Monday: Alinsky, pp. xiii-97 (Do not worry about length: it is a very easy read.)
Extremely detailed map and exit polls
Party Outside Groups (POG)
- Party Divisions in the House
- Party Divisions in the Senate
- State Government Control
- Redistricting: cracking and packing
2020: Why a miracle? Why a tragedy?
- The election was "the most secure in American history"
- Courts rejected accusations of fraud
- So did administration officials
- 2023 survey on the 2020 election
Why the electoral college? Most democracies have parliaments: Framers never considered that system.
In the late 1700s, voters really did not have a lot of information about potential candidates. National news media, as we understand the term, would not exist for more than half a century.
The Framers did not anticipate parties. They saw the electoral college as something akin to a search committee. See Federalist 68.
[The] immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.
...
[The] people of each State shall choose a number of persons as electors, equal to the number of senators and representatives of such State in the national government, who shall assemble within the State, and vote for some fit person as President. Their votes, thus given, are to be transmitted to the seat of the national government, and the person who may happen to have a majority of the whole number of votes will be the President. But as a majority of the votes might not always happen to centre in one man, and as it might be unsafe to permit less than a majority to be conclusive, it is provided that, in such a contingency, the House of Representatives shall select out of the candidates who shall have the five [later three] highest number of votes, the man who in their opinion may be best qualified for the office.
1824 John Quincy Adams and the "Corrupt Bargain"
Close call: 1968 and the Wallace scheme: interactive map
Bush, Gore, and 2000
TIMELINE FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020
November 3 Election Day
- "Declarations" and concessions have no legal meaning.
- Election administration is a state and local duty. There is no "national ballot."
- Counting takes time, in part because so many offices are on the ballot. And in 2020, mail ballots were a large share of the total.
November 3–December 8 Period for resolving state recounts and controversies
December 14 Electors cast their votes
- "The Electoral College" is an abstraction. All the nation's electors never meet together. They meet state by state.
- "Faithless elector" laws
January 6 Congress counts the electors’ votes
- Both houses have to reject a challenged electoral ballot for the objection to prevail.
- THE EASTMAN MEMO (which cited Tribe)
- Electoral Count Reform Act
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