, according to projections.

    NAN also reports that Clinton won the popular vote by almost three million votes.(NAN)

  • 538 electors choose between Trump, Clinton today

    538 electors choose between Trump, Clinton today

    Six weeks after the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election, the battle for the White House is yet to be over as the 538 electors formally cast their votes for either Democratic Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump on Monday.

    News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that although, technically the President-elect Trump won the electoral college on Nov. 9, officially, he has not been voted for.

    Under the US Constitution, the real presidential election takes place on Dec. 19, when electors meet in the 50 state capitals and Washington, D.C. to cast their ballots.

    To be elected a president, therefore, a candidate must score 270 Electoral College votes, representing 50 per cent plus one vote or a simple majority vote.

    As the electors prepare to vote on Monday, there are reports that many Republican electoral college members have been besieged by phone calls and e-mails to vote against Trump.

    Clinton’s victory in the popular vote, by a margin of close to three million but not the electoral vote and controversies about Trump have generated unusual interest in the electoral college.

    Trump needs 270 electoral votes on Monday to claim White House and his victory in various states in the  Nov. 8 election put him in line to get 306 of the 538 electoral college votes as against Clinton who had 232.

    NAN reports that Clinton’s almost three million over Trump’s, made him the most unpopular president-elect since 1876 and heightening the tension in recent weeks.

    Already 18 notable U.S. actors and other artists have urged Republican electors to “go down in the books as American heroes” by not voting for Trump.

    One elector has resigned, another said he would not vote while electors in three states went to court seeking authority to vote as they please.

    The Republican elector from Texas, Art Sisneros, resigned, saying a vote for Trump “would bring dishonour to God”.

    Christopher Suprun, a Texas elector, said he would not vote for Trump, who won his state’s election.

    “Donald Trump lacks the foreign policy experience and demeanour needed to be commander in-chief,” he said.

    In California, a Federal Judge scheduled a hearing on a similar request from an elector, Vinzenz Koller, who said he could not vote for Clinton.

    Courts in Colorado and Washington have rejected  pleas from electors to be released from requirements to vote as their states did, although the electors in Colorado appealed the lower court ruling.

    The state Supreme Court will have until noon on Monday, when electors cast their ballots, to decide.

    On Sunday, John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, suggested that 37 electoral voters bound to Trump could defect, which would be enough to create at least a tie and send the votes to the House to decide.

    Podesta predicated his argument on glaring allegations that Russians hacking the emails of Democrats during the election led in part to Clinton’s loss.

    He also argued that members of the Electoral College should have an intelligence briefing about the hackings before voting on Monday.

    “I assume that our electors are going to vote for Hillary Clinton.

    “But the question is whether there are 37 Republican electors who think that either there are open questions about the purported Russian hackings or that Donald Trump is really unfit to be president and I guess we will know that tomorrow.”

    However, Reince Priebus, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in spite of the mounting pressures on the electors to vote against Trump “we expect everything to fall in line”.

    Priebus, however, confirmed “the only known and so-called ‘faithless’ balloter, who lives in Texas and whose vote goes to Trump but plans to vote for another, yet-to-be-named Republican.

    “But other than that, we’re very confident that everything is going to be very smooth,” he said.

    Priebus, however, noted “a massive petition drive to get electoral voters to cast ballots against Trump and the alleged harassment of some of the voters, particularly in Arizona, where Trump won 49 per cent of the vote, compared to 45 percent for Clinton, which entitles him to all 11 electoral votes”.

    There is no U.S. Federal law on electoral votes while the penalties for violations are minor, such as being disqualified from future balloting, but some states bind their voters to the popular vote.

    A total of 29 states have laws that bind the electors, requiring them to cast their votes for whichever candidate won that state’s popular vote but the laws are weak, providing only nominal penalties.

    The Supreme Court ruled in 1952 that states do not violate the Constitution when they require electors to pledge that they will abide by the popular vote but the justices have never said whether it is constitutional to enforce those pledges. (NAN)

  • America’s Electoral College and Democracy

    “…that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” – Abraham Lincoln’s memorable Gettysburg’s Address of November 19, 1863.

    Few textual critics, if any, can improve on Abbey Lincoln’s concise definition of democracy as “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. In what sounds like a derivative of that classic definition, democracy may be said to be a system of government by the majority of eligible voters of a state, typically through elected representatives; a rule by the majority; a government in which the supreme power is vested in the (majority) of the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held elections.

    The political structure in the United States of America, where the emergence of the President and Vice-President depends on a so-called Electoral College, established by Article Two of the United States Constitution (1787), whereby the voice of the majority (popular vote) is bridled by a political artifice called electoral college vote is the very antithesis of “government of the people, by the people, for the people” and can, therefore, not be dignified with the name of democracy.

    Each state appoints a number of electors equal to the number of Senators (i.e. one hundred in all) and of Representatives (i.e. four hundred and thirty-five in all) to which the states may be entitled in the Congress, in addition to three electors from the District of Columbia and one elector each from the states of Maine and Nebraska. Those figures yield a total of 540 electors. Any presidential contender who wins at least 50 per cent, or 270 thereof,  becomes President of the United States, even if majority of the electorate (popular vote) prefers his/her opponent with the popular vote!

    Why, one may wish to know, is there any need for “Election Day” (always announced with fanfare) or popular election such as happened on November 8, when the popular vote counts for nothing in the final analysis? For example, if, for the sake of argument, the two major presidential candidates polled 269 Electoral Votes apiece, the 435-strong House of Representatives would be asked to decide which of the two candidates becomes President of America, the Popular Vote notwithstanding! In the recent presidential election in the US, the non-partisan Cool Political Report had candidate Hillary Clinton at 62,825,754 popular votes in contradistinction to candidate Donald Trump’s 61,486,735 (or 47.9 percent to 46.9 per cent, respectively. Another 6-9 million votes were cast for third-party candidates, including Libertarian Gary Johnson, Green Jill Stein and independent David Evan McMullin. That translates to 53.1 per cent of voters casting their ballots for candidates other than Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than one million votes, but lost the Electoral College Vote (she polled 232) to Trump (who allegedly won 290).

    The 2016 presidential election in America made Trump the fourth President to lose the popular vote but win his spurs against his opponent. In 1876, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, with 4,036,298 popular votes, won 185 Electoral College votes. His opponent, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, won the popular vote with 4,300,590 votes, but won only 184 Electoral College votes. Hayes was elected President. In 1888, Benjamin Harrison, with 5,439,853 popular votes, won 233 Electoral College votes. His main opponent, Democrat Grover Cleveland, won the popular vote with 5,540,309 votes, but won only 168 Electoral College Vote. Harrison was elected President. In 2000, Republican George W. Bush garnered only 50,456,062, and his main opponent, Democrat Al Gore, got 50,996,582 popular votes. Even so, Bush became President as he polled 271 Electoral College votes to Al Gore’s 266. Usually and almost ineluctably, candidates that lose the popular vote but become Presidents via that load of hocus pocus called “Electoral College Vote” turn out to be particularly unsuccessful and unpopular Presidents! It is strange that all the beneficiaries of the Electoral College Vote peculation have been Republicans!

    The Electoral College is, essentially, a vestigial structure—a relic of a bygone era in which the founding fathers specifically fulminated against a nationwide vote of the American people to choose their next President. Instead, the draftsmen of the constitution, (particularly Delegates Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts and George Mason, the man, of Virginia) gave a small, lucky group of people called the “electors” the power to make that choice, arguing that “the people (popular vote) haven’t the requisite capacity to judge the respective pretensions of the candidates.”

     Such was the origin of the Electoral College, which makes the election of the Chief Executive of America a despicable simulacrum of democracy. The outcome of a presidential election in the US is really just settled in a few so-called swing states. Today, only 12 of the 50 states in the US control about 53% of the votes in the Electoral College.

    On the basis of the odious political contrivance called Electoral College Vote, an undisguised enemy of democracy, (and hoping there was no “malicious software” in the election machines), Donald John Trump has been elected President-elect of the US. He had consciously made far-reaching electoral promises: he will build a wall to separate the US from Mexico and will make the latter to pay for the cost of the wall; he will transfer the Israeli capital from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; he will defeat ISIS; he will repatriate all undocumented immigrants; he will stop all Moslems from entering the US; he will resile from the multilateral Climate Change (Paris) Agreement; he will contract out of the NATO confraternity; he will stop the carnage on US streets; he will appoint a Special Prosecutor to prosecute, and put, Hillary Clinton in jail…

    Whether or not he becomes popular or unpopular during his first four years in office, or remains President after the November 2020 presidential election, or, indeed, will be impeached as predicted by the same polyhistor and Presidential Historian, Prof. Allan Lichtman, who predicted his victory in the 2016 election, will depend, largely, on the extent to which he fulfils, and the manner in which he executes, his 2016 electoral promises. One hopes that the American electorate will hold him to account!

     

    • Akiri, an attorney writes from Lagos.
  • Gowon wants Electoral College for 2015 poll

    Gowon wants Electoral College for 2015 poll

    …Opposes creation of new states

    Former Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon (rtd) on Wednesday advocated for the use of the Electoral College system in the conduct of future Presidential elections in the country, beginning with the 2015 elections.

    He also asked the National Assembly to end the agitation for new states.

    The former Nigerian leader spoke just as Kaduna State governor, Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa lamented the security situation in the northern part of the country, which according to him, has chased away potential investors who were willing to invest in the Agriculture, mining and solid mineral sectors in the region.

    Speaking at a two- day conference on the north and strategies for sustainable development, the former head of state who was represented by the Chairman of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Alhaji Aliko Mohammed however said that the north must come together to forge a common front in other to enjoy political progress and development.

    Although he did not elaborate further on the Electoral College system, he said, “Unless we come together in the north, we would continue to have problems. I met with the Senate caucus in the north in Abuja last week and I asked them to reconsider the introduction of Electoral College in electing the president.”

    Gowon said the creation of new states will only increase the cost of governance, pointing out that it will not resolve the catalogues of problems bedevilling the country.

    Addressing the gathering, Governor Yakowa said that the north has always remain a catalyst for the unity of the country, adding that despite the current security challenges, the region will remain a rallying point for the unity and development of the country.

    Yakowa said, “The north has been a catalyst for the unity, stability and development of the country. The country has been relying for direction from the north. This is contrary to what some out there would want the world to belief about the region.

    “History has shown that the unity and strength of the north, with a collective sense of purpose and focus has been the bastion for the unity and strength of Nigeria. We must do everything to sustain this responsibility bestowed on us by providence.”

    The governor, who commended the organizers of the conference for their foresight, said it was gratifying that Nigeria has remained a single country despite the security challenges, saying, “we must give credit to Nigerians and to God that Nigeria still remains a country, albeit beleaguered by towering security challenges.

    “In this difficult time, we must work assiduously to adequately address the tolerance level among our people, if we must succeed collectively. Nigeria, as a multicultural and multilingual nation of diverse people, with more than 250 distinct languages and ethnic groups, cannot continue to behave as a group of irreconcilable religious and ethnic nationalities, contrary to the ‘One North One People’ bequeathed to us by no other than the late Sardauna, Ahmadu Bello,” Yakowa said.